The MoA Week In Review - OT 2023-260
Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:
Palestine:
- October 30 - Biden Forced To Call Off His Plans For Ethnic Cleansing Of Gaza
- November 1 - Economist Fakes Political History Of Gaza
- November 3 - Nasrallah Speech On Gaza
Related:
- Imperial Designs - New Left Review
- Israel’s ‘Total War’ Strategy in Gaza - Tikun Olam
- Israel admits airstrike on ambulance in Gaza - CNN
- What the BBC fails to tell you about October 7 - Jonathan Cook
- A Dangerous Conflation of anti-zinoism and anti-semitism - N+1
- Chartbook 251: Israel's national security neoliberalism put to the test - Adam Tooze
- Far-right minister: Nuking Gaza is an option, population should ‘go to Ireland or deserts’ - Times of Israel
- Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah's Speech on War in Palestine - Full Transcript - Sott
This speech was only part 1. Another Nasrallah speech will follow on Nov. 11 2023. It will reveal more of his plans.
- INTERVIEW: Hala Jaber – ‘Nasrallah Speaks + Gaza Update & Analysis’ (video) - 21st century wire
- There Might Be No Day After in Gaza - Carnegie Endowment
> There will be efforts to devise arrangements, to be sure. But the most notable diplomatic fallout from the fighting might be that diplomacy becomes even more difficult. The coordination necessary to make any arrangements for governance functions may be extremely difficult to achieve.
...
Gazans will live in the surviving buildings and makeshift structures for a while. Any rebuilding will exclude significant portions of Gaza. Commerce, manufacturing, agriculture, and other businesses will be effectively destroyed, rendering Gazans completely dependent on humanitarian aid. Once a “besieged enclave,” Gaza will be reduced to a “supercamp” of internally displaced persons. <
Sam Heller | سام هيلر @AbuJamajem - 6:51 UTC · Nov 5, 2023
My (belated) takeaways from Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah's speech Friday, which I think mostly elaborated on what we've understood to be Hizb's posture and calculus since October 7 🧵: 1/8
...
Ukraine:
- October 31 - The War Is Lost - Zelenski Will Leave - The White House Has Failed
- November 2 - Ukraine SitRep: Technologies And Stalemate - Zaluzny's Failures
- November 4 - The Ukraine Peace Talk Trial Balloon
Related:
- Russia must protect Zelensky - RT
- 'We're losing': Ukrainians reel from war chief's stalemate warning - AFP
- Zelensky Rebuke of Top General Signals Rift in Ukrainian Leadership - NY Times
- Top Ukrainian general’s gloomy view of Russia war fuels military aid debate - Politico
- A competitor to Zelensky? How Zaluzhny's article sparked rumors about his presidential ambitions (in Russian) - Strana
---
Other issues:
Russia:
- Israel’s Fight With Iran Proxies in Syria Poisons Russia Ties - Bloomberg
- Putin says Russia must prepare for additional Western sanctions - Anadolu
- Dozens Arrested in Dagestan After Mob Storms Plane Arriving From Israel - NY Times
The Dagestan government blamed pro-Ukrainian conspirators for the clashes at the airport, saying that they had inflamed the public to fuel unrest in Russia. - ‘Financial Times’: the stench of propaganda in today’s coverage of the Makhachkala riots is overwhelming - Gilbert Doctorow
Empire:
- The Self-Isolation of the West - Gordon Hahn
- Dao Prize Acceptance Speech Matt Taibbi / The Racket
- US seeks strategic dialogue with Russia - Indian Punchline
- How Britain and America Backed Jihadists Throughout Kosovo War - Kit Klarenberg
Germany:
- How Germany’s Greens Lost Their Luster - NY Times
- The New German Ideology: The Rise of the Master Values - Tarik Cyril Amar
- The Last Effort: Germany's Final Battle in the West - Big Serge
Michael Tracey @mtracey - 2:47 UTC · Nov 2, 2023The House just passed 354 - 53 a resolution that could be read as effectively authorizing war with Iran. "All means necessary" would have to include military means... correct?
Naturally, it also declares support for Israel waging war on Iran
The new Speaker is really on a roll!
Use as open (not Ukraine or Palestine related) thread ...
Posted by b on November 5, 2023 at 13:03 UTC | Permalink
next page »Thanks, b, for this lengthy Week in Review. I jumped right in at the NYT article about the German Greens. Maybe it’s just me, but I found some of the messages in there quite extraordinary.
“Today the Greens are widely viewed as a drag on the government of the Social Democratic chancellor, Olaf Scholz…” <— ! They draggin’ down Scholz! Who’s been treated purely like a disposable water boy by Biden himself and that German ambassador, I think?
“The reversal of fortunes for the Greens is the story of a party that has long struggled to transcend its roots as a niche, environmentalist party to become a more pragmatic political force capable of broader appeal to lead the country.” … I’m sorry, but I only know a small amount about the history of Germany’s Green Party and I can’t believe they actually wrote that. “Struggled,” I suppose that’s one way of expressing it.
“But in Mr. Scholz’s government, which also includes the pro-business Free Democrats, the Green presence has been weightier, and the party’s stumble raises questions about whether the German economy…” Wait — “the pro-business Free Democrats”… has Washington found itself a new horse to ride in on?
“Experts said the law, which was passed in weakened form in September, has helped fuel the growing popularity of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, which is polling at more than 20 percent, around the highest in its history.” Well if experts [from the State department?] say that about the heating law, or Heizungsgesetz, then it must be so.
“ “The key thing is going to be — the challenging thing, but also the beautiful thing — is to convince people who don’t yet think the way we do,” said Katrin Göring-Eckardt, a longtime leader in the party from eastern Germany who is now a vice president of Parliament.” Maybe that came out wrong in translation but that sounds a bit far-right to me.
“Bernd Ulrich, a journalist with the newspaper Die Zeit who is writing a book on green politics, said that Mr. Habeck, in particular, would be key to whether the party could restore its stature.” He has been portrayed as laughable in the Canadian media, and I can’t see past that. Apologies to Herr Ulrich.
Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Nov 5 2023 13:58 utc | 2
Thanks b, for all your work. The week review is a really good innovation of the last few years.
Posted by: Minaa | Nov 5 2023 14:42 utc | 3
Russian historian Aleksandr Dyukov on the inflation of Ukrainian partisan numbers under Khrushchyov:
While the data on the number of partisans in the Belorussian SSR—374 thousand—is confirmed by documents, and each one has a registration card, the data on the number of partisans in the Ukrainian SSR—500 thousand—is a post-war invention ordered by Khrushchyov; the total number of partisans in the Ukrainian SSR was about 240 thousand.The number of Ukrainian partisans, according to UShPD [Partisan Movement’s Ukrainian Headquarters — S] records, was about 220 thousand during the entire war. This figure was mentioned in 1949 by Colonel I. G. Starinov who was giving closed lectures at the Frunze Academy (he was deputy head of the UShPD during the war), this figure was initially given by Soviet historians. However, after Khrushchyov came to power, a decision has been made to increase the number of Ukrainian partisans. At first they attempted to do this by identifying undercounted partisans—but only 20 thousand were found. After that they stopped caring and proclaimed the figure of half a million partisans.
Can’t have fewer partisans in the Ukraine than in Belarus!
Posted by: S | Nov 5 2023 14:50 utc | 4
ahahahahaha. I'm dying, as the Z-ppl (not those Z-ppl, the other ones) say. The Price Cap Coalition is on the loose!
US Treasury Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), 2 Nov
Russia-related Designations, Updates and Removal; Counter Terrorism Designation Update; Issuance of Russia-related General Licenses
rough count
individuals: CH (2), CY (2), IE (2), LT (2), SE (1), RU (33), TR (1)
companies: AE (13), CH (1), CN (5), CY (3), LU (1), MN (1), RU (154), SG (1), TR (10), UZ (1)
pna.gov.ph, EU plans to present 12th package of sanctions vs. Russia soon: EC, 5 Nov
The European Commission will soon publish the 12th package of European Union (EU) sanctions on Russia, which will include fresh import and export bans as well as an increase in the oil price ceiling [!], EC President Ursula von der Leyen said at a press conference in Kiev."dual-use things, "third-country" compliance "anti-coercion" measures!
