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August 13, 2023
The MoA Week In Review – (Not Ukraine) OT 2023-191

Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:

> Putting these findings together, what the esric surveys reveal is that the Tiananmen Square protest was by nature an anti-reform movement when urban residents panicked about the negative consequences of marketization. In a miracle of miracles, if there were free elections, the conservative anti-reform candidates probably would have won, and China would have returned to the centrally planned system where urban residents enjoyed a cradle-to-grave social safety net. <

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Other issues:

Afghanistan:

Germany / Europe

Apartheid:

Use as open (not Ukraine related) thread …

Posted by on August 13, 2023 at 12:41 UTC | Permalink
Comments

It looks as though the worlds biggest automobile manufacturer is getting set to outsource quite literally everything including engineering to China, with the exception of corporate management. That would be the VW AG. If true, that’s quite a blow to German labour.

Posted by: nwwoods | Aug 13 2023 13:19 utc | 1

re Sy Hersh on D-land: Germany should have impeachment investigation into Scholz re the pipeline destruction: did he know and if so when did he know it?
Similarly, the US Congress should investigate if the Executive had foreknowledge of or participated in that industrial sabotage which is bringing the world’s #4 (soon to be #5) economy into recession.
===========================
re NYT piece on Sex Segregation in Israel. Interesting how Israel often goes into ultra-traditional and conservative manifestation whereas in countries where Jewish power players exercise leveraged influence punching well beyond their relatively small population’s weight they always advocate the opposite – anti-family, anti-tradition, pro-feminism etc. Extremely hypocritical.

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 13:45 utc | 2

The USA is, obviously, going through a bit of a crisis at the moment that goes to the heart of culture and politics and the legal framework of the USA itself. The Kennedy suit against Google/YouTube is important because major private institutions like Google along with nearly all major US institutions is becoming part of the (actual) government. The last chance USA-ans have at returning to some semblance of Constitutional government is the legal system which is only partly controlled by the central government and its operatives.
Kennedy is a multi-dimensional threat to the government as I’ve defined it and the myths that keep it going. I was surprised and not surprised that the Yves’ article showed a lot of hostility towards Kennedy with a bunch of ad hominem attacks on him. I’m not surprised because NC has always been very hostile to “conspiracy theories”, i.e., anything that questions the mythological framework of liberalism. I was, once, one of the most popular people on NC many years ago but was banned because I insisted on the fact that RFK senior’s assassination was a government hit (I gave facts that are know more broadly acknowledged now than back then). Obama was still “Saint Obama” and Yves openly admitted that she wanted her blog to be read (as it was) by the WH and wanted to tone down people like me who saw long ago the ineaments of the Deep State (a term Yves and Lambert strenuously objected to though I defined it carefully).
Censorship and hatred of diversity of opinion was alive and well in liberal web sites starting with the Daily Kos site that I was also kicked out of for saying the same things that are now mainstream in the alt-media. Things changed at NC but it reflected the views that you had to speak politely and avoid ruffling the establisment’s feathers and now doesn’t mind ruffling feathers since the establishment is now so obviously neo-totalitarian.
Free speech is essential. We need to listen to each other. None of us can see the whole picture–we are like the Blind Men and the Elephant story, i.e., we cannot arrive at a semblance of truth without the input of as many points of view as possible. Kennedy’s most important campaign statement was that we need to listen to each other. The labelling of “conspiracy theorists”, communists, fascists, racists, transphobic, and all the rest of the epithets official culture hurls at enemies is directly harming our lives not just in the USA but around the world as the oligarchs insist on making enemies to keep tensions high and the war mentality as central to our emerging mythos.

Posted by: Chris Cosmos | Aug 13 2023 13:57 utc | 3

re NYT piece on Sex Segregation in Israel. Interesting how Israel often goes into ultra-traditional and conservative manifestation whereas in countries where Jewish power players exercise leveraged influence punching well beyond their relatively small population’s weight they always advocate the opposite – anti-family, anti-tradition, pro-feminism etc. Extremely hypocritical.
Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 13:45 utc | 2
Izzie population is quite fragmented, and I don’t keep up, but there is a healthy size population of the rainbow wokists too. And Russians. The Haredi (traditionalists) are out-reproducing everybody else. A very not self-sustaining situation, Bibi has been kind of sitting on it and exploiting it to keep himself in power for 20+ years now.

Posted by: Bemildred | Aug 13 2023 14:00 utc | 4

The big story last week was the coup in Niger which has shed light on the way that neo-colonialism works in Africa.
Niger, which has large and easily worked deposits of uranium, oil and gold, all of which have been exported to France for decades where, among other things, they enable the French to produce electricity at prices so low it can be exported, is the second poorest country in the world.
More than 80% of Nigeriens have no access to electricity.
What has happened has been that the worm has turned- the ‘coup’ which has shocked Victoria Nuland and taken Tony Blinken’s breath away is widely supported by the people, both in Niger and elsewhere in the ‘former’ French colonies where the new bosses, such as the deposed President of Niger, have been just the same as the old bosses only with darker skin tones.
It’s a movement that could spread and reverse the gains NATO made when it removed Ghadaffi in Libya.
Philip Roddis at http://steelcityscribblings.uk/wp/ introduces a fine article from the WSWS and an excerpt from George Galloway’s talk show featuring an African expert on the situation.
“The region is one of the richest in the world in terms of natural resources, including oil, gold and uranium (UN, 2018, p. 7). However, the Sahel, a semi-arid region, is one of the poorest and most environmentally degraded in the world (USAID, 2017, p. 1). For example, Niger, despite its abundant extractive resources is ranked 187/188 on the Human Development Index (Sangare &Maisonnave, 2018, p. 581).”
From ‘Natural Resources Management Strategies in the Sahel’ – a Birmingham University report for the UK Government.
This is the story that reveals the geo-strategic implications of the proxy war in Ukraine.

Posted by: bevin | Aug 13 2023 14:13 utc | 5

Posted by: Bemildred | Aug 13 2023 14:00 utc | 4
Good point. It’s just one of many factions. Actually, I wasn’t really judging the POV, just noting how Israel generally is far less democratic and liberal than what they tend to push in the West.
An Tibetan teacher I knew years ago remarked in passing that Asian view generally regards a lack of distinguishing between the sexes in the public sphere as a sign of cultural decadence, that when the sexes have clearly different roles and costumes etc. the society remains more vibrant. My mind interpreted that as something akin to a battery principle in that one needs to separate positive and negative polarity for the current (which is also a field) to flow correctly. Or something (I’ve never understood how electricity works!).
There was a period in my childhood when I found myself doing traditional English ballroom dances. In such culture the males and females are always in different configurations and how one relates to the opposite sex is the main purpose of all the rituals and steps. It is actually a lot of fun and the atmosphere is always lively. In one Buddhist congregation I used to attend males and females were split down the middle of the room. It was no big deal but it creates a different feeling from when they are all jumbled together.
There’s something to it. I’ve only met a few orthodox Jewish types but found each of them extremely intelligent and attentive. The way they dress seems strange, displaced from our times, sort of an urban equivalent to Mennonites and Amish, but their minds are very sharp and present.

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 14:21 utc | 6

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a post from Peter Watson (PeterAU at this forum). Does anyone know how he’s doing?

Posted by: David Levin | Aug 13 2023 14:31 utc | 7

If bf’s haven’t yet come across Working Brother’s channel, I am going to suggest having a look. It comes from a slightly different perspective to all the other ones. Has a great original music intro and it has had John Bosnic being ‘interviewed’, well more allowed to tell his life stories with some slight interruptions from the host.
Bosnic’s stories are amazing. They cover the formative events of the last 50 years. Enjoy.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses/28314
🧿 John Bosnic continues to Talk to the WB about his incredible life story. In this segment we cover the Russia-Japan connection as well as how supermodels helped John in some international diplomacy.
John tells us about his run in with the MSM of the early internet era and how news was reported on by the likes of Christiane Amanpour, Tim Judah and John Pomfret.
We also learn how he got a sat-phone in the 90s and how it is that the ESPO pipeline got to be.
➡️ https://youtu.be/jLa8J58JLt0 ⬅️
From Japan to Serbia for love, and other details in the 2nd part of the look into who John is.
https://t.me/WorkingBrother/1022
Part3
🧿 John Bosnic is back to Talk about the details of how he got chess Grandmaster Bobby Fischer released from extradition to the United States, in a “Catch 22” of Japanese court.
We also talk about the reasons that Bobby was a wanted man, and how John gave up work to defend the innocence of an American being hunted by his own government.
➡️ https://youtu.be/nic8vS-ywNU ⬅️
After a long wait, John is back to share some Russian and Iranian propaganda.
US DEPT of Treasury, Yakuza, CIA, Serbs and some jokes included.
@WorkingBrother 😎
https://youtu.be/nic8vS-ywNU
Part 4
🧿 John Bosnitch is back to Talk about some lesser known details in history. This time we get into some of the details of the of Kosovo & Metohija, Draža Mihajlović, Tito, and the English obsession with extinguishing Russia (as well as Serbia by extension).
Bosnian Muslim Serbs and Communists as agents of the British empire, as well as some propaganda videos are also discussed.
➡️ https://youtu.be/l3B1a74Feik ⬅️
The Non-Alligned Movement as a tool of the colonial system and other jokes!
@WorkingBrother 😎
https://youtu.be/l3B1a74Feik
Episode 4 or 5? The weight of chains movie 2010
Annanpoor, borger, propagandists in Yugoslav lies.
Journalistic tours in Sarajevo, WaPo trash & sellout story fixers – WB Talks (85) to John Bosnitch

Posted by: DunGroanin | Aug 13 2023 14:42 utc | 8

There’s something to it. I’ve only met a few orthodox Jewish types but found each of them extremely intelligent and attentive. The way they dress seems strange, displaced from our times, sort of an urban equivalent to Mennonites and Amish, but their minds are very sharp and present.
Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 14:21 utc | 5
The Middle Easterners I have met all seemed quite intelligent. Of course there is some selection bias in that.
Intelligence and education are not the same, although they sometimes go together.
Avoiding modern consumer culture has many benefits.
Working relationships, relationships that work are complimentary, there is an exchange of value and obligation that is accepted by all involved. This is true in marriages and in partnerships of all sorts.
But you can fake it for a while.

Posted by: Bemildred | Aug 13 2023 15:07 utc | 9

Was Lahania destroyed by a directed energy weapon?
https://hendrie.substack.com/p/lahaina-was-destroyed-by-a-directed

Posted by: psychohistorian | Aug 13 2023 15:08 utc | 10

The Haredi (traditionalists) are out-reproducing everybody else. A very not self-sustaining situation, Bibi has been kind of sitting on it and exploiting it to keep himself in power for 20+ years now.
Posted by: Bemildred | Aug 13 2023 14:00 utc | 4
That may be true among the Israeli Jews, but as a group the non Jewish residents, the Palestinians, overwhelming outproduce everyone. Despite being born and raised in the country the constitution has denied non Jews the full rights of citizenship. This is the root of the fortress mentality within the Israeli government, why they don’t march with Palestinians against BB and the constant attacks on Palestinian civilians. Demographics left to work on their own would makes Jews a minority in Israel very quickly.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Aug 13 2023 15:21 utc | 11

thanks b! many interesting articles to choose from.. thanks..

Posted by: james | Aug 13 2023 15:43 utc | 12

The “Surprise” of Authoritarian Resilience in China – American Affairs Journal
This is an interesting article. The Tianamen Square protestors reacted to what had by then become an open abandonment of Socialism by the CCP, although that process began long before under Deng. For seeking to return to Socialism, they were slaughtered.
I’d say of the two parties to that massacre, it was the CCP that could be described as conservative in that they were seeking to conserve their power from a challenge below while completing the transition from Socialism back to Capitalism.
The market reforms the CCP advanced did make the country an economic powerhouse which can confront imperialism directly. Still, China is clearly a capitalist and not a socialist country at this point.
Nonetheless, via the CCP, the FIRE sector of the economy is fully under the control of the national leadership which makes their form of capitalism superior to the violent anarchy of the oligarchical form that dominates the west.
China is no workers democracy, working people have no counsels or direct political power, but unlike the US the leadership is brighter, more forward thinking and genuinely nationalist in that it takes responsibility for the interest of all Chinese, although primarily the Han, and makes efforts to improve their conditions of life, within capitalist society, not unlike FDR and the keynesians for a few years after WW2 in the west.
Under the current imperialist pressure, the CCP has done more socialist posturing, but that’s all for show at this point.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Aug 13 2023 15:53 utc | 13

Ahenobarbus@12
Its NEP on steroids.

Posted by: bevin | Aug 13 2023 15:58 utc | 14

Posted by: bevin | Aug 13 2023 15:58 utc | 13
…and going on for decades, not as a temporary emergency measure amidst a civil war.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Aug 13 2023 16:15 utc | 15

@psychohistorian | Aug 13 2023 15:08 utc | 9
I wasn’t there, but that looks extremely suspicious.

Posted by: Norwegian | Aug 13 2023 16:40 utc | 16

Lahaina was surrounded by tall dry grasses. The historical nature of the construction was very vulnerable to fire. With 60mph winds and a downed power line it could easily erupt into a Chicago style fire. Without any proof at all other than some charred trees it’s ridiculous to simply assert directed energy weapons.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Aug 13 2023 16:50 utc | 17

Some may recall the large 100,000+ strong protests in Prague Czech Rep. last year against the EU and Ukraine. One of the leaders in the protest coalition was the communist Jozef Skala. Turns out he is now being prosecuted for ‘denying genocide’ for participating in a debate about the WW2 Katyn massacre.
Good interview (1 hour) with him here by a British communist channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udPlVclWpBI
Article on the same:
https://thecommunists.org/2023/01/31/news/medieval-inquisition-returns-europe-czech-republic-historical-truth-tellers-josef-skala-trial/

Posted by: Browser | Aug 13 2023 16:56 utc | 18

“… a temporary emergency measure amidst a civil war.” Ahenobarbus@14
The Civil War, which was, as we understand, actually a war of international capital against socialism certainly devastated the country. The figures on the fall in production between 1913 and 1921 are extraordinary.
However the NEP was a peacetime policy designed to last for, to paraphrase Lenin’s words, a long time but not for ever.
The timing being based on external factors, one of which was the constant need, which China knows all about, to pour precious capital into the bottomless pit of defence against imperialist aggressions.

Posted by: bevin | Aug 13 2023 16:56 utc | 19

Thank you for the link to the article about Chinese Social Surveys from American Affairs Journal. It’s an eye opener. Shining light on Tiananmen Square (directly) and how our American definition of democracy has led us to supporting a National Socialist regime in Eastern Europe (indirectly).
…” Global Barometer Surveys (2010–2015) covering more than seventy countries and regions. The respondents in these surveys were asked about their opinions regarding the following six questions related to the levels of subjective democracy in their societies:
(1) The level of democracy is very high in my country;
(2) The democratic system in my country is functioning very well;
(3) Ordinary people in my country can freely express their opinions;
(4) I trust the media in my country;
(5) My government responds to what people need;
(6) I am satisfied with my government’s performance.”
I wonder what an honest rendering of the survey’s results would tell us about our own American democracy.

Posted by: Phlogiston Warrior | Aug 13 2023 17:01 utc | 20

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Aug 13 2023 16:50 utc | 16
from what i’ve read, people had been warning about the danger of this for years. Eucalyptis trees had been introduced into the area, and they are extremely prone to catching fire.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 13 2023 17:01 utc | 21

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Aug 13 2023 15:53 utc | 12
The “Surprise” of Authoritarian Resilience in China – American Affairs Journal
This is an interesting article. The Tianamen Square protestors reacted to what had by then become an open abandonment of Socialism by the CCP… For seeking to return to Socialism, they were slaughtered.
I’d say of the two parties to that massacre, it was the CCP that could be described as conservative in that they were seeking to conserve their power from a challenge below while completing the transition from Socialism back to Capitalism.
=====================================
1. I read somewhere a while back that much of the coverage of Tianamen is hyperbolic and the casualty rate was inflated by western press for effect. No idea as to the truth myself.
2. Interesting your use of the word conservative. I had to read your sentences a few times to understand what you were trying to say and then I think I got it: to you the word ‘conservative’ is by definition derogatory. So the govt was being (derogatory) conservative in supporting it’s pro-market pro-capitalism reforms by suppressing the anti-democracy, pro-socialism protests.
Well, it still doesn’t make sense. And maybe that’s because these old left-right conservative-liberal labels no longer apply to today’s reality. The longer they continue to be used, the harder it will be for all of us to talk to each other.
That came through in the study in this well presented (though occasionally dense) article: western attitudes not only towards China but towards democracy itself are so biased and/or muddled that it is hard for them to analyze their own polities, let alone systems that are fundamentally different.
Reading through I thought they missed a big point in this regard namely the western polities use of multi-party systems, in the US two main parties which have gamed things so that third parties have a very hard time getting traction. For example, if you do a survey about ‘how well is the country going’ in a two party system, then most often about half the people whose party is out of power are automatically going to reply in the negative which is going to significantly lower the ceiling of positive responses to questions like that. Whereas with a Chinese single party system, that seems to have a more dynamic and democratic interface with people on the local level, if the country is doing okay then most people are going to give a positive answer. And if the country is clearly moving forward – as has definitely been the case in China for a few decades now – then that positive number is going to get up towards 80-90%+ fairly easily whereas again in a Two Party system it will always be hard to get much above 60% even in good times. So that difference in core political structures makes comparative analysis like this a bit challenging.
For me the political aspect of China I have find most interesting for some time is that studies show that, percentage-wise, her people demonstrate against the government more than any other developed country (even the French!). That said, I don’t think they demonstrate against the Central Government or CCP HQ, rather regional or local. Presumably this has something to do with how the Chinese political system works; moreover it strikes me as a very positive aspect especially given they have a 1.3+ billion polity versus most western 100 million or less and the US with ‘only’ around 300 million.
That said, if the nation is not doing well generally, which will always involve corruption along with stupidity, I wonder how the system can self-correct. My understanding is that this is supposed to be taken care of within the meritocratic neo-mandarin CCP party itself which in theory has only the best rising through its densely competitive ranks. Sounds good. But if the Leader-President can conduct extensive anti-corruption purges as reportedly took place a few years ago, how do the Chinese people know that this is conducted in good faith and is not a push towards tyranny or totalitarianism? Not being Chinese or living there, have no way of knowing, but I wonder what sort of safeguards there are there against that sort of thing. (Of course that question hangs over every single polity in the world.)
Am also curious what binds Chinese together apart from CCP political doctrine which can only address a narrow, mainly administrative, spectrum of concerns. Because what binds a society together, especially in a positive way, will somewhat determine how corrupt or not any given society will be. Before the modern era this was taken care of by religion, or in Chinese Confucian terms, ‘ritual’ or ‘rites,’ but in the modern era am not sure how it works. It does seem to be working well, but right now things are moving forward on the modernization front. That phase will start to slow down in the next few decades, and then the real test on that binding front will begin perhaps.

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 17:10 utc | 22

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%207:3-5&version=NIV
A neat trick by the US intelligence community is accusing others of ‘whataboutism’. This conflicts with traditional wisdom, as above. It tends to suppress the very real decay of the West while putting others under a microscope. It also tends to create a parallel universe of foolishness as with The Hill doing an in depth discussion of how Russia will collapse – ignoring exponentially rising debt and major cities rotting away across the US

Posted by: Eighthman | Aug 13 2023 17:12 utc | 23

Phlogiston Warrior | Aug 13 2023 17:01 utc | 19–
The “analysis” performed in the American Affairs item is skewed form the outset by its clear pre-existing bias against China as being “authoritarian” and much of the data presented in rather old. It’s indeed a Howler that the two nations (Russia and China) despised and smeared as being “authoritarian” have the most responsive governments and actively involved polities when compared to what’s accurately described as the “inverted totalitarian” Outlaw US Empire where corrution is open and rife amongst the highest political officials in the land. I wonder how that journal will react when the Neoliberal Authoritarian nations finish crumbling because their citizenry isn’t listened to whatsoever.

Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 13 2023 17:20 utc | 24

@psychohistorian | Aug 13 2023 15:08 utc | 9
Concerning DEW to explain supposed wildfires in Hawaii
From where would those hypothetical DEW weapons beam hypothetical energy?
Oh, from invisible UFOs right?

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Aug 13 2023 17:33 utc | 25

Posted by: nwwoods | Aug 13 2023 13:19 utc | 1
VW have also closed operations in Russia. The words “panic” and “stations” comes to mind.

Posted by: horseguards | Aug 13 2023 18:00 utc | 26

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Aug 13 2023 16:50 utc | 16
from what i’ve read, people had been warning about the danger of this for years. Eucalyptis trees had been introduced into the area, and they are extremely prone to catching fire.
Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 13 2023 17:01 utc | 20
Yes, that explains a lot, eucalypti are very impressive when they burn.