"We will soon propose a 12th package of sanctions, with new listings, new import and export bans, actions to tighten the oil price cap, and to further crack down on sanctions circumvention," she wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
According to Bloomberg sources, the new planned restrictions will affect exports of welding equipment, chemical products and other military-related technologies. The community is also considering banning software licenses and imports of some processed metals, aluminum and building items, transportation products, and gemstones. The latest EU sanctions list is expected to include more than 100 individuals and 40 businessOorsula November 4 Declaration: Slava Big Israel!entitiescompanies.According to the agency's sources, the EU seeks to persuade European
corporationseNTiTIes to include restrictions in contracts with foreign nations prohibiting the transfer of equipment that can be used for military reasons to Russia.
Posted by: sln2002 | Nov 5 2023 15:06 utc | 5
Finland's president, the same satan-looking creep who illegally signed Finland up for the EU, the euro and Nato (and who officially has a 100% approval rating), signed Finland into the WHO agreement as well. The one that gives the bodily sovereignty of people away to the gay creep Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a Bill Gates stooge.
According to the agreement, this gay without medical education can now, at Bill's whim, announce an imaginary medical emergency that requires everyone to be vaccinated. By force if necessary. Just in time as the satan-looking Finnish president got all those US troops into Finland to help with the "forced" part. If necessary. Sounds like a double genocide threat together with the preparations for making Finland into the next Ukraine.
No discussion on the topic in Finland except three or four people grumbling on Telegram.
Posted by: Michael A | Nov 5 2023 15:24 utc | 6
Lavrov was asked a curious question and provided one of his semi-cryptic answers on the weekly "Moscow. Kremlin. Putin" program:
Question: At a meeting on the events in Dagestan, which you also attended, President Vladimir Putin used the words "root of evil" for the first time in reference to the United States. Are they doing something with the root? Uprooted? What should be done with it?Sergey Lavrov: There are other methods, including the use of chemicals, which do not have to be uprooted. President Vladimir Putin may have used this term for the first time, but he has repeatedly voiced the idea, conclusion and assessment that the United States is the main actor (as it is now fashionable to say) whose goal is to destabilise any region of the world.
Recently, I read analytical responses to what is happening. One of the politicians (not in Russia) said that when they discuss the foreign policy of the West and the United States, it is wrong to talk about double standards. They have the same standard: "We are in charge. We will return what we want. Where we can't achieve any result, we will destabilize the situation and fish in troubled waters."
If you look at all the foreign adventures of the United States over the past fifty years, starting with Vietnam, there is not a single story in which they have actually benefited the country and the region in whose affairs they intervened.
This only confirms the conclusion I have just voiced: it is in their interest to destabilise anything and everything. Then wait for their dollars (which they print in huge quantities) for someone to come in the expectation that the United States will "help" someone again. Those who count on such assistance should remember the sad experience of all the leaders of countries that relied on the United States. As soon as the situation changed, Washington shamelessly abandoned these leaders to their fate and began a new phase of its selfish policy.
Question: As for the root and the "chemicals" – will we not be accused of preparing and using chemical weapons? Now there are all sorts of fantasies.
Sergey Lavrov: This is an image. Let everyone draw conclusions to the best of their ability.
I would go further back in time than Lavrov to the period immediately after WW2 to the Outlaw US Empire's actions in Central and South America as well as its saving many Nazis, but otherwise he's correct. What Russia is trying to do is to get the Global Majority to awaken and review what has actually occurred since WW2, which is certainly 100% revisionist but isn't aimed at altering those events but understanding them and the consequences they've had since, one of which is the genocide in Palestine.
Sam Heller | سام هيلر @AbuJamajem - 6:51 UTC · Nov 5, 2023 My (belated) takeaways from Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah's speech Friday, which I think mostly elaborated on what we've understood to be Hizb's posture and calculus since October 7 🧵: 1/8
Could someone, please, post here the whole thread for those of us who do not have am X account and are not able to read anything at X any more, since Musk took over?
Thanks in advance
Posted by: Ghost of Mozgovoy | Nov 5 2023 15:44 utc | 8
Could someone, please, post here the whole thread for those of us who do not have am X account and are not able to read anything at X any more, since Musk took over?
Posted by: Ghost of Mozgovoy | Nov 5 2023 15:44 utc | 8
Here you go:
https://nitter.net/AbuJamajem/status/1721057530506248319
Posted by: Zet | Nov 5 2023 16:00 utc | 9
"Dozens Arrested in Dagestan After Mob Storms Plane Arriving From Israel."
This issue is interesting. I believe what appears to be the obvious explanation: SBU fomented the riot to undermine Russia as anti semitic, playing on the natural revulsion to the Zionazi's mass slaughter of innocents in Gaza, particularly in regions with large Muslim populations.
However, I check the wsws.org periodically as they frequently have good coverage, despite their ridiculous line on Trump and then Russia since 2017.
Look how their "young guard" covered Dagastan:
"But political responsibility for the outburst of antisemitism also lies with the Kremlin and the Russian oligarchy as a whole. The Russian ruling elite has a sinister history of promoting antisemitism. This includes both the Jewish pogroms in Tsarist Russia and the antisemitic campaigns of the Stalinist bureaucracy, a central component of Stalinism’s nationalist reaction against the internationalist program of the October Revolution. The Russian oligarchy as it emerged out of the Soviet bureaucracy’s restoration of capitalism has revived all of these traditions in the vilest manner."
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/11/04/gevb-n04.html
Ultimately, because anti semitism existed under the Tsar and Stalin, it's assumed that the current Russian government is also antisemitic. This is not just unfair or specious reasoning, but a furtherance of the Ukronazis attempt to slander Russia to it's own and US imperialism's benefit.
When an imperialist country attacks a non imperialist country, the traditional marxist line is to defend the victim of imperialism and take a defeatist line on the aggressors. But this website consistently seems to equally denounce Russia and US imperialism ala Max Shachtman. It does so in a subtler way than obvious fake left whores of the empire like the DSA which makes it more insideous.
This comment is only for those that consider the marxist perspective valuable and include wsws.org in their reading.
I just wonder about wsws.org. Are they for real or is some element of the leadership a controlled opposition in the US?
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Nov 5 2023 16:01 utc | 10
Some links regarding war profiteering:
• Eyes on the Ties: Corporate Enablers of Israel’s War on Gaza
• Responsible Statecraft: Wall Street eyes big profits from Israel-Hamas war
• The Guardian: ‘Hamas has created additional demand’: Wall Street eyes big profits from war
• PressTV: War profiteering: US arms industry giants rejoice as Israel rains bombs on Gaza
Maybe some people should think twice on where they put their savings, especially US folks...
Posted by: Zet | Nov 5 2023 16:09 utc | 11
"Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that he is ready for any contacts [...] . Curtailing of the basis of bilateral relations between Russia and the US was spearheaded by the Americans. This is why at least the head of the US will have to change his position at some point, taking a more constructive stand on bilateral relations, which will be followed by conditions for such a meeting growing ripe".
As I keep repeating, there is not a "West" vs. "Global South" struggle right now. There is a "West" (Anglosphere and EU and someone else), an "East" (Russia, China and a bunch of satellites), and a "Global South" (the rest).
The strategic goal of the East is to make European Countries switch allegiance and build an Eurasian community. After that, the Anglosphere will have no other choice than joining this community of peers. That will mark the end of the Unipolar struggle without a shot fired (well, almost...).
The strategic goal of the USA is to raise again an iron curtain between the East and the West to protect its economy from a total failure. US real economy, which was prominent for a few decades after WWII, lost its competitiveness on a global scale already in the '80s, at least, hence the bullying on its allies to stay afloat (e.g. the Plaza Accord that maimed the Japanese economy). However in the '90s, after the fall of the USSR, the US elite pushed for a globalist agenda, an economic system where they could not compete and could not bully: that was a total strategic failure. Now they are backtracking, but it is probably too late.