Posted by: Bemildred | Aug 13 2023 18:08 utc | 27

Whats China doing here ? Doesnt seem wise to me.
———————————————
“”The IMF was approved for the qualified foreign institutional investor (QFII) status by China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), after it was approved for Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (RQFII) in 2019, domestic media outlet cnstock.com reported on Friday.
The QFII/RQFII system is one of the most important systems for the liberalization of China’s financial market. Overseas institutions, including the IMF, have accelerated their applications for QFII and RQFII, which indicates that overseas investors, especially long-term investment funds, recognize China’s medium- and long-term development prospects, experts said.
The IMF investment funds that obtained the qualification of QFII are responsible for reserve assets investment. Upon obtaining the new QFII status, the IMF plans to transfer long-term investment assets through the Stock Connect to the QFII/RQFII mechanism, according to the Xinhua News Agency.”
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202308/1296113.shtml

Posted by: Shocked | Aug 13 2023 18:28 utc | 28

It just means the IMF can buy China A stocks without going through Blackrock or some other intermediary. I’m more surprised a big financial org like the IMF didnt have this status already. It doesn’t mean much, especially nowadays with China been so interconnected.

Posted by: Autumn | Aug 13 2023 18:44 utc | 29

The story of the week, probably the year, is that of Niger. The second poorest people on earth living in a country full of riches which are whisked away to France through a policy of neo-colonialism and currency manipulation.
Niger is rich in easily accessible uranium deposits, oil and gold. It is also on the direct route for a pipeline between Europe and the major oil deposits of Nigeria, its neighbour to the south.
It is also home to two big US bases and 1500 French troops. They are engaged, officialy, in fighting against the jihadist militias that the US fostered to, among other things, help bring down the Ghaddafi government in nearby Libya.
I tried to post this, in the form of a link to Steel City Scribblings, which has an excellent article on the subject and includes links to a WSWS analysis of events in Niger and a discuyssion on George Galloway’s MOAT with a young African expert on the subject.
I suspect that the link ran into difficulties with the filter but anyone wanting to learn more about a tiny country which is challenging imperialism in its rawest and greediest form should google Steel City Scribblings and see for themselves.
There is another very good article at unherd:
‘Niger and the collapse of France’s empire’ by Thomas Fazi.
“…Consider Niger: the country is France’s biggest source of uranium (providing around 20% of its supply), which is needed to fuel the nuclear plants which provide roughly 70% of the country’s electricity. Yet, only one in seven Nigeriens (and just 4% of rural residents) have access to modern electricity services, while more than 40% of the population live in extreme poverty. Just as strikingly, 85% of the company that operates Niger’s uranium industry is owned by France’s Atomic Energy Commission and two French companies; only 15% is owned by Niger’s government.
“The CFA system, and the lack of monetary and economic sovereignty it entails, is central to this systematic plundering of resources — in Niger and elsewhere in the Sahel. Of the 10 countries with the world’s lowest Human Development Index, five are part of the franc zone, including the three that have experienced recent coups.
“Nor is France’s control over the franc zone limited to economic tools. Niger is also France’s main Sahelian military base, hosting around 1,500 French soldiers. To further complicate matters, the country is also home to around 1,000 US soldiers, one of the largest contingents of American troops on the African continent, operating under the umbrella of the United States Africa Command (Africom). Since 2013, the US has also been carrying out drone missions from several bases in Niger — including a recently constructed $110-million installation. For both France and the US, the purported objective is to fight Islamic terrorism; the reality, however, is that despite this massive foreign military presence, security in Niger and other countries has deteriorated over the years — as have their economic prospects…”

Posted by: bevin | Aug 13 2023 18:52 utc | 30

Here’s a link to Fazi’s article
https://www.realclearworld.com/2023/08/08/niger_and_the_collapse_of_frances_empire_971507.html

Posted by: bevin | Aug 13 2023 18:55 utc | 31

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 17:10 utc | 21:

Interesting your use of the word conservative. I had to read your sentences a few times to understand what you were trying to say and then I think I got it: to you the word ‘conservative’ is by definition derogatory. So the govt was being (derogatory) conservative in supporting it’s pro-market pro-capitalism reforms by suppressing the anti-democracy, pro-socialism protest

.
I’ve always considered that you write well and is apparently well read. But through denk’s criticism of you, I also see some of your hidden agenda in your postings and dismissed most of your opinions on contemporary China for being ignorant and probably prejudiced against Chinese, which frankly doesn’t really bother me at all. But in this silly theorizing here, it proved to me that you’re either just simply stupid or is actually trolling here at this forum as denk alleged!
Tiananmen was university students protesting against Deng Xiaoping’s anti-democracy/anti-socialism policies??? Buwahahahahaha!
There were college professors who were granted visa and tenures to come to America, to carve out a meager living as soon as CPC decided to crackdown and stop the nonsence. There were organized material and money supports on large scale coming from Hong Kong a mere 1 week after the protestors gathered at Tiananmen, with tents, food, and even weapons! So, you conclude that America sympathized with the students because it wanted China to enforce socialism? So there has always been Hong Kongers who thought, and are resource rich, the same as The US government? Can’t you at least be intelligent enough to put two and two together and consider the possibility that there were perhaps hidden forces at work behind the scenes, instigating and organizing the turmoil? If you can, you wouldn’t have blurted out the nonsense of Tiananmen students fighting to retain socialism. If you can’t, you’re just pathologically stupid. By the way, China could have easily stopped those professors and students from leaving if they wanted to. China simply didn’t give a damn. Their immediate actions, and subsequent actions/attitudes against these “traitor” spoke volumes about what China thought of these rogues and the supporters behind them. These yellow-trash don’t really deserve a bother! Same as Li Hongzi of Falungong, Dalai Lama of Tibet, Jimmy Lai of Hong Kong, or Rebia Kadeer of Xinjiang.
Dozens and dozens of the students, those so-called “leaders”, were granted visas and admitted into prestigious colleges in a matter of a few weeks after the crackdown. I’ve never seen US government moved so fast before in granting student visas and admissions, and I’ve never known poor Hong Kong social workers were so rich as to be able to provide these “Chinese student leaders” with so much money to travel to USA, rent apartments/pay tuition and expenses/even buy cars etc., all happened overnight! Prompto! As smooth and inconspicuous as Zelensky’s western bank accounts are accumulating wealth right now. Yeah, maybe things just happened, or maybe there was hanky panky after all. Did that ever cross your mind???

Posted by: Oriental Voice | Aug 13 2023 18:57 utc | 32

@ 30 /31 bevin.. thanks.. i will have a look…
this story / interview is quite fascinating.. looks like jan 6th was a set up..
Ep. 15 Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund reveals what really happened on January 6th. – Tucker Carlson

Posted by: james | Aug 13 2023 19:13 utc | 33

@ 29 bevin..
here is a like to the steel city scribbling’s article on niger..
Wizwoz on the Niger coup

Posted by: james | Aug 13 2023 19:16 utc | 34

“But in this silly theorizing here, it proved to me that you’re either just simply stupid or is actually trolling here at this forum as denk alleged!”
Posted by: Oriental Voice | Aug 13 2023 18:57 utc | 31
Stupid it’s not. Trolling by obfuscation and voluminous posts is the method of operation. More should see that.

Posted by: waynorinorway | Aug 13 2023 19:18 utc | 35

Thank you b, for linking to nakedcapitalism’s presentation of RFKjr’s lawsuit on freedom of speech issues. Since 2000 the US electoral system has been increasingly straightjacketed so stringently that I could wish for a wayback machine, to remind us all of the freedoms curtailed even as information and conversation seemingly became more readily available. RFKjr is performing an enormous public service in doing this. I can’t help comparing it to his Hudson River cleanup operation.
This is like that. I am happy to be around to see it begin.

Posted by: juliania | Aug 13 2023 19:20 utc | 36

psychohistorian | Aug 13 2023 15:08 utc | 9
The recent fires in Greece were also locally produced. Men on motorcycles. (As seen on Twitter).
This is Simplicius’s take on climate change as the new paranoia for the masses.
climate paranoia?
Note that eliminating “farming” (as in DenmarK and Ireland) are trials to see how easy it is to cause starvation after the medical lockdowns and avoidable deaths. Obey and be damned.
**
Note also the “idea” of making farms and nature as collateral for unpayable debts.(Land for debt in S.America, Africa etc). Ukraine has already been sold to “cover” it’s future debts.
**
In one curious part he talks about Soros and Roschild thinking they are “Gods”. This fits in with the ultimate “aim” of a one world Corporate Godlike Government, run by gods and goddesses. (don’t forget “corporations” are also immortal, so those behind them can use an “immortal” regime as a front. Their families can simply continue indefinite “ownership” with no questions asked and no possibility of reprieve for the rest of us).
Zelensky probably thinks he is god material as well.
***
Africans may have other ideas about land (and minerals etc) for debt.

Posted by: Stonebird | Aug 13 2023 19:26 utc | 37

I’m sorry you feel that way, but I really don’t have an axe to grind other than not being able to see China clearly. It’s very foreign and very far away so that’s not even a criticism, just a fact. I do have opinions about what happened to Tibetans back in the 1950’s and thereafter based on having lived with some but they never made a big fuss, no doubt the true story is highly complex and multi-faceted and in my mind it’s not a big deal either though there is no question that the process cut many lives short often in painful ways. But that’s how the cookie crumbles in human history. So it’s not a big deal for me though I don’t buy the party line sometimes expressed here. Opinions vary.
As to this article, I was just going from what it said, not my animus. Did you read it? Here is one of the opening paragraphs:

(1) The Tiananmen protest was not a pro-democracy movement. While analyzing the esric data, I found something very interesting and unexpected. Public dissatisfaction with inflation, unemployment, social morale, and government inefficiency skyrocketed during the peak of the urban protests in spring 1989, but the majority of urban residents in October 1988 (54 percent) thought that market reform was going “too fast,” and such “anti-reform” attitudes closely echoed the rise of inflation during the same time. In the meantime, public demand for liberal democratic ideas such as freedom of speech and freedom of the press never surpassed 33 percent, even in May 1989.

My takeaway is that the protesters were urging the government to take their foot off the pedal viz market-driven capitalist-style reform. No? If that is a misunderstanding of what the writer says above, please clarify. My take from the passage above is that the protesters wanted more socialism and safety net and stability etc. and less capitalism and insecurity.
This is important (and as the author wrote ‘unexpected’) because I believe in the western press the story was that people were protesting the authoritarian communist government and demanding more freedom, democracy and so forth. But turns out the truth is the opposite of that narrative.
In any case, it was in this context that I found Ed’s used of ‘conservative’ puzzling. And from there moved onto another point.
You write: “Can’t you at least be intelligent enough to put two and two together and consider the possibility that there were perhaps hidden forces at work behind the scenes, instigating and organizing the turmoil? If you can, you wouldn’t have blurted out the nonsense of Tiananmen students fighting to retain socialism. If you can’t, you’re just pathologically stupid.”
You also write: “Tiananmen was university students protesting against Deng Xiaoping’s anti-democracy/anti-socialism policies??? Buwahahahahaha!” I didn’t write that. Anti-democracy and anti-socialism are two different sides. Democracy was the side in favor of opening up to capitalism, the markets etc. and socialism was the side of not opening up. You make no sense.
Then you write: “There were college professors who were granted visa and tenures to come to America, to carve out a meager living as soon as CPC decided to crackdown and stop the nonsence. There were organized material and money supports on large scale coming from Hong Kong a mere 1 week after the protestors gathered at Tiananmen, with tents, food, and even weapons! So, you conclude that America sympathized with the students because it wanted China to enforce socialism?”
I didn’t make any such conclusion. None of that was in the article (or if it was I must have skimmed that section). I certainly don’t know anything about all the professors and students and visas you mention. I only was responding to what was written in the article and quoted above. How am I ‘pathologically stupid’ for interpreting that way?
I recommend you climb off that high, judgmental (left brain!) horse a little. An apology would be nice as well, though neither requested nor required here. In any case, no need to get so personal in disagreeing with a post. In any case, if you can see where I misinterpreted the paragraph posted in above, please set me straight. But not by using lots of extraneous data I have no knowledge of, just within the parameters of the article itself.
Now: if you want to prove that the author in that article is misrepresenting the truth as you see it, using other data, have at it, but don’t blame me for what he wrote. I don’t pretend to know much about either China or Tiananmen Square. In June of 1989 I was high up in the mountains in a meditation hut (doing arcane tantric Buddhist meditations the communists at that time had made illegal which, come to think of it, is why I learned them from Tibetans in the first place!). I don’t recall ever reading about it in any depth and as with all such events assume that whatever is out there in the western press is BS so I wouldn’t pay it any mind anyway.

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 19:30 utc | 38

Posted by: bevin | Aug 13 2023 18:52 utc | 29
I agree that Niger and the processes under way in the Sahel region are of great importance. A Niger delegation was in Mali today to seek further support, especiallly in light of a military threat from ECOWAS. The possibility of a Mali-Burkina Faso federation is being studied, and they are inviting Guinea to consider joining. Burkina Faso and Mali de facto are operating as one army, according to the Burkina transitional president Ibrahim Traore.
I have spent a lot of time trying to find non-western sources of information about Niger and have found some Nigerien media that are worth checking out. They are in French. Also some Burkina media. There is a lot to learn that will surprise you.
It’s fascinating what these military governments are doing, or are trying to do. Especially in Burkina Faso, where the ideas and spirit of the truly great Thomas Sankara have been revived.
Here is an excerpt from the 30 May 2023 expose of the Burkina Prime Minister before parliament: (machine translation)
“Small minds, I repeat, are incapable of dreaming big. They are even afraid of what is great, because it makes them tremble on their fragile base.
As for us, we are conquerors of the impossible. We are builders of the future. As Thomas Sankara said, we must dare to invent the future. We are not sure that we will succeed, because there are many obstacles, and
foreign powers, with their accomplices inside, are scheming in the shadow to make us fail. But, we will not be able to blame ourselves for not having tried. We refuse fatalism. What we will not have succeeded in, others
will take up the torch.
…Money is futile and volatile. It is a means and not a base. No
nation in history has only been built and continue on the basis of money and
businesslike. Rather, it is the values of ethics, integrity and courage that
unite people and create nations. The nations recognize themselves in
heroes who have illuminated their time by their determination, their courage, their
integrity.
You don’t have to be rich to be respected. Dignity is not a
negotiable product on the free market. It is lived and is based on
human and social values. That’s why I keep repeating that even if
Burkina is not particularly rich in natural resources, we can
ensure that it is respected and respectable, envied and enviable. We can
ensure that the Burkinabe is worthy and proud of himself and his homeland, with
the minimum of riches that our soil and our subsoil abound. We will then have
managed the real refoundation (of our society). It is towards this destiny that I entrust you.
Whole speech: https://ouaganews.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/D.S.N-Premier-Ministre-Apollinaire-Joachimson-KYELEM-de-TAMBELA-2023.pdf
Niger media
https://www.w3newspapers.com/niger/
https://www.legit.ng/
https://www.lesahel.org/
some Burkina Faso media:
https://lefaso.net
https://burkina24.com
netafrique.net
minute.bf – English

Posted by: JB | Aug 13 2023 19:41 utc | 39

@ waynorinorway | Aug 13 2023 19:18 utc | 34
i have been meaning to ask you – how are the potatoes coming along??

Posted by: james | Aug 13 2023 19:54 utc | 40

If post is very long,
And name is not karloff,
Then equals troll.

Posted by: Troll Detector | Aug 13 2023 20:19 utc | 41

I was surprised and not surprised that the Yves’ article showed a lot of hostility towards Kennedy with a bunch of ad hominem attacks on him. I’m not surprised because NC has always been very hostile to “conspiracy theories”, i.e., anything that questions the mythological framework of liberalism. I was, once, one of the most popular people on NC many years ago but was banned because I insisted on the fact that RFK senior’s assassination was a government hit (I gave facts that are know more broadly acknowledged now than back then). Obama was still “Saint Obama” and Yves openly admitted that she wanted her blog to be read (as it was) by the WH and wanted to tone down people like me who saw long ago the ineaments of the Deep State (a term Yves and Lambert strenuously objected to though I defined it carefully).
Posted by: Chris Cosmos | Aug 13 2023 13:57 utc | 3
——————————————————–
You weren’t by any chance the poster who called himself “Banger”, were you, if I might ask. I remember I was mad when she kicked him off and also nixed any discussion of the Deep State, deeming the term ill-defined, but really disrupting any uncovering of such by banning discussion.

Posted by: jonboinAR | Aug 13 2023 20:23 utc | 42

Washington Post has a story about a goliath rip-off under the heading “Climate Solutions”:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/11/carbon-capture-vacuum-biden/
That’s 1.2 billion from USA’s Energy Department, for Occidental Petroleum’s Direct-Air-Capture (DAC) project, in Texas. Taxpayer’s dollars funding a scheme to violate the second law of thermodynamics — the kind of impossible dream our Green New Deal is built of.
DAC is not a new idea. A feasible DAC project does not exist, anywhere in the world, because our universe is constrained by an inviolable law which forbids running the movie projector backwards, such that water leaps up off the floor into an unshattered goblet which jumps back up on the table. Reminds me of Oscar Hammerstein’s Cinderella:


And because these daft and dewy- eyed dopes
Keep building up impossible hopes,
Impossible things are happ’ning every day!

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Aug 13 2023 20:33 utc | 43

@ Troll Detector | Aug 13 2023 20:19 utc | 40
I tend to agree, but could we add bevin to the exception list?

Posted by: malenkov | Aug 13 2023 20:47 utc | 44

Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 13 2023 17:01 utc | 20
Yes, much as in California and Texas (the two places I’m personally familiar with, I’m sure there are others) – the warnings had been coming in various forms for years. In Hawaii’s case it involved removing the grasses and implementing a power (electricity) shut-down plan in the event of high winds from passing hurricanes.
I was not aware of the ‘invasive’ non-native eucalyptus trees, but as I mentioned, the town was surrounded by tall (waist high or taller) invasive grasses. Due to lack of recent rains, this grass was very dry and flammable. In addition, the topography contributed being that there are lots of steep hills making fire spread easier rather than harder. The architecture of the buildings was largely historic – in fact dating to around the time period that the Great Chicago Fire burned 3+ acres of that city, so very hardwood intensive construction, and being Hawaii, likely some thatched rooves on the touristy type places. Lahaina’s center was dense, too. A perfect recipe for disaster.
Regarding the conspiracy theory about the fire chief not being the one to give the press conference, well there’s an easy explanation for that; either he was off-island or not responsible for the recovery effort which was the main point of conversation now that the fires are out.
A surprisingly good article on the lawsuits now filed and the overall situation can be found here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/hawaii-utility-faces-scrutiny-for-not-cutting-power-to-reduce-fire-risks/ar-AA1fbBp3
WSJ on the warnings from years ago:
https://archive.ph/lAVXA
Officials were not on the island until the day after:
https://www.civilbeat.org/2023/08/mauis-top-emergency-officials-were-off-island-as-wildfires-hit-lahaina/

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Aug 13 2023 20:58 utc | 45

God forbid that the CCP liberated the slaves in Tibet. The CIA realized they had an ‘in’.
http://un.china-mission.gov.cn/eng/gyzg/xizang/200903/t20090325_8410907.htm

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Aug 13 2023 21:08 utc | 46

Posted by: Troll Detector | Aug 13 2023 20:19 utc | 40
Like Malenkov @43, I tend to agree, but would also want to exempt bevin, whose contributions I find immensely valuable.
Perhaps some Trolls are paid by the word, or column-inch, as a miserably useless measure of their effectiveness.
That would fit very well with today’s totally dysfunctional Western World, where nothing works any more, but the policies of failure are supported by absurd, failed and corrupted metrics.

Posted by: Badger | Aug 13 2023 21:20 utc | 47

Continuing a discussion from another previous (Ukraine) thread on “the white race” from a Soviet/Russian perspective, here’s a piece on Nazism.
https://redsails.org/the-international-origins-of-nazism/
Which goes on to say:

Hitler commented that “the American union feels itself to be a Nordic Germanic state and in no way an international mishmash of races.”
The plan to implement a racial state was closely connected with the programme of colonial continental expansion that was happening on an international level. It was not only Soviet Russia that was emerging as the sworn enemy of the white race and culture in Europe. France, too, was on the hated list. The abolition of slavery in France came with the Jacobin revolution, as well as the picking of black people as troops to fight not only in the war but also in the occupation of the Rhineland. France also tolerated relationships between black soldiers and German women, which led to the pollution of Aryan blood. Furthermore, the French did not seem to have any internal racial consciousness as they made no attempt to keep the purity of the Aryan race and therefore tolerated the “bastardisation,” “blackening” and “general niggerization [Verniggerung]” of the nation.