Posted by: SG | Nov 5 2023 16:28 utc | 12
On the Guardian this morning...
"Zelenskiy says cost of no more US aid is Russian war against Nato as he invites Trump to Ukraine."
Pretty desperate...courting assassination...
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Nov 5 2023 16:31 utc | 13
Slowly but surely de-dollarization is progressing:
Latest data from the SWIFT system showed that yuan's share of international payments hit a record high of 3.71 percent in September, and the currency retained its position as the fifth most active for global payments, while total payments in yuan increased by 2.77 percent in terms of value compared with August.From January to September in 2023, the volume of cross-border yuan settlement hit 38.9 trillion yuan ($5.32 trillion), up 24 percent year-on-year, according to statistics released by People's Bank of China, the central bank, on Friday.
Since the beginning of the year, there have been notable developments in the yuan's internationalization, such as surpassing the euro to become the second-largest currency in Brazil's foreign exchange reserves, Argentina's first-ever use of yuan to repay its foreign debts, and Pakistan's inaugural payment of Russian crude oil expenses in yuan.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202310/1300726.shtml
Posted by: Zet | Nov 5 2023 16:46 utc | 14
@Bruised Northerner | Nov 5 2023 13:58 utc | 2
Habeck held a speech two days ago - read from a teleprompter - where he basically declares his undying loyalty to Israel and demands every German does that as well, uncaringly even throwing German Muslims and critics of Israel under the bus. He even threatened immigrants with expulsion, if they "hate" on Israel too much! The Greens, who were shuttling in every single guy from all over the world into Germany now threaten Muslim immigrants with expulsion.
And the United Media Front in Germany has been gushing over his speech, how great it is supposed to be. Recently Habeck was regularly critizised for his incompetence as the minister of economy. But as the Greens are now the party most heavily infested by transatlantic establishment stooges, they are also the most heavily defended by large parts of the media. Quelle surprise. They all have no morals, it really is absurd.
Posted by: Roland | Nov 5 2023 16:53 utc | 15
I'm thinking, someone's got jet lag, narcolepsy, a closed head injury, or something.
12:04pm: Blinken tells Abbas [?!] Gazans must not be 'forcibly displaced'• Secretary Antony J. Blinken, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, and Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi At a Joint Press Availability, 4 NovUS Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday that Palestinians in Gaza "must not be forcibly displaced", a State Department spokesman said.
Blinken met with Abbas in Ramallah as he made a surprise high-security visit to the West Bank as violence surges in the occupied territory in tandem with the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller [!] said the pair also discussed "the need to stop extremist violence against Palestinians" in the West Bank.
...We're all deeply concerned about escalating extremist violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. This has been a serious problem that's only worsened since the conflict. I updated ministers today on my discussions with- throughout the Israeli Government yesterday, where I underscored that incitement and extremist violence must be stopped—and perpetrators must be held accountable....• Secretary Blinken's Meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, 5 Nov
Posted by: sln2002 | Nov 5 2023 17:14 utc | 16
thanks b... ditto minaas comment to you...
@ Ahenobarbus | Nov 5 2023 16:01 utc | 10
thanks.. interesting and relevant question on wsws... perhaps bevin will chime in?
--------------
i wish i could read the nyt articles.. oh well.. i refuse to sign up.. i don't care that much..
Posted by: james | Nov 5 2023 17:19 utc | 17
Posted by: james | Nov 5 2023 17:19 utc | 17
NY Yella Cake? You're not missing anything except serial over-writes. But if you must abuse yourself, copy & paste the story's URL into an archive.* or waybackmachine search field.
Posted by: sln2002 | Nov 5 2023 17:24 utc | 18
Hello, unappreciated blog! Thanks for reminding me: Stereotype is the mind killer.
Posted by: sln2002 | Nov 5 2023 17:39 utc | 19
@ sln2002 | Nov 5 2023 17:24 utc | 18
thanks and thanks for the link @ 19 and your posts more generally!
Posted by: james | Nov 5 2023 17:48 utc | 20
Habeck held a speech two days ago - read from a teleprompter - where he basically declares his undying loyalty to Israel and demands every German does that as well, uncaringly even throwing German Muslims and critics of Israel under the bus.
Posted by: Roland | Nov 5 2023 16:53 utc | 15
Full ack! The only positive thing about his speech was that it was translated into various languages incl. Arabic so Muslims all over the world can see his racist remarks.
Posted by: Zet | Nov 5 2023 18:15 utc | 21
"... just wonder about wsws.org. Are they for real or is some element of the leadership a controlled opposition in the US?" Ahenobarbus@10
They aren't 'controlled opposition.' But they do share a broad range of propaganda objectives with the ruling class.
One has to bear in mind that every time an Anne Applebaum or a Robert Conquest pops up with more 'documentation' of Stalin's crimes of hundreds of millions starved to death or even Mao's plot to kill off everyone except his immediate family (and the girl he fancied two doors down), the WSWS and many other organs of the various groups which claim to be bearing the mantle of Trotsky fall over themselves to 'second that motion.'
And that incidentally, is true of the charges of anti-semitism against Stalin who was guilty of much but nothing of the sort.
The truth and this is a long, sad story, is that Trotsky's memory has been hi-jacked by anti communists since his death. Even during his lifetime the old fellow had to fight off the friendship of the Un-American Activities Committee and its ilk- after his death the floodgates opened and- I speak as a man whose entire adult life has been spent in the halls of Trotskyist analyses- since the early 1950s when hundreds of ex-Trotskyists (including NATO's first Secretary General) rallied to the imperialist side of the Cold War (many of chanting the Stalin=Hitler idiocy, most of them wallowing in new found wealth).
Hence, in the not very long run, the NeoCons who hated 'Stalinism' so much that they applauded the end of the USSR and had so deluded themselves that the Imperialists were the 'good guys' in the Cold War that they slipped very easily into becoming unashamed partisans of the Hegemonic Empire.
Most Trotskyists did not go so far, many, indeed, like the faction around the WSWS merely displayed a weakness for personality cults of the kind that would have embarassed Stalin- hence the long list of "theoreticians' and despots-over-a-dozen-or-two who have helped fuck up the working class movement, turning it into a network of fan clubs edging closer and closer (as the Ukraine crisis has demonstrated) to the neo-con position.
As I say its a long story: james, "don't get me started..." Really all we have yto do is repeat Wren's epitaph- " If you would see Trotsky's monument, look around you!"
The founder of the Red Army deserved better but the more one studies the course of the Central Committee of the CPPP the clearer it becomes that all those involved were flawed, while the task before them was impossible.
That the USSR defeated the Wehrmacht, and all of Europe behind it, is enough. And so it should be.
Let me just add, after reviewing the above quickly, that one other consequence of the wholesale desertion of US left-communists to the imperialist cause is the genocide in Gaza. Just take a look at the front row of the cheering section.
Posted by: bevin | Nov 5 2023 18:18 utc | 22
i wish i could read the nyt articles.. oh well.. i refuse to sign up.. i don't care that much..
Posted by: james | Nov 5 2023 17:19 utc | 17
If you’re on a Mac or iOS device then you can use the following shortcut to open any pay-walled page on archive.ph via the share sheet, doesn’t get simpler than that:
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/eed044b9a72448afb56d6985f504005b
Posted by: Zet | Nov 5 2023 18:23 utc | 23
From the NYTimes, today: US banks are now https://archive.ph/V7hGz”>forthrightly criminal confiscation of customer accounts based solely on the recommendation of AI computer evaluations that seek to identify fraud and other illegal activity.
But a New York Times examination of over 500 cases of this dropping of customers by their banks — and interviews with more than a dozen current and former bank industry insiders — illustrates the chaos and confusion that ensue when banks decide on their own to cut people off. Individuals can’t pay their bills on time. Banks often take weeks to send them their balances. When the institutions close their credit cards, their credit scores can suffer. Upon cancellation, small businesses often struggle to make payroll — and must explain to vendors and partners that they don’t have a bank account for the time being. As if the lack of explanation and recourse were not enough, once customers have moved on, they don’t know whether there is a black mark somewhere on their permanent records that will cause a repeat episode at another bank. If the bank has filed a SAR, it isn’t legally allowed to tell you, and the federal government prosecutes only a small fraction of the people whom the banks document in their SARs.
The NYTimes does inform us that the banks do “offer a modicum of sympathy”, though.
Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | Nov 5 2023 18:24 utc | 24
Posted by: SG | Nov 5 2023 16:28 utc | 12The strategic goal of the USA is to raise again an iron curtain between the East and the West to protect its economy from a total failure. US real economy, which was prominent for a few decades after WWII, lost its competitiveness on a global scale already in the '80s, at least, hence the bullying on its allies to stay afloat (e.g. the Plaza Accord that maimed the Japanese economy). However in the '90s, after the fall of the USSR, the US elite pushed for a globalist agenda, an economic system where they could not compete and could not bully: that was a total strategic failure. Now they are backtracking, but it is probably too late.
I agreed with most of your post - esp. dividing blocs into West, East and Global South vs West vs RoW, and that the East hopes that Europe will join Eurasia (which it really should). I believe either Putin or Lavrov suggested that (again) only last week.
However, I have emboldened your last sentences because I don't understand them. Assuming the 'they' refers to the US elites, I don't know what you mean by 'where they could not compete and could not bully'. Could you kindly clarify?
Posted by: Zet | Nov 5 2023 18:23 utc | 23
i wish i could read the nyt articles.. oh well.. i refuse to sign up.. i don't care that much..
==============================================
I use Brave Browser (chrome family) with an extension called Archive Page. All the mainstream press tends to open immediately (because someone else already processed it) but if not it doesn't take long for them to create a new archive link. It is offered on Firefox as well.
@ Zet | Nov 5 2023 18:23 utc | 23 // @ Scorpion | Nov 5 2023 18:42 utc | 26
thanks guys.. i am on linux ( not apple ) - ubuntu, with brave browser.. i will try the archive feature... that is also what @ sln2002 | Nov 5 2023 17:24 utc | 18 recommended.. i am a bit of a luddite on ubuntu, lol..
Posted by: james | Nov 5 2023 19:00 utc | 27
Het land weet dat er kwaad is gedaan / En dat van die zon en
die maan / Al Dat rokende van het land / Van de verbijstering
van de beesten / Van het lichten van het land / En de zon en
de maan / Van de angst van de beesten
Nu moet ik gaan: de bloemen sterven / En het donkert al
als ik jou weer ontmoeten zal / Zal ik mijn naam in jouw huid kerven. Dan zal ik zingen van een zwarte dag / En van de schaduw die wij moesten delen / En van de vloek die sprong in onze kelen
en van het mes dat in jouw handen lag.
Langzaam, van ver gevolgd door de hond van de hof
Ben ik de oude wegen zwijgend ingeslagen
Een bleke herfst verbloedt achter de zwarte hagen;
Vrouwen gaan einderlangs, rouwend, in donkere stof
Al grauwer wordt het veld
De lucht koelt af, de nevel welt
Wat staat gij zo en kijkt verbaasd en staart?
Wat is het dat u in de schemering zo ontstelde?
(De Kift)
Posted by: Minaa | Nov 5 2023 19:32 utc | 28
Eagelton's piece in NLR suffers from the usual academic bubble interpretation of US geopolitical actions (and escaping that bubble has shaped the latter part of my academic career...)—namely, that it assumes US policy is determined and executed by something akin to an university sub-committee, well-meaning and intelligent people who end up trying to crack a nut with a sledgehammer. Nowhere is the scourge of neoliberal managerialism discussed and this is the elephant in the room: a dysfunctional latter-day bureaucracy that elevates self-promoting narcissists and sociopaths who get ahead by applying a brutal calculus concocted from the worst excesses of corporate capitalism, shameless entrepreneurialism and inflexible bureaucratic hierarchies. The characters that populate his op-ed (Biden et al.) are, frankly, crooks who preside over a system of plunder. That the Israelis are saying the quiet part out loud by ethnic-cleansing and land-grabbing in plain sight with the blessing of the 'civilized world' only serves to highlight the fact that the last 200 years of Western hegemony has been so many versions of Kurtz's imperative to 'exterminate all the brutes'. Let's not put lipstick on 'imperial designs' as though there is a rational system of governance at work. The Jake Sullivans of this world are not Buckley Jr or Gore Vidal; they're pimply middle managers who put no height limit to the pile of bodies they will climb to fill their accounts and dominate others.
Posted by: Patroklos | Nov 5 2023 19:32 utc | 29
I agree 100% with Paroklos. His description applies not only to politicians and the media "people" but to most universities in Western Europe nowadays.
With regard to Kurtz, isn't it odd that no one in the Western governements seems to have seen Apocalypse Now and how their own elements might turn rogue.
Posted by: Tom3 | Nov 5 2023 19:42 utc | 30
Posted by: Tom3 | Nov 5 2023 19:42 utc | 30
Absolutely right: Conrad's novella and Coppola's film are about as timely as it gets.
Posted by: Patroklos | Nov 5 2023 19:53 utc | 31
Posted by: Patroklos | Nov 5 2023 19:32 utc | 29Nowhere is the scourge of neoliberal managerialism discussed and this is the elephant in the room: a dysfunctional latter-day bureaucracy that elevates self-promoting narcissists and sociopaths who get ahead by applying a brutal calculus concocted from the worst excesses of corporate capitalism, shameless entrepreneurialism and inflexible bureaucratic hierarchies.
Good insights, but I feel you are blending primary colours overmuch in that there is a significant difference between yellow, blue and red. Managerialism is indeed a widespread, serious and generally overlooked problem, but I don't believe that it alone creates the rapacious greed of Hegemonic Empire. Rather, I suspect that in order to milk populations of their wealth and agency, organized elites systematically put up buffer zones of baffling bureaucracy to camouflage their policies and networks. Those at the managerial level are mainly well-meaning but are systematically dumbed down by operating a machine designed and fueled by the deception involved with making sure they don’t know the elites whose purposes they ultimately serve. Deception by definition involves hiding, obfuscating which by definition engender ignorance. Ignorance is the opposite of being awake, knowledgeable, on the ball. Hence the sclerotic, paralyzing nature of rampant managerialism – as well as its seemingly occluded, untouchable nature.
Those are two sides - managerialism vs elites. No doubt there are several others. For example the Zionist project, though only of interest to a tiny segment of the West’s population, has an over-sized influence on no end of domestic and foreign policy. Doubtless there are other powerful elements as well.
The point being that it's not just one amorphous managerialist blob. There are various and differing skeins in the overall tartan.
I very significant event's been taking place in Moscow over the weekend that I just was made aware of: "the marathon of the Znanie society as part of the Russia exhibition-forum, which opened at VDNKh," via this TASS report in Russian on Patrushev's remarks made yesterday. Curiosity aroused, I went to Znanie Society's website to see if I could find his complete remarks and those of other participants. Wow! What an event. For those who don't know, Znanie is Russian for knowledge, and the society integrates Russian leaders from all sectors with the overall educational system. (I've reported on this organization and its work at my substack and VK sites.) What follows are the core of Patrushev's remarks as provided by TASS, but not all by far:
People's Unity and Overcoming the Time of TroublesNational Unity Day symbolizes the overcoming of internal and external threats by the people of Russia through unity and cohesion.
During the Time of Troubles, Russia was on the verge of losing its sovereignty, but its people "united, defended their native land and statehood," got rid of interventionists and traitors, restored a strong government, and embarked on the path of independent development.
This was facilitated by the enormous spiritual upsurge of the multinational people of the country, "whose statehood has always been based on three pillars - national unity, faith and a strong vertical of power."An Age-Old Confrontation
Europe has long sought to destroy the Russian state, as it could not tolerate the rise of the Third Rome - Moscow, this was regularly manifested in attempts at "political intrigues, economic enslavement and direct aggression."
From the German knights to the Nazis in the 20th century, almost all of Europe participated in the aggression against Russia.