Footnotes removed.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Aug 13 2023 21:21 utc | 48

https://darkfutura.substack.com/p/climate-paranoia
Simplicius’s non-Ukraine substack. This article has some really good shots of TV weather reports, how they colored the maps a few years ago versus recently. Temperatures that were in calm and normal green are now shown as catastrophic end-of-the-word red. Very telling. Many such pics.
Since I never watch such reports, had no idea.
………………………………………….
Posted by: Troll Detector | Aug 13 2023 20:19 utc | 40
@malenkov:
Only trolls or submissive joiners worry about trolls. Non-trolls are comfortable thinking for themselves.
Bevin is a fantastic contributor but an extremely biased historian putting out extraordinary pro-communist propaganda some of which is arguably false – though perhaps he believes it himself. And yet I don’t think it’s trolling because he has the generosity to express himself so well. I have yet to read a post by him that doesn’t make me think and isn’t well crafted. Hat’s off.
My crime here is that I am neither as good a writer or thinker. But trolling? Childish BS even thinking that way, frankly. (THAT’s trolling if you want an example! My definition: deliberately provoking a rise from inferior people whose opinion you are too arrogant to respect.)
Karlof1 is a gem, much valued, but also very biased in that he always and only pushes a similar pro-Russian, pro-multipolarity line with nary any question or doubt. Since he provides excellent information and commentary it’s not trolling, but it certainly isn’t objective either.
Doubt is uncomfortable; certainty is reasssuring. Trolls tend to fear the former whilst embracing the latter. They usually accuse of trolling those who don’t go alone with their group think (or what they project the dominant group thinks). But that just shows one is too pusillanimous to think for oneself, to handle a little doubt about the party line.
Deal with it!
My comment about that China article was 90% about the differences between our two-party systems and China’s one party approach. It wasn’t partisan or critical of either side, rather an observation about differences. None of what I wrote was addressed, instead Orient’s confused take (which I think actually might have come from Ed’s initial confused take because of a strange use of the word conservative in that context) was projected as some sort of outrageous anti-China statement. Which it wasn’t in any way, shape or form. He projected all his bias onto my entirely simple words which expressed no pro or contra anything. And my subsequent rebuttal has not been addressed. Just a few ad hominem trolling comments.
By shameless trolls.

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 21:22 utc | 49

@ Tom_Q_Collins | Aug 13 2023 21:08 utc | 45
How curious that I just read all of John Burdett’s Bangkok-based mysteries, the fourth of which took place mostly in Kathmandu and concerned Tibetans —whose cause he promoted in the preachiest tones, although he depicted them as violent superstitious thugs. Made me feel sympathy for the PRC!

Posted by: malenkov | Aug 13 2023 21:28 utc | 50

Tianenmen Square truths:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-tiananmen-massacre-what-massacre/5574567

What really happened at Tiananmen Square? Australian-based writer Wei Ling Chua challenges the western mass media and western government narrative in his well researched and analyzed book, Tiananmen Square “Massacre”?: The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence (Amazon, 2014). Reading it is sure to give pause to anyone who swallowed the western mass media disinformation.
Chua reveals the western mass media disinformation and compellingly offers a narrative that aligns with the facts.
* Tiananmen Square protests were not about democracy; they were protests of poor economic conditions.
* There was no massacre at Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989.
*The protestors were not unarmed.
* It was the violent protesters that caused the mayhem and not the soldiers.
*Western journalists provided accounts replete with words, but incriminating photographic and video evidence is lacking;
E.g., Chua relates how the BBC manufactured the perception of a “Massacre” in 1989 through the power of words – without any footage of a dead person.
*Viciousness of some student leaders. Said Chai Ling, one such “leader”: “Actually our wish is to see blood; that is to frustrate our government to the extreme that they will eventually butcher their citizens. I believe that only through a river of blood in the Square, will the nation then open their eyes and unite, but how could we tell our fellow students our intention?” (84)
* “[F]orces in America, Taiwan and Hong Kong (Hong Kong was still under the British control at the time) actively instigat[ed] the situation.” (89)
* There was CIA involvement in Tiananmen Square. (89-90)

Emphasis obviously mine. It’s actually an extremely long article and I recommend reading the whole thing as it touches on the concept of “democracy” including inasmuch as how it exists in China compared to the “democratic West.”

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Aug 13 2023 21:28 utc | 51

The above post was about 357 words not counting the prior references. I am going to try to keep to under 250 words from now on. And limit daily posts. I think that will make people happy. And if I do either feel free to gripe. I do not wish to be a nuisance here. Truly.

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 21:28 utc | 52

And if I do either
should be
And if I go over either (voluntary limitation)

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 21:29 utc | 53

Scorpion, you say:
“Bevin is a fantastic contributor but an extremely biased historian putting out extraordinary pro-communist propaganda some of which is arguably false.”
Arguably false in what ways? I suppose that’s not the same as verifiably false, at least.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Aug 13 2023 21:30 utc | 54

@ Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 21:22 utc | 48
I was lucky to have one of the last great journalism teachers. (NB. I never did professional journalism.) Upon submitting copy he would demand: “Good. Now cut three column inches.” Then: “Cut another two.” All with the written assumption that no essential content be lost.
Hint fucking hint.

Posted by: malenkov | Aug 13 2023 21:33 utc | 55

*unwritten assumption (of course)

Posted by: malenkov | Aug 13 2023 21:36 utc | 56

Posted by: malenkov | Aug 13 2023 21:28 utc | 49
@ Tom_Q_Collins | Aug 13 2023 21:08 utc | 45
How curious that I just read all of John Burdett’s Bangkok-based mysteries, the fourth of which took place mostly in Kathmandu and concerned Tibetans —whose cause he promoted in the preachiest tones, although he depicted them as violent superstitious thugs. Made me feel sympathy for the PRC!
===============================
I spent a few months in and around Tibetan communities in exile in India after which I was extremely glad to be a westerner. They were mentally and socially esconced in rigid, theocratic feudal structures which I couldn’t have handled for even a week. That said, I don’t think their religion and culture should have been suppressed the way it clearly was.
About ten years ago I met a Chinese qigong teacher. He had formerly been a martial arts coach in China running women’s teams several of which won national gold medals. Doing it once is a big achievement; doing it many times with different teams is exceptional. He also trained Jet Li. But at one point he started having spiritual visions. He saw new qigong forms for spiritual development. He started teaching them and things got so difficult for him (I don’t know the details) that despite being a patriotic, hard-working citizen he left his country and started teaching in the West where he felt free to do so despite not speaking any of our languages (and from what I could tell not really wanting to either).
This isn’t a horror story or anything but there are aspects of the Chinese approach to religious freedom which I personally am uncomfortable with – and so are many Chinese.
(222 words)

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 21:40 utc | 57

of the Chinese approach to religious freedom
should read
of China’s (or CPC’s) approach to religious freedom

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 21:43 utc | 58

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Aug 13 2023 21:30 utc | 53
hmm “Bevin is a fantastic contributor but an extremely biased historian putting out extraordinary pro-communist propaganda some of which is arguably false.”
so Scorpion is saying that Bevin is extremely biased because some of the extraordinary pro-communist propaganda he puts out is true, as Scorpion cannot even argue that it is false. i’m not quite sure what Scorpion is saying here. If Bevin omits the extraordinary propaganda which is arguably false, does that make the rest of the extraordinary propaganda true? if it is true what makes it extraordinary propaganda? or even ordinary propaganda? I am often confused by what Scorpion writes.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 13 2023 21:58 utc | 59

Posted by: malenkov | Aug 13 2023 21:33 utc | 54
Hint fucking hint.
====================================================
Great minds think alike. 5 minutes before you wrote yours I had already stated the intention to write shorter posts. Though I didn’t feel the need to stoop to profanity, however, despite the childish insults directed my way. Life’s too short. Plus dignity and manners matter.
My background is English public school where we were trained to write as much as possible using extremely long sentences in as short an amount of time as possible (preparation for A-levels). It helps with thinking (maybe) but it makes it hard to do so concisely. But I’m going to learn. You’ll see!

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 22:03 utc | 60

Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 13 2023 21:58 utc | 58
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Aug 13 2023 21:30 utc | 53
hmm “Bevin is a fantastic contributor but an extremely biased historian putting out extraordinary pro-communist propaganda some of which is arguably false.”
so Scorpion is saying that Bevin is extremely biased because some of the extraordinary pro-communist propaganda he puts out is true, as Scorpion cannot even argue that it is false….. I am often confused by what Scorpion writes.
=======================================
‘Tis true I didn’t off any counter-argument but there was no open topic under discussion, plus not possible to introduce one in a short post, even by my (previous) standards.
He often states that most of the stories of atrocities during the early communist times are lies told by imperialists, that all the problems in communist Russia were due to imperialist subversion or are lies etc. He insists that the Holodomor is a total fabrication and anyone who thinks otherwise has evil intent etc.
Now: it is possible that everything Bevin says is true; I wouldn’t know and don’t claim to. But I do know that very many other people who have spent years studying these things do not agree with his take. And nor do I though have no proof either way.
That is why I don’t regard him as a troll even though I think some of what he says is biased and likely incorrect.
I have no problem with people who hold different opinions. But lacing one’s disagreement with personal insult? No, that’s just troll behavior.
[183 words]

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 22:13 utc | 61

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 22:13 utc | 60
how is he wrong? the fact that one can find western experts who dispute his assertions about the role of the United States in the world is not surprising; in many cases their jobs and careers depend on the opposite. and if he isnt wrong what makes what he is saying propaganda, let along extraordinary propaganda?
You are mischaracterizing his position. he has never said that “all the problems in communist Russia were due to imperialist subversion or are lies”. give a quote if you have one, but you don’t.
you are slipping away from your own assertions, adopting a more reasonable tone.

Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 13 2023 22:33 utc | 62

“… a temporary emergency measure amidst a civil war.” Ahenobarbus@14
The Civil War, which was, as we understand, actually a war of international capital against socialism certainly devastated the country. The figures on the fall in production between 1913 and 1921 are extraordinary.
However the NEP was a peacetime policy designed to last for, to paraphrase Lenin’s words, a long time but not for ever.
The timing being based on external factors, one of which was the constant need, which China knows all about, to pour precious capital into the bottomless pit of defence against imperialist aggressions.
Posted by: bevin | Aug 13 2023 16:56 utc | 18
You’re right on the timeline. It was war communism, then NEP. Nonetheless, the NEP was to be temporary until the country had attained an econonomic stability, but that stability was simply to provide time to the Soviets until revolution could be supported and carried out internationally primarily in more developed countries like Germany and larger countries like China. It was understood that socialism in a single country was untenable and would eventually collapse as it ultimately did.
It’s hard to recall post Stalin but at the outset of the revolution its goal was a world revolution with the Comintern working with parties all over the world. Just as Capitalism became a world system after defeating feudalism, so Socialism was to displace Capitalism, globally.
The NEP which brought back capitalist measures, was in no way a long term plan. If it was then the point of the workers revolution would be simply to reform capitalism a bit. Reading Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, it’s clear, at least after Lenin’s speech at the Finland Station, capitalist reforms were not the goal. Trotsky wanted to immediately send the red army into India and liberate it from the British colonialists and broaden the revolution.
As you know, the international revolutionists in the party were expelled in the late 20s and murdered in mass by Stalin in the late 30s. He had to wipe out most of the original Bolsheviks to seize control of the party and turn to a national utopianism, that ultimately imploded is a massive blow to workers around the world. Even Putin who is no Marxist, laments the destruction of the USSR.
China’s system is the best thing going today, but it’s far from socialism and is no paradise for workers. You don’t have to run cover for the CCP Stalinists to support China over US imperialism. Critical support is what’s needed.
As Karloff said, I can see the article is American and therefore bias. We all know when the RC of the US refers to authoritarian regimes it’s simply newspeak for a country that won’t let US finance capital shit all over it.
Still, it’s an interesting article in that it highlights that Tianamen Square was not a color revolution, but a genuine struggle to counter Capitalist reforms and the resulting economic impacts of those reforms. That is true.
Again, remains to be seen who was right in that struggle. I suppose it’s possible the CCP put down the protests to enable the country to become strong enough to really counter imperialism and will at some point return to revolutionary Socialism. Perhaps the pressure they’re under at the moment will provide the impetus.
I tend to doubt that, but it is possible. They’re Stalinist nationalists and for decades now, capitalists.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Aug 13 2023 22:35 utc | 63

from uk telegraph…
Germany considers ban on far-Right AfD
Call to ‘defend democracy’ as party surges to 21pc in opinion polls

Posted by: james | Aug 13 2023 22:45 utc | 64

“Diagnosis not correct”: Chancellor Scholz defends his work – despite poll fiasco
interview with scholz from today – excerpts.. if anyone can produce the full transcript – that would be nice..

Posted by: james | Aug 13 2023 22:49 utc | 65

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/lessons/index.htm
Link to lessons of October on the failure of the German revolution. This was the event the soviets we’re holding out for with the NEP as a backstop. The plan was for the German and Russian revolutions to join forces resolving the then developmental backwardness of Russia and the lack of land and resources in Germany.
There are many like this on the Stalinist mismanagement of the Chinese revolution too, which is very topical here as the Stalinists we’re supporting the warlord chiang kai shek to the extent that they allowed him to slaughter Chen Duxiu and the 700k trade unionists that supported him in Shanghai. As we know, Chiang went on to found the break off republic of Taiwan.
That betrayal sent the CCP in China into crisis, ultimately sending Mao into villages, abandoning the working class and focusing on the peasants to make his revolution, which was very weak until Chiang began handing the country over to imperial Japan.
Even at the outset the CCP had good relationships with the Chinese capitalists admitting them to high positions in the party.
Nonetheless, today China is not imperialist and they do not allow US finance Capital to ruin their country. Historically superior model of capitalism, much better than the imperialist west, but not revolutionary and not socialism by any stretch.

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Aug 13 2023 22:54 utc | 66

Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 13 2023 22:33 utc | 61
how is he wrong? ….You are mischaracterizing his position. he has never said that “all the problems in communist Russia were due to imperialist subversion or are lies”. give a quote if you have one, but you don’t. you are slipping away from your own assertions, adopting a more reasonable tone.”
===============================
I missed this earlier sorry from Tom Collins:
“Arguably false in what ways? I suppose that’s not the same as verifiably false, at least.”
==========================
OK. First: my remark about both bevin and karlof was in response to:
Posted by: Troll Detector | Aug 13 2023 20:19 utc | 40
If post is very long, And name is not karloff, Then equals troll.”
Malenkov agreed a few posts later also suggesting to add in bevin’s name.
============================================
That is why I discussed those two much valued posters.
OK: why I called bevin ‘extremely’ biased – also karlof1.
First: is that insulting? I see how one could take it that way but that is not my meaning. I mean that views contrary to one’s bias are ignored or put down whilst only one’s preferred view is pushed.
karlof1 is ‘extremely’ pro multipolarity. It is a reasonable position which he represents masterfully. However, he only reports things favorable to that view never things critical. That’s bias.
bevin seems to me to be ‘extremely’ biased in favor of leftism & communist Russia. I don’t keep quotes but I have formed an opinion after reading his comments. I don’t recall him ever offering anything critical about communism or Russia and he often characterizes critical views in dismissive terms. That is bias.
It’s not a crime to be biased – most of us are with most issues – but it’s good to acknowledge it. More importantly, it is not troll behavior (the topic) to be biased. Trolling – to my mind – has to do with offering insult instead of argument. Going against the party line is not trolling unless one does it mainly to provoke arguments. I never do that except when responding to insult. Also, the party line here is fuzzy. There are many different viewpoints at this bar though some seem to feel that only theirs are kosher.

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 23:10 utc | 67

Posted by: pretzelattack | Aug 13 2023 22:33 utc | 61
I just remembered one example, pretzelattack, but not precisely. Somebody – maybe me – mentioned how the communist revolution was funded by western banking cartels – Schiff et alis. There’s that famous voyage from Manhattan to Halifax to London to Berlin to Stockholm to Moscow. The story is they brought twenty million dollars with them to fund the revolution. In return after they overthrew and took control they collected and sent back all of Russia’s gold to their Western backers.
Maybe that gold story isn’t true, but I believe the train story is not disputed. (How could they go through all these territories at war with each other? Hmmm….)
I vaguely recall bevin denying there was any such event, or that even if there was the train there was no money on it.
The import of the story being: what does it say about ‘the worker’s revolution’ if it was funded by western banksters? It gives the lie to the entire movement, doesn’t it?
I don’t recall the interchange exactly. bevin if he likes can chime in. But I’m pretty sure he dismissed the entire story as a huge imperialist lie. I regard it as more or less true. Do I know either way? Absolutely not. Am I biased? I would say so, although am not invested so can easily change opinion, nor do I find it insulting if someone like bevin disagrees. There are many opinions…
[240 words]
[If people stop addressing my posts here, I will stop responding! But if you want to keep going, that’s fine too…]

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 23:23 utc | 68

I vaguely recall bevin denying there was any such event, or that even if there was the train there was no money on it.
==============================
To be more precise: I think he denied there was any funding from the Schiffs et alia for that train.

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 13 2023 23:26 utc | 69

Women will be saving the US economy thank you very much. Meaning Barbie, Taylor Swift, and Beyonce. The movie and concerts have and will generate huge amounts of money for local economies. For Swift LA concert about several hundreds of million dollars. You go gurls.
Taylor Swift, Barbie, and Beyoncé bring female boost to economy
Mean while the US is re-industrializing itself.
Why America’s Largest Tool Company Couldn’t Make a Wrench in America

The world’s largest tool company couldn’t figure out how to make a wrench.
Stanley Black & Decker built a $90 million factory on the edge of Fort Worth, Texas, intending to burnish the Made-in-the-U.S.A. luster of the Craftsman brand by forging mechanics’ tools with unprecedented efficiency. But the automated system was a bust, and the tools that were supposed to be pumped out by the million are so hard to find that some consider them collector’s items.
In March, 3½ years after breaking ground, Stanley announced it was closing the factory. The property is now being advertised for sale.

Posted by: Erelis | Aug 13 2023 23:48 utc | 70

Erelis: I’ll give Taylor Swift a pass—I think she does have some talent—but do you think Barbie could be trained to make a decent wrench?

Posted by: malenkov | Aug 14 2023 0:00 utc | 71

Officials were not on the island until the day after
@ Tom_Q_Collins | Aug 13 2023 20:58 utc | 44
Thanks for taking a moment aside, from such spellbinding disputes over the troll-status of various correspondents, to mention USA’s deadliest wildfire in more than 100 years (with a death-toll of 93 and rising, surpassing 2018’s Camp Fire).
In Black Lives Matter there’s a say-their-names tradition — to recall the humanity of the slained, to bestow on slaughtered subhumans a more dignified tag than “suspect.” Well, the following is my municipal say-their-names, in memory of urban conflations since…
Camp Fire (November 2018)
Concow & Paradise, California
North Complex Fire, aka “Bear Fire” (August 2020)
Berry Creek & Feather Falls, California
“Lytton Fire” (June 2021)
Lytton, British Columbia
Dixie Fire (August 2021)
Greenville, Canyondam & Warner Valley, California
“Lahaina Fire” (August 2023)
Lahaina, Maui
(Apologies to any burned-down towns I forgot about.)
Mostly north of me, in California. Paradise still has a chamber of commerce, happily tottering about like a three-legged dog. Those Dixie Fire villages weren’t much, along with Berry Creek and Feather Falls. My brother had his lifelong home up in that Sierra foothills town of Berry Creek. I saw more stars than civilized humankind can comprehend, falling asleep on the open back porch of that house, then I saw foraging jackrabbits and even a black bear, waking up in the morning. Once upon a time, before it all burned down three years ago.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Aug 14 2023 0:11 utc | 72

malenkov: “but do you think Barbie could be trained to make a decent wrench?”
Sure, if she were Russian. 😉

Posted by: Erelis | Aug 14 2023 0:16 utc | 73

Erelis: Oh, snap!

Posted by: malenkov | Aug 14 2023 0:17 utc | 74

Scorpion @ 67:

“… There’s that famous voyage from Manhattan to Halifax to London to Berlin to Stockholm to Moscow …”

The sea voyage from Manhattan to Halifax in Canada was undertaken by Leon Trotsky and his family when they learned that Tsar Nicholas II had been overthrown in St Petersburg in February 1917. While on board, Trotsky, his family and five other revolutionaries were pulled off the ship by British authorities. Trotsky’s family stayed in Halifax while Trotsky himself and the other five revolutionaries were imprisoned in an internment camp at Amherst in Nova Scotia. Trotsky was released after a month at the request of the new Russian government, and he arrived back in Russia in May 1917.
By then, Vladimir Lenin had been back in Russia for a month, having travelled there in a sealed railway train from Zurich in Switerland through Germany to Denmark and Sweden (parts of the journey from Copenhagen to Malmo, and from Stockholm to Finland involved travel by boat) and St Petersburg / Petrograd.
The German government at the time (under Kaiser Wilhelm II) had hoped to use the Bolsheviks to do their bidding in Russia, to take Russia out of the war so the Germans could concentrate their forces on fighting the British, the French and their allies on their western flank which was close to the major industrial regions in the German empire; and to force Russia to give up its territories in eastern Europe (the territories that became part of the Baltic republics, Belorussia, Poland and western and central Ukraine).
There is no need to suggest that the Germans and the Bolsheviks were collaborating as though they were equals: the Germans were hoping to use the Bolsheviks as tools to achieve certain goals and aims in eastern Europe and Russia that, over 20 years later, Hitler decided to achieve by force and invasion.