Historically, Russia has always been a "bone in the throat of the West," hindering the implementation of its hegemonic plans, and representing a powerful civilizational alternative.
Western Russophobic ideologues have come up with entire theories on how to achieve the collapse of Russia, which formed the basis of the Western strategy to destroy our country.
The 1990s as a New Time of TroublesThe dramatic 1990s became a "new Time of Troubles" in which the existence of the Russian state was once again threatened.
The collapse of the Soviet Union gave wings to the rulers of the United States and other Westerners, who believed that by dividing Russia, they could achieve its destruction.
Western advisers flooded Russia in the 1990s, seeking to create chaos in the country, "encouraging separatism, imposing debt fetters and onerous international obligations." The West relied on stimulating chaos and introducing external control of the country.The West also used additional levers of pressure in the form of NATO's aggressive eastward expansion, support for extremism and radical religious groups, inspired a "wave of defamation of the Russian Orthodox Church and traditional Islam," and propagandized all sorts of vices.
As a result of the radical reforms imposed by the West, the standard of living in the country declined, unemployment grew, industry, agriculture, transport, and the financial system were destroyed, and the military-industrial complex actually ceased to perform its main function - to provide the armed forces with modern weapons.
International terrorism in the 1990sposed a serious threat to Russia's sovereignty, with Western countries hypocritically calling the terrorists "fighters for freedom and democracy."
Powerful stuff. I'll agree with the analogy of the 1990s being a new Time of Troubles. All too often I fail to check the Russian TASS page. I'll compile some of these "lectures' into a review and post them to my substack. I'll post a notification when that's completed.
Someone, maybe the author, linked this piece in comments at the Kit Klarenberg Substack article:
https://ourimperialpress.substack.com/p/how-the-fk-are-these-the-good-guys
RE: NATO
"It is easily one of the biggest- and ugliest- lies to be spun as a byproduct [of] this conflict. Not that the Western mass media has ever tired of polishing the (should have long since been flushed) turd that is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
NATO is unequivocally the most offensive, in several meanings of the word, defensive organization in history. It has no record of ever “defending” anything. Instead it has been, repeatedly, a truly brutal aggressor that has abused and crushed weaker nations.
A supposed force of righteousness and peace promotion, deterring wars and violations of national sovereignty with its steely, restrained resolve, it instead has been an initiator of numerous wars and a serial violator of national sovereignty, often pursued with a vicious, hateful enthusiasm. Sold as a vehicle to deter military actions and prevent political unrest, it is a repeated wrecker of stability, leaving nations and entire regions in chaos after disastrous, consistently failed, interventions."
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Nov 5 2023 20:11 utc | 34
Posted by: james | Nov 5 2023 17:19 utc | 17
Not sure why nobody has suggested this yet, but it works for all NYT and other typical paywalled MSM articles (not Substack or sports sites requiring membership).
Example: https://archive.ph/2S0sE
There is also a browser plugin available for Chrome (yeah, fuck Google) and others.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Nov 5 2023 20:18 utc | 35
Posted by: bevin | Nov 5 2023 18:18 utc | 22
Excellent comment...which pretty much goes for most of your contributions here, so doesn't bear mention (by me) but for the fact that you're a minority preaching against a great headwind. Even here.
At the same time, you have me wondering - how many of the original "neocons" were ex-Trotskyists or at least ex-Troskyite (if there's a difference)? My understanding was that many if not most of them at the minimum claimed to be or were said to have lingered in the same circles during university and such.
And I wonder if you could elaborate on the influence of Zionism in the early days of the "neocon" movement - as many of them, again as far as my limited knowledge goes, were very much pro-Israel (which for many years following its founding was essentially a socialist country)?
Could you recommend any books on this, by the way?
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Nov 5 2023 20:23 utc | 36
Is Life tracking Scripture or does Scripture track Life?
Here 'tis Sunday, Ed; and my Orthodox Old Calendar readings, at any rate are right on track. The Epistle extract is a bright one from the end of Corinthians II that neither circumcision nor noncircumcision 'counts for anything', but a 'new creation' is where is at, and that, friends is the 'Israel of God'. (More on that anon.)
Then, the Gospel Reading comes from Saint Luke and is the story Of the rich man (whose name we are not told) and the poor man, Lazarus, lying at the rich man's gate. We all know that they both die and go opposite places; what is interesting is the conversation between Abraham and the rich man, [who wishes not to be where he is, but it is apparently too late.]
So, says the rich man, please send Lazarus to my five brothers 'so that he may warn them'. Abraham says, "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them." And he said, "No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to him from the dead [as Lazarus now is] they will repent." He [Abraham] said to him, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead."
Of course, this is Jesus telling this story to a crowd of people, and one would point out that this is the first of those who might rightfully be called 'a Christian', so although the participants in the story seem all to be very much Jews, one can say this is the Christian slant to it all.
On the other hand, Paul, who is writing to the Corinthians [Greeks] is very much a Jew, moreso for having severely persecuted Christians, and yet he's the one with a positive message here, as far as providing an 'out' at the end of it - 'a new creation'.
Back in the day, in my little church, we never had our priest expounding on the texts immediately after the readings - the service would continue its usual course to the end. Conversations ensued during the coffee hour [or hours] back at the house. So, I will leave it at that. Enjoy your Sundays, everyone!
Posted by: juliania | Nov 5 2023 20:25 utc | 37
@ Tom_Q_Collins | Nov 5 2023 20:18 utc | 35
thanks tom! dang, but that first link works like a hot dam! thanks..
Posted by: james | Nov 5 2023 20:33 utc | 38
Managerialism [sic] is indeed a widespread, serious and generally overlooked problem
Posted by: Scorpion | Nov 5 2023 19:59 utc | 32
Have a peek into this grande bourgeoisie (FKA βουλή) handbook: Mortality, Immortality, and Other Life Strategies by Zygmunt Bauman.
Posted by: sln2002 | Nov 5 2023 20:34 utc | 39
@ Zet | Nov 5 2023 18:23 utc | 23 // @ Scorpion | Nov 5 2023 18:42 utc | 26thanks guys.. i am on linux ( not apple ) - ubuntu, with brave browser.. i will try the archive feature... that is also what @ sln2002 | Nov 5 2023 17:24 utc | 18 recommended.. i am a bit of a luddite on ubuntu, lol..
Posted by: james | Nov 5 2023 19:00 utc | 27
Search for “Best Web Archives” and you’ll find quite a few sites that almost fully archive the entire NYTimes/WaPo/Atlantic/Grauniad daily front-pagers, among many, many others. I use Archive Today, which masqs itself under several different (and shifting) dot-affixes. Find the best one for you.
To use these services simply copy the URL of the page you want to view and then—this is sometimes (but not always) imperative—delete all the Cooke-generating tracker garbage that follows the root-URL.
A few tries and you’ll easily get the hang of it all, but a quick overview follows:
Enter the root URL into the “search” function on Archive Today and I have only found, as a guesstimate, around 0.5% of articles as “unsaved”. And in the few instances where I go back and check a few days later, those “lost pages” are almost always recorded.
The tools are out there. They are being provided and served up by the genuinely “Anonymous” (which doesn’t stupidly advertise itself) of the “Global Others as conceived by the Collective West” (GlOCCoW, maybe?): the Global South, Africa, BRICS, the SCO, OBOH/BRI, the Global left, etc: these are all combining information resources that will inevitably overwhelm all efforts by US/uk and their subsidiaries, Fr/ISI/Germ, to “control THE NARRATIVE”.
Let us not kid ourselves: what is meant by the phrase “control of the narrative” is “control of the basic facts upon which future histories will be established”.
Anyone who uses the phrase “the narrative” has (perhaps passively) assumed the social role of someone who is presuming to fight for the basic facts that will be included as “history”, from today on into the future.
Historically, any purely rhetorical fight for “history” is a battle that is only determined by combatants on a battlefield. Thus: Sargon, Babylon, Ramses, and Sumer were all established.
Thus, also, Napoleon, Churchill, and Stalin were defeated.