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Aug 14 2023 0:46 utc | 75

Erelis @ 72, Malenkov @ 73:
I now have visions of various Barbie doll arms and legs being repurposed to make wrenches. The hands might be useless but the pointed feet, ready-made for the wearing of stilettoes, might come in handy for screwing or unscrewing things.
🙂

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Aug 14 2023 0:49 utc | 76

This may be of interest to some:
https://worldaffairs.blog/2019/06/02/tiananmen-square-massacre-facts-fiction-and-propaganda/

“As far as can be determined from the available evidence, NO ONE DIED that night in Tiananmen Square.” What?! Who would make such a blatant propagandist claim? China’s communist party? Nope. It was Jay Mathews, who was Washington Post’s Beijing Bureau Chief in 1989. He wrote this for Columbia Journalism Review.
Here are a few more examples of what western journalists once said about what happened in Tiananmen Square in June 1989:
CBS NEWS: “We saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel — in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a “massacre” had occurred in [Tiananmen Square]” — thus wrote CBS News reporter Richard Roth.
BBC NEWS: “I was one of the foreign journalists who witnessed the events that night. There was no massacre on Tiananmen Square” — BBC reporter, James Miles, wrote in 2009.

Posted by: integer | Aug 14 2023 0:51 utc | 77

The hands might be useless but the pointed feet, ready-made for the wearing of stilettoes, might come in handy for screwing or unscrewing things.
🙂
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Aug 14 2023 0:49 utc | 75

I bet Ken would know 😉
Didn’t some cult film director make a horror-murder movie using Barbie dolls? Now that I’d like to see!

Posted by: malenkov | Aug 14 2023 1:30 utc | 78

“..There is no need to suggest that the Germans and the Bolsheviks were collaborating as though they were equals: the Germans were hoping to use the Bolsheviks as tools to achieve certain goals and aims in eastern Europe and Russia…” Refinnejenna | Aug 14 2023 0:46 utc @ 74
No need at all. Not least because Lenin’s was only one of several ‘sealed trains’ authorised by the German General Staff, taking exiles back to Russia.
The Lenin train was the only one wth Bolsheviks, others carried Cadets, Mensheviks and SRs left and right back to Russia.
So how does the theory that the Germans wanted to use the Bolshies to subvert the state account for their facilitating the simultaneous arrival in Russia of Lenin’s most powerful political opponents?

Posted by: bevin | Aug 14 2023 1:39 utc | 79

Erelis: I’ll give Taylor Swift a pass—I think she does have some talent—but do you think Barbie could be trained to make a decent wrench wench? FIFY (Margot Robbie is hot).
Posted by: malenkov | Aug 14 2023 0:00 utc | 70

Posted by: Phil R | Aug 14 2023 1:51 utc | 80

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Aug 14 2023 0:46 utc | 74
There is no need to suggest that the Germans and the Bolsheviks were collaborating as though they were equals: the Germans were hoping to use the Bolsheviks as tools to achieve certain goals and aims in eastern Europe and Russia that, over 20 years later, Hitler decided to achieve by force and invasion.
========================================
What I suggested is that the Schiffs and others arranged the journey through various nation states at war with other whilst young men on all sides were dying in droves in the trenches. I did not suggest ‘the Germans and the Bolsheviks were collaborating’ rather that the banking cartel elites in US, UK and Germany sponsored the bolsheviks to rape Russia of her gold reserves and plunder the country afterwards to the benefit of their networks once the old order had been (barbarically) vernichted. Who else could have got a group to go from Manhattan to Moscow? Not the German or UK or US governments or the bolsheviks alone. No, it was a higher order of influence than national governments at war with each other; a higher order which fronted twenty million (several billions today) which they got back tenfold in gold bullion. You disagree? OK: please explain who else could have made that happen?
Re Hitler’s invasion: one theory is that because Stalin couldn’t ask people to die for anti-nation-state communists he transitioned back to nationalism even though that was anathema for communists and counter to their pan-European ambitions. Thanks to Hitler’s invasion, Russia segued from a bloody, ideology-driven experiment back into a cohesive nation state, albeit at terrible cost – though some historians claim that many millions of the twenty plus million casualties did not die in battle with the Germans, rather were internally liquidated.
[241 words]

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 14 2023 1:56 utc | 81

various nation states at war with other
shld be
various nation states at war with each other

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 14 2023 2:01 utc | 82

Ahenobarbus | Aug 13 2023 22:35 utc @62
Yours is the standard narrative of those who follow Trotsky. It is generally correct but it is a simplification of a very complex history.
The critical question was that of the international revolution which never actually arrived, though for years it seemed just around the corner. Lloyd George excused his withdrawal of British troops from Russia on the grounds that it would provoke a revolution if they remained there. The dockers had refused to load ships. Soldiers had mutinied. Shop stewards committees had called strikes. There were similar, rather more serious, moves in Italy: factory occupations, calls for revolution, peasant land seizures. And there were revolutions in Bavaria, Hungary, Vienna- all suppressed but all serious. On this all were agreed: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin et al.
Then there was Germany.
It is easy to forget how close not only the Bolsheviks but their enemies felt revolution to be in those days- there were communes everywhere, strike cum uprisings. Even in Georgia Tom Watson won a seat in the US Senate by claiming to be following the example of Lenin and Trotsky.
As to Socialism in One country Stalin had no illusions about it. He was simply pursuing the policy of industrialising as a matter of necessity, and as a means of providing employment for large numbers who had been left unemployed by a decade and a half of devastation and destruction- this involved a strategy of self reliance and an actual practice of making compromise after compromise, like the NEP but also both state capitalism and partnerships with and concessions to foreign capitalists. This included agreements to honour Tsarist debts, the repudiation of which had been one of the first scts of the revolution.
The long view remained, and I believe that Stalin shared it, that socialism was possible, necessary and the raison d’etre of both party and state.
The truth is that we have yet to find a proper history of Soviet Union, suffice it to say that neither Trotsky’s polemics or Tony Cliff’s pamphleteering are a substitute. It took a long time for the history of the French revolution to be rescued from the Terror mongers, it is going to take a long time for the history or Russia between 1920 and 1941 to be rescued from the anti-communists, the Nazis, the Information Research Department etc. And the same might be said of China where according to the CIA and the Academy Mao was responsible for the deaths of millions, here there and everywhere as the economic disasters ‘inevitable under socialism’ marched hand in hand with a doubling of life expectancy, an end of illiteracy and population increases in every ethnic group against which genoocide was, allegedly practised.

Posted by: bevin | Aug 14 2023 2:22 utc | 83

I was surprised and not surprised that the Yves’ article showed a lot of hostility towards Kennedy with a bunch of ad hominem attacks on him. I’m not surprised because NC has always been very hostile to “conspiracy theories”, i.e., anything that questions the mythological framework of liberalism. I was, once, one of the most popular people on NC many years ago but was banned because I insisted on the fact that RFK senior’s assassination was a government hit (I gave facts that are know more broadly acknowledged now than back then)…
Posted by: Chris Cosmos | Aug 13 2023 13:57 utc | 3
Regarding Naked Capitalism. I visit the site every day, and it’s clear that the people who run the site are extremely touchy when it comes to criticism. The web is filled with forums, message boards, etc., run by people who treat their digital territories as petty fiefdoms, slapping down anyone who threatens their delicate egos–whether it’s model train building, or politics, or whatever. It’s amusing that such characters think their actions make them appear strong rather than weak. My own solution, learned over a couple of decades online, is to make sure I never get too attached to what is in the end a pretty ephemeral form of discourse. Of course the people who run many message boards want comments from the ones who visit the site, because it shows ‘engagement’ and they want their little territories to be successful. I think many of these sites serve an important purpose, so it’s really too bad when some operators let their egos interfere with the free and open discourse they claim to support.

Posted by: Lukasco | Aug 14 2023 2:24 utc | 84

@ Refinnejenna | Aug 14 2023 0:49 utc | 75
Since we are on an open thread I must say that when recently purchasing work shoes ( water resistant with roomy area for toes and with superbly cushioned and treaded soles) I witnessed more than several “Barbie” footed customers trying on sandals. They were women with deformed feet — big toe crooked inward, small toes deformed down and inward, “Barbie feet.” Ouch. Can’t wLk that back, the results of western foot binding. Ouch — the result of indoctrination, commercialization and self-sacrifice to belong?
Barbies, such deformed wenches could possibly turn a nut but to whose benefit?
~~
Just to say I love Bevin’s commentary. He is erudite and has the people’s interests in heart and mind. I always learn something from his posts.
Scorpion is challenging. I also learn therefrom. Yin yang.

Posted by: suzan | Aug 14 2023 2:26 utc | 85

Regarding my comment @ 74, I have just come across a map of Vladimir Lenin’s journey from Switzerland to Russia and discovered that his journey did not include a sea trip from Stockholm to western Finland.
He and his companions had to cross the Baltic Sea from Sassnitz in northern Germany to Trelleborg in Sweden. From there the train took him and his fellow Bolsheviks through central Sweden and Stockholm all the way north to Haparanda, crossing the border into Tornio and then through Finland into St Petersburg / Petrograd.
My apologies to all barflies for not checking Scorpion’s statement I referenced @ 74 properly.
Bevin @ 78: That the German government also sent other exiles back to Russia need not contradict what I said earlier about the Germans seeing the Bolsheviks as a useful tool. Indeed, treating the Bolsheviks as if they were another bunch of unwanted exiles by giving them the same treatment as the other exiles might well be a useful cover by the Germans to hide their intentions. It does not mean that the Germans and the Bolsheviks were plotting anything together.
Scorpion @ 80: You have not read my comment @ 74 carefully or you would have seen that Lenin and Trotsky returned to Russia separately.
Bankers such as Olof Aschberg may have financed (wholly or partly) the Bolshevik revolution but in February 1918 the Soviet government repudiated all debts incurred by the former Tsarist government and the succeeding Menshevik government and that action more or less set the West against the Soviet Union, to the extent that an economic and financial blockade was launched against the new country by Western governments.
The Soviets and Tsarist debt
Repudiation of debt at the Russian Revolution (Wikipedia article)
Russian debt repudiation, 100 years on: February 10, 1918 to February 10, 2018
Incidentally in the late 1990s, the Russian Federation paid out monies to the value of US$400 million to the descendants of French bond holders who purchased Russian government bonds in the late 1890s.