Yet, by extension, so also has the US been defeated in, quite literally, all of its wars since WWII—let’s emphasize WWII because the US was allied with both Britain and Russia, which in FDR’s vision would have served as a useful, cooperative counterpoint to The Vaunted British Empire (an Empire most current Media Brits strive to ignore—what with the USSR)
The USSR was such an indubitably valuable ally during WWII—and yse, all of the wars fought by the US have been in opposition NOT to “Soviet encroachment” but rather against “anti-colonial insurgencies”, against which the VAUNTED US MILITARY has ALWAYS LOST—except where the F/uk/US coalition in Africahas utilized genocide, as has been proven in Rwanda, during the Clinton era of the Neocons.
This whole presumption of dictating an “end to history” has always been just damnably stupid—Godel proved why, mathematicaly, in our modern era. But Religion was created synchronously with Mathematics—not “logick”— each in contrast to one another (and Gematria along with literal timelines of the Bible, in contrast).
Meanwhile Science (old “Mathematics”) and Humanism (as, now, ”Religion”, as argued by Nietzsche, the Existentialists, and the Communist Philosophers most cogently) are in a confused admixture that confuses each, and drives many people into often fruitless investigations of the past
Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | Nov 5 2023 20:57 utc | 40
“…fruitless investigations of the past”==demonstrably ahistorical religious Evangelical bullshit such as is puked out upon people who can neither smell nor taste the moral rot and spoilage in men like John Hagee, or Joel Osteen.
Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | Nov 5 2023 21:06 utc | 41
Posted by: bevin | Nov 5 2023 18:18 utc | 22
-----------------------------------------------------------
That was a very interesting account of you own history bevin, and pretty good breakdown concerning Trotsky and his followers after his death. I moved over to the CPUSA from the very conservative Socialist Labor Party (SLP) which was Marxist, but anti-Leninists', Stalinist, and Trotskyists. I came to DeLeon's SLP in my mid-twenties through my ex-father-in-law, a retired salty Merchant Marine and a firm socialist, and a hell of a nice guy. I respected him a lot, but Marxism without Lenin just didn't seem complete. So, in my early thirties I moved over to the CP, but not without doing some research. Early on I was confused by the division between the various Marxist groupings (or should I say cults?) as it did begin to look like to me at the time.
My reading of Trotsky's early works seemed quite reasonable, even as my association with the CP which eventually ended my interest in the works of Trotskyist didn't completely tarnish my view of Trotsky, including the idea of the "Permanent Revolution (PR)" which at one time did seem to make sense to me.
Some time back, here on MoA, you explained why Stalin could not abide by Trotsky's idea of the PR, and it was very similar to the many discussions I had with CP fellow travelers (I will not go into it here) and I assumed you were a fellow traveler as well.
I was living in Boston when the CP split into factions (one faction led by Angela Davis) in some part over Stalinism. This faction became the left arm of the Democratic Party and ceased to be communist as far as I can tell, not even with a little "c".
I keep close contact with many of my CP comrades, including the head of the Houston Party, and there has not been, as you said a "wholesale desertion of the US left-communists to the imperialist cause is the genocide in Gaza" by the CP. There are differences over the PLO and Hamas, which go back to 2006. But even the CP accepts that the present leadership of the PLO are nearly worthless. At least that is my reading of the situation.
Posted by: Ed | Nov 5 2023 21:48 utc | 42
@Scorpion | Nov 5 2023 18:38 utc | 25
However, I have emboldened your last sentences because I don't understand them.
Sorry, I tried to be too concise, because the issue is quite complex. What I meant is the fact that the US economy reached a dominant position (between the '40s and '50s) due to a number of contingent reasons, i.e. being the only advanced economy left untouched by the war, being gifted loads of British technology etc.
In the American propaganda, however, all these contingent reasons were dismissed as to give the impression that the dominance of the US economy was the result of some kind of exceptionalism, of some inherent quality. To say the truth, the opposite was actually true: the extreme US capitalism is a hindrance for a real economy. However, and that is a problem of propaganda, new generations of Americans were raised with the belief in American exceptionalism, even in the economic sphere. That is the reason why the US elite could not foresee that their real economy was ill prepared to compete on a global scale, once the iron curtain was brought down.
As long as there was a Cold War and an iron curtain, Americans could keep afloat their aging real economy through a number of bullying measures: some harsh, like the aforementioned Plaza Accord, others somewhat softer, like leveraging their huge internal market for anti-competitive practices. With the end of the Cold War, new markets opened up for Western companies and the Western market opened up to Eastern companies. This fact had some big consequences: the relative importance of the US market for Western (European, Japanese) companies shrinked, becaused those companies have now more big markets to exploit, so the USA cannot leverage their own market to impose their will as before; some new big markets, e.g. China, are impervious to US political pressure, so, there, American companies have not some of the advantages they enjoy(ed) in Western markets; Eastern companies were actually more competitive and independent than what the Americans thought.
The result is that Boeing was still dominating the aerospace market in the '80s, it was challenged by Airbus in the '90s and it was surpassed during the 2000s. American carmakers were historically the biggest in the world, and they were outcompeted by Japanese, European and Korean automakers in the 2000s. US machine tool industry was quite important, but it is now declining steadily.
Posted by: SG | Nov 5 2023 21:49 utc | 43
@ Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 5 2023 20:04 utc | 33
That’s what I have been trying to articulate!
I have been having to figure it out by my own research , but there it is! In black and white.
It’s our West against their East. We have been the villains for centuries in our avarice and attempt at hegemony over not just them but the whole world. Or our lords and masters have. No matter what fairytales were sold of our ‘Rights’ as individuals and pantomime ‘democracy’, ‘one man one vote’ …lies all lies.
For our grandkids sake - they must know the truth - we must question all our beliefs.
Thank you again for your great work , along with b and others to make this site so crucial in understanding just wtf is going on!
Posted by: DunGroanin | Nov 5 2023 22:01 utc | 44
"...Stalin were defeated."
Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | Nov 5 2023 20:57 utc | 40
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stalin, and the Russian people won the fucking WWII in Europe. Are you arguing differently? Then please explain?
Posted by: Ed | Nov 5 2023 22:03 utc | 45
No matter what fairytales were sold of our ‘Rights’ as individuals and pantomime ‘democracy’, ‘one man one vote’ …lies all lies.
Posted by: DunGroanin | Nov 5 2023 22:01 utc | 44
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Voting, even one man (person) one vote, does not a democracy make. It is who and what you are voting for. Our "Democratic Republican" form of government ensures that we always elect a majority of candidates that represent a minorty class of wealthy doners. Whatever was promised during the campaigns is null and void as soon as the first session of the newly elected candidates are gaveled into office. You would think that the American and Europeans would get the message.
Posted by: Ed | Nov 5 2023 22:15 utc | 46
So, here we are. A total clusterfuck. And, for you sensitive ones, b used that in an article years ago. I was wondering if any of you have seen the photographs of Soliemani and General Patreus together?
Posted by: Immaculate deception | Nov 5 2023 22:18 utc | 47
This article Western Left and the US-China Contradiction sums up the problem with the Western Trotskyist Left (e.g. World Socialist Web Site or Novara Media) so well:
Their position amounts in effect to saying: I have my notion of how a socialist society should behave (which is an idealised notion), and if China’s behaviour in some respects differs from my notion, then ipso facto China cannot be socialist and hence must be capitalist.
A bunch of mostly upper middle class intellectual masturbators imagining what a "perfect" socialism would be and rejecting any actual existing socialism because it does not meet their ridiculous standard. The enemies of real change.
One may critique many aspects of Chinese economy and society, but calling it “capitalist” and hence engaged in imperialist activities on a par with western metropolitan economies, is a travesty. It is not only analytically wrong but leads to praxis that is palpably against the interests of both the working classes in the metropolis and the working people in the global south.
DunGroanin | Nov 5 2023 22:01 utc | 44 "For our grandkids sake - they must know the truth - we must question all our beliefs."
As Patrick Armstrong wrote, the point at which we realize everything we have been told were lies.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 5 2023 22:26 utc | 49
Re bypassing paywalls or subscription walls. At most sites, once the page has opened it takes a second or a few for the blocker to appear. Hit the readerview icon during that short window. Full article comes up in the reader view format. Sometimes photos ect are missing but the written article is always complete.
Reader view icon on the three browsers I use is always (on the three browsers I use) innermost icon in the address bar. It generally appears only when the page opens so best to be aware of its exact location and have the pointer there ready to click on it the moment it appears.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 5 2023 22:40 utc | 50
Ahenobarbus @ 10, Bevin @ 22:
WSWS.org is certainly very weird. Its writers clearly recognise that the West is seeking to undermine Putin's government and Putin himself through Ukraine and various "Color Revolution"-style stunts of the kind that recently occurred at Makhachkala Uytash airport. But because the current government doesn't adhere to a specific socialist or Marxist-style ideology in its management of the Russian economy or political system, the writers at WSWS.org refuse to acknowledge that the Kremlin has to work with whatever resources are available to it, with all the limitations and restrictions that happen to exist, and with the current level of knowledge, expertise and experience available to it. They won't admit that the Russians and Chinese, with the systems and histories they have had, have managed to succeed using a mix of political and economic strategies, making particular decisions that were appropriate at the time they were made, in a context where they had to face formidable enemies that used whatever tools and tactics to try to block and sabotage their efforts.
Reading Bevin's comment @ 22, the thought occurred to me that the current Trotskyists he described are little different from the Mojaheddin-e-Khalq group with its slavish adoration of former leader Massoud Rajavi (died three years ago apparently, according to recent Iranian news media stories) and current leader Maryam Rajavi (widow). MEK was originally a leftist student organisation opposed to Pahlavi rule in the 1960s and 70s. The organisation is now a cult of ageing members with its headquarters in Tirana (Albania) dedicated to cyberhacking.
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Nov 5 2023 22:43 utc | 51
karlof1 | Nov 5 2023 20:04 utc | 33
Thanks for bring that organisation to everyone's attention. I had never heard of them and even in the alt media in the west here there is little or no mention. Valdai Club is very well known, but as far as Russia's domestic future/economy is concerned, this discussion group may be more important.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 5 2023 22:50 utc | 52
DunGroanin | Nov 5 2023 22:01 utc | 44--
Thanks for your reply. It'll be awhile before I post that; might even be tomorrow given I'm hosting my daughter and new grandson at the moment. I hope I live long enough to teach the boy, and he'll take to reading like his mother. I see what Russia's doing and marveling. I know what's being done in Moscow is available online, but it must go on the road and become a traveling exhibition. Of course, there's nothing similar in the West or RoW, but it's a model that the RoW can emulate.
Peter AU1 | Nov 5 2023 22:50 utc | 51--
Thanks for your reply, Peter. I've reviewed Znanie at my VK and substack, so a few people have likely followed it. But you're correct that more need to know and understand its workings. That much of what's being produced at this show is video means we need to get better audio translators.
Ahenobarbus @ 10, Bevin @ 22:
The writers at WSWS.org are very strange in reporting news from Russia and its close environs. It is as if they are jealous of Russia (and China as well) in having found their own ways, that happen not to adhere to strict or near-strict Marxist or socialist political and economic ideologies, to succeed in maintaining their own sovereignty. The assumption that the current Russian political / economic elites have not changed since Tsarist times suggests that, of all supposedly Marxist / socialist organisations, the WSWS.org writers forget recent Soviet and Russian history.
What Bevin omits to mention is that Trotsky's belief that socialist revolution in one country will not succeed unless it spreads to other nations has been turned on its head by the West's use of "Color Revolution" tactics to instigate rebellion and overthrow of socialist or near-socialist governments.
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Nov 5 2023 23:04 utc | 55
Ahenobarbus @ 10, Bevin @ 22:
I originally posted my comment @ 54 with an extra observation about the neocons and the Iranian organisation MEK but it wasn't accepted ... very strange!
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Nov 5 2023 23:07 utc | 56
Anyway, something I never articulated here was that I knew when Nutty Yahoo gained power with his cohorts, shit would happen. And it is. I've looked at maps. Erdogan did the same lately. Israel has systematically acquired more territory since the fucked up Balfour agreement. They won't ever be happy. Even if they took the whole Middle East.
Posted by: Immaculate deception | Nov 5 2023 23:08 utc | 57
Tooze's piece states the Israeli predicament very well:
1. The continued ethnic cleansing of Gaza will decimate the Israeli high-tech and high value-added sectors as critical staff are drafted and foreign companies pull back from a country which is increasingly becoming toxic for their brands.
2. The much greater birth rate of the ultra-orthodox Jews, many of whom do not work and all of whom do not receive a modern education, will both undermine the high value-added parts of the economy and change the political dynamics in Israel toward an adoption of religious laws - an Israeli "Caliphate"
3. The Israeli's had become more and more dependent upon cheap Palestinian labour, which may no longer be an option.
4. 1 & 2 will accelerate a self-feeding process of the "best and the brightest" leaving for better climes.
The GDP negative affects quoted by Tooze may very well be significant underestimates. Wether Israel "wins" or not in Gaza it is on a long term path of decline at the same time as its Western sponsors' relative power is also declining.
Earlier cultures here left pyramids and other works. What will we leave?
Posted by: Immaculate deception | Nov 5 2023 23:35 utc | 59
Posted by: SG | Nov 5 2023 21:49 utc | 43
Thank you. Though I have a niggle (because I always do!): is it not the case that much of the Chinese growth was facilitated by Western elites who to this day own large share of Chinese manufacturing? I often wonder how much the seeming division between East and West isn't a mirage.
Indeed, there are those who say that multipolarity is such a mirage. I am insufficiently informed to know one way or another but the way the world moved into lock-downs (never before done) in virtual lock-step has made me now suspect a globalist scheme is in effect and thus also the current seeming geopolitical bifurcation.
I like your history of the US. My impression is that it was an extension of Europe without crowded living conditions, stifling class systems and red tape. So it was Europe unleashed with tons of real estate to explore, develop and expand into. Boom times. (And screw the natives!) Those days were over soon after WWII so growth came from other technology-based and financing sources which have become harder to come by.
China similarly, though a densely populated old civilization, has enjoyed a modernization boom, but that too will soon be over so they plan to fuel growth by making the whole developed world one giant BRI system with China at the center. There might be resistance; or massive corruption. Centralization attracts corrupt elements to infiltrate and take over, leveraging small numbers into far-reaching influence and wealth – as in the now declining US.
Posted by: Roger | Nov 5 2023 22:24 utc | 48This article Western Left and the US-China Contradiction sums up the problem with the Western Trotskyist Left (e.g. World Socialist Web Site or Novara Media) so well:
Their position amounts in effect to saying: I have my notion of how a socialist society should behave (which is an idealised notion), and if China’s behaviour in some respects differs from my notion, then ipso facto China cannot be socialist and hence must be capitalist.
A bunch of mostly upper middle class intellectual masturbators imagining what a "perfect" socialism would be and rejecting any actual existing socialism because it does not meet their ridiculous standard. The enemies of real change.
I never much read about leftist movements, though spending time here has made me more aware of them. Both paragraphs from your post pasted in above summarize my main early impression of the topic.
Terms like 'communism' and 'capitalism' should be retired. They may have been clarifying during their era but calling Russia and China, which went full communist and came out the other side something extremely different, either communist, socialist or capitalist falls far short. Civilization State fits much better – and is far more interesting.
Also, my admittedly ill-informed impression of Trotsky is that one of his priorities was to eliminate nation states and thus any sort of nationalism. But Stalin realized he couldn't fight the Germans without patriotism and sacrifice so had to abandon such ideological fixations to foster national solidarity. China, of course, is also very nationalist.
Sometimes big ideas become huge stumbling blocks. Permanent Revolution only makes sense if there is a permanent corrupt regime needing to be overthrown. But once that work is done, some sort of sane, stable society needs to be established otherwise, how can one bring one's children up into any sort of transmissible culture? This is common sense. Too often impassioned intellectuals really do lose the plot.