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Aug 14 2023 2:52 utc | 86

@78 bevin
That’s an easy one, bevin. To hedge their bets and inflict maximum chaos. As long as they were “anti-imperialism,” which they seem to have all been, it wounded the Tsar’s ability to maintain order.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Aug 14 2023 2:59 utc | 87

Malenkov @ 77:
Here you go: Superstar – The Karen Carpenter Story

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Aug 14 2023 3:00 utc | 88

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Aug 14 2023 2:52 utc | 85
What I suggested is that the Schiffs et alia arranged the journey but don’t wish to dispute your details since I don’t pretend to be an expert. Remember this issue arose because I was making a distinction between bias and trolling and that although I find bevin biased (plus erudite), that does not make him a troll. (Well, it made sense at the time!)
As bevin points out above, the whole business is murky. I take a generalist, longer-term view noting a few things:
One of the 19th century Tzars was planning a belt and road joining the whole of Eurasia to the Americas. He or another also wanted democracy.
Jews bitterly resented being restricted to ‘beyond the pale.’ They assassinated one Tzar and failed to do so with his son. One of those assassins was Lenin’s brother. Later a Tzar was overthrown and his entire family viciously murdered. The same people involved in this long-term animus with the Tzars whilst desirous of entering fully into Russian society (and plundering it) ostensibly on behalf of the indigenous working classes (yeah, right!), had extensive connections with international credit cartels who some believe were then and are now the true leaders of the West.
I believe this narrative arc of a Jewish activist thrust into Russia culminating in a hostile takeover of the traditional Christian order is broadly correct though some might substitute the word ‘Marxist’ for ‘Jewish’ – in this context a distinction with nary a difference.
[249 words]

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 14 2023 3:53 utc | 89

By the way David Hundeyin the journalist who lives and works in Nigeria and who researched and released the story on Nigerian prez Bola Ahmed Tinubu having been a major heroin dealer in Chicago in the 90’s which eventually surfaced in the west after the ecowas BS over Niger has a substack site called https://westafricaweekly.substack.com
He was on Galloway’s show where in typical cringing Galloway style (he actually called Craig Murray “Your Excellency today – what’s a self proclaimed socialist doing kowtow to ridiculous 19th century honorifics anyhow?), Galloway made a big deal over Hundeyin’s oxbridge education heh heh.
Anyway Hundeyin who also has twitter & youtube presence has great takes, fact backed takes on the actual relationship between the people of Nigeria & Niger (it is close and conflict between the two would create massive internal issues in Nigeria) as well as explaining how corrupt and unelected the Nigerian government is.
So rather than listen to me or anyone else’s take on him, go and learn for yourself.

Posted by: Debsisdead | Aug 14 2023 3:54 utc | 90

Navalny opposition leader in Putin’s Russia put away for 30 years.
Trump facing up to 600, so say another 30 years. RICO charges to be filed soon. He will be perp walked and finger printed.
One DA claimed Trump, an ex-President and current leading candidate for one again, is a flight risk so they got a secret order to tap into his private DM’s without his knowledge. Circuit Court on appeal agreed.
Can’t make this stuff up!
Interesting times….

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 14 2023 4:10 utc | 91

For those interested in left and right brain business, I developed a simple 1 minute exercise to grok it experientially.
(Read 1 & 2 first, then do both. Can repeat a few times if desired.)
1. For 15 seconds focus on the dot below. Put 100% of your attention on it and don’t let your mind wander away.
2. Then for following 15 seconds maintain same steady attention on the dot, but now also be aware of both the external and internal space around the focused dot experience.
●
Notes:
This method is not good for extended training but great to get an idea of the principles. Left brain focuses (does parts) but when it does so tunes out broader contexts. Right brain does context (wholes) but can tend to be generalist and formless. Both together makes each more potent.
If you cannot hold to the dot for even 15 seconds without wandering, you would benefit greatly from old school mindfulness practice using the more dynamic and somatic breathing as the object instead of the overly static dot. If you think you cannot feel any spaciousness, more familiarity with mindful attention will naturally bring it up.
[200 words]

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 14 2023 4:42 utc | 92

ZH has a posting up with the title
Greenwald: It’s Not Left Vs Right Anymore, “It’s Anti-Establishment Versus Pro-Establishment”
This is part of an interview with Russell Brand

Posted by: psychohistorian | Aug 14 2023 4:50 utc | 93

Better layout hopefully. If not won’t try again:
For those interested in left and right brain business, I developed a simple 1 minute exercise to grok it experientially.
(Read 1 & 2 first, then do both. Can repeat a few times if desired.)
1. For 15 seconds focus on the dot below. Put 100% of your attention on it and don’t let your mind wander away.
2. Then for following 15 seconds maintain same steady attention on the dot, but now also be aware of both the external and internal space around the focused dot experience.
.
.
.
●
.
.
.
.
Notes:
This method is not good for extended training but great to get an idea of the principles. Left brain focuses (does parts) but when it does so tunes out broader contexts. Right brain does context (wholes) but can tend to be generalist and formless. Both together makes each more potent.
If you cannot hold to the dot for even 15 seconds without wandering, you would benefit greatly from old school mindfulness practice using the more dynamic and somatic breathing as the object instead of the overly static dot. If you think you cannot feel any spaciousness, more familiarity with mindful attention will naturally bring it up.
[200 words]

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 14 2023 4:53 utc | 94

i have been meaning to ask you – how are the potatoes coming along??
Posted by: james | Aug 13 2023 19:54 utc | 39
Briefly, I think they are doing fine. 2 flowered over the weekend. Record heat here this summer so
a lot of watering has been needed. I’ll know more in a couple weeks when I give in to my own curiousity.
But james, I shouldn’t detract from a good theme in this thread, specifically conduct here in what used to
be the best bar, by half, to learn and share solid info. (Thanks to Oriental Voice @ 18:57 utc | 31.)
I’m blocked by that poster in question but I’m encouraged to see that others have expressed some disatisfaction.
Naming names is sometimes necessary but usually brings emotive responses either by those called out or those left out.
So I’ll just say that I really appreciate pretzleattack and malenkov for their style of short and pertinent posts.
Others here in this thread are appreciated too and if Scorpion does indeed cut back on his (imo overbearing) opinions
the bar will benefit. Possibly then there will be room for some of the missing regulars to come back.
Gotta get to work. Summer shuts down early here and some paint and repair to this ol’ house still on the ‘honey-dew’ list.
Best!
[224 words :-)]

Posted by: waynorinorway | Aug 14 2023 5:01 utc | 95

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 14 2023 4:53 utc | 93
Without doing your experiment, Scorpion, I will perhaps take a different tack from the discussions you have been having with others, as I think -no- I believe that the emphasis is wrong. It is very hard to follow the discourse as although it may seem clear to you, it just doesn’t make sense to me. Just physically speaking, for instance, it is not practical to describe an intimacy between brain and spirit; they are poles apart. That physical intimacy does exist, but rather it is between spirit and heart. For again, physically speaking, spirit enfolds and supports the heart.
What is necessary for wholeness of soul is for the mind, whose physical dwelling place is upstairs in the brain to take itself on a journey down to our physical center, which is the heart. Pascal, whom I will probably misquote, said that ‘the heart has its reasons which reason alone cannot understand.’ We Orthodox say. more accurately, that prayer is standing in the heart with the mind (or intelligence if you like), in the presence of God. So that location is surrounded by the lungs where human breathing, spirit resides. It is centering oneself, and really a very simple, rational thing to do.
I have no desire to concentrate on any little dots. But I do desire to be in the presence of God, with the physical aides that the above description permits. In doing so, I am most fully – me. And not too far from the potatoes which james is asking waynorinorway about.

Posted by: juliania | Aug 14 2023 5:35 utc | 96

I have a slightly different version of the journey I described at Aug 14 2023 5:35 utc above that I’ll pose as a sort of a question: what is the difference between genes and cells in defining our health prospects? It seems to a complete amateur on the subject that much medical science and geneological investigating into ancestry devotes itself to the unravelling of the genetic makeup of individuals, whereas what has been under attack by the virus we’ve all been facing has been on the cellular level, with t-cells and such marshalled in defence.
I’ve been seeing articles questioning the priorities and I’ll be so bold as to say that completely on the surface of things (which is where I, admittedly, do my deep thinking), I’d class ‘gene science’ as ‘woke’ and ‘cell science’ as ‘multipolar’.
In other words, gene science is ‘we think we know’ whereas cell science is ‘we know we don’t know – but not to worry; our bodies do.’

Posted by: juliania | Aug 14 2023 5:57 utc | 97

Posted by: bevin | Aug 14 2023 2:22 utc | 82
Glad your at the bar, Bevin.
Yes, Trotskyist line, but who would be a better and more accurate source? Stalin, who you say was a two stage revolutionary, remade the entire party and government and it perished, as predicted.
Stalin was no man of steel. He was a backwoods Georgian peasant with webbed feet whose alcoholic dad the shoemaker would beat him all day, driving him into the priesthood, which he abandoned for the new ideas and was so zealous and stupid that he carried out bank robberies to fund his efforts. But they needed a Georgian, and he was a suck up so he quietly worked his way up the ranks, fought all efforts to carry out the revolution in 1917, then murdered Lenin at an opportune time. By 1937 he killed almost every Bolshevik involved in 1917. Almost all of them!
He was no two stage socialist, he was an ignoramus lusting for power who found a counterrevolutionary mood in the wake of the defeated German revolution and rode it. The original sorcerer’s apprentice.
I think a better argument could be made for the CCP as being a two stage revolutionary party. At least that process is still in motion…

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Aug 14 2023 6:00 utc | 98

Posted by: Scorpion | Aug 14 2023 4:53 utc | 93
Snake oil, I say!

Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Aug 14 2023 6:02 utc | 99

Hi, did anyone notice the new threat to the EU energy market? The gas pipeline between Nigeria and the Mediterranean, that EU counts on to supply gas for the coming winter, goes through Niger… So not only are Niger a key supplier of Uranium and gold, but also in control of the pipeline…No wonder the west are so keen on intervention. Very quiet in the mainstream media…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-…n_gas_pipeline
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cv4yz-KsnIu/
https://intellinews.com/niger-coup-t…roject-286426/

Posted by: Aivazovsky | Aug 14 2023 6:41 utc | 100

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