It seems to me there are now two main axes:
1. Civilization States
2. Global systems aka universally applied ideologies aka totalitarian techno-feudalism.
It remains to be seen how things will shake out given all polities have elements of both.
It remains to be seen how things will shake out given all polities have elements of both.
edited:
It remains to be seen how things will shake out given all the major players have elements of both.
"Psycho-social disorder". A little ditty I came up with years ago.
Posted by: Immaculate deception | Nov 6 2023 0:24 utc | 63
File this under the thickest file you've got: the one labeled "You Can't Make this Shit Up"
"The Australian Government has recently introduced in Parliament a new law proposal to ban officially unapproved online content. Digital companies are expected to adopt a code of conduct which will see them censor speech based on broad, vague and far-reaching directives.
"The Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023 foreshadows the imposition of a legal obligation on digital platforms to police alleged ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’. If that does not work, the law proposal provides for the full empowerment of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to directly intervene for the purpose of preventing ‘harm’.
"Section 2 of the proposed legislation defines ‘harm’ as follows:
(a) hatred against a group in Australian society on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion or physical or mental disability;
(b) disruption of public order or society in Australia;
(c) harm to the integrity of Australian democratic processes or of Commonwealth, State, Territory or local government institutions;
(d) harm to the health of Australians;
(e) harm to the Australian environment;
(f) economic or financial harm to Australians, the Australian economy or a sector of the Australian economy.
"The concept of ‘harm’ peddled by the bill is illusory, and its content would be subjectively determined by a powerful government agency. The definition of what is and what isn’t harm is malleable and can expand and contract depending on ACMA’s prevailing views. Ultimately, any type of speech with which the government is uncomfortable could be deemed ‘harmful’. For example, describing “disrupting social order” as serious harm could be interpreted to stop the organization of legitimate political protests. This could certainly be used to suppress legitimate political speech that should be part of a functioning democracy.
"Above all, ACMA would gain sweeping powers to require any person to appear at a time and place of its choosing to answer questions about misinformation or disinformation. These powers include infringement notices, remedial directions, injunctions and civil penalties, including fines of up to AU$550,000 (US$358,000) for individuals and AU$2.75 million for corporations. Criminal penalties, including imprisonment, may also apply in cases of alleged “extreme harm.”
"The provisions found in this law proposal put the communications and lives of free-thinkers, human rights defenders, independent journalists, and ordinary citizens under constant risk. They go in direct opposition to international human rights experts’ advice that “general prohibitions on the dissemination of information based on vague and ambiguous ideas, including ‘false news’ or ‘non-objective information’, are incompatible with international standards for restrictions on freedom of expression… and should be abolished.”
"It is noteworthy that the Australian Government is exempted from the proposed legislation. Hence, the content issued by the government is never to be considered ‘misinformation’ but criticisms of the government by ordinary citizens can. It is certainly ironic that views incompatible with the government’s preferred narrative could be deemed to ‘harm’ the integrity of Australia’s democracy since it would disallow speech and expressive conduct that is integral to the maintenance of democratic processes...."
And here's another from the Mother Country!
"The UK is considering adopting a new definition of “extremism” that includes anyone who “undermines” British institutions or values, The Guardian reported on Saturday, citing internal government documents.
“Extremism is the promotion or advancement of any ideology which aims to overturn or undermine the UK’s system of parliamentary democracy, its institutions and values,” reads the new definition, reportedly drafted as part of a national counterextremism plan announced by cabinet minister Michael Gove’s Department for Leveling Up, Housing and Communities earlier this year.
"The source documents, marked “official – sensitive,” trumpet its potential to “frame a new, unified response to extremism.” The lack of public debate or consultation regarding the new definition has worried activists, who fear it will effectively criminalize dissent...."
Posted by: bevin | Nov 6 2023 0:56 utc | 64
Earlier cultures here left pyramids and other works. What will we leave?
Posted by: Immaculate deception | Nov 5 2023 23:35 utc | 58
What we will leave will glow in the dark for 10,000 years.
Posted by: Jerr | Nov 6 2023 1:01 utc | 65
Refinnejenna@54
The idea that the Revolution needed to spread to survive was one Trotsky shared, but it was common to the Party as a whole.
It was axiomatic that a peasant country like Russia, devastated by war and unable to get assistance to rebuild the economy from any country unless there was a revolution (in Germany? The UK? or anywhere in western europe) needed that revolution.
Trotsky's idea of Permanent Revolution, developed by Parvus and derived from Marx was somethinbg else.
But you are right about the inspiration for the Colour Revolutions (so crucial in the neo-con handbook) being another deformed, bastard child issuing from the rape of communism by imperialism.
Posted by: bevin | Nov 6 2023 1:04 utc | 66
Ed@42
I used the term 'left communist' to denote the original Trotskyists in the West. I was not talking about left wingers within the CP (anti Eurocommunism I imagine.)
Have you read Losurdo on Stalin? It is very good as is most of his work (all probably).
By the way I was once a 'fellow traveller' indeed- I even attended meetings at the Red Dean (Hewlett Johnson's) house in Canterbury Cathedral close. I didn't know then that he was part of the audience at that famous Minneapolis House Party at which Leadbelly sang and from which an LP came- evidently you can hear the Red Dean singing in the choruses-that's religious training for you.
I even flirted with DeLeon in my teens too!
Posted by: bevin | Nov 6 2023 1:15 utc | 67
Posted by: Scorpion | Nov 5 2023 19:59 utc | 32
I couldn't disagree more with your condescending patronizing post. Managerialism cannot be disentangled from the advent of a particular type of corporate capitalism. It is neoliberalism's modus operandi. Managers are not well-meaning dupes; they are cadres selected precisely for their compliance to the power structure. You are naively trying to exculpate middle management, but they execute the misery, often with an enthusiasm that exceeds their brief. This is because there is structural dependence: there are not elites (evil) and managers (poor functionaries), there are bosses who select yes-men as a reward for demonstrated loyalty.
Posted by: Patroklos | Nov 6 2023 1:43 utc | 68
WaPo "lifts the veil" on CIA involvement in Ukraine since 2014 (yeh, right. just since 2014)
Though the CIA denies it is involved directly in kill-capture missions, it is doing the same things it did under Phoenix in helping Ukrainian intelligence operatives to collate and organize intelligence and to create blacklists and may be giving direct orders.Civilian officials considered to be Russian collaborators or propagandists are on the blacklists. In a new twist, the CIA and SBU have made the death lists publicly accessible on the Myrotvorets website, which advertises itself as being run out of Langley.
Related (paywalled at Executive Intelligence Review): https://archive.ph/LG6kX
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Nov 6 2023 1:45 utc | 69
Terms like 'communism' and 'capitalism' should be retired. They may have been clarifying during their era but calling Russia and China, which went full communist and came out the other side something extremely different, either communist, socialist or capitalist falls far short. Civilization State fits much better – and is far more interesting.
It seems to me there are now two main axes:
1. Civilization States
2. Global systems aka universally applied ideologies aka totalitarian techno-feudalism.
Posted by: Scorpion | Nov 6 2023 0:18 utc | 60
----------------------------------------------------------------
When we Marxist talk about Socialism, Communism, and Capitalism, we are talking about economic systems. The economic system determines the social Class Content of the nation or state in question. The world has only known five economic systems during its short history of humanity.
1). Primitive communism for which we know little about, but we do know that hunters and gatherers required cooperation in obtaining their life sustaining foods and nourishments, and a system of distribution satisfactory for the tribe or clan would also require cooperation.
2). Slavery (in its various forms) is a product of the accumulation surplus wealth above that which is required by the old clan systems to survive. This surplus wealth, including slaves, became the property of the armed leaders and heads of states that would emerge from slavery.
3). Feudalism which emerged out of the struggle against slavery.
4). Capitalism which emerged out of the struggle against Feudalism.
5). Socialism, which is still emerging out of the struggle against capitalism.
All of these economic systems had a long historical life span and went through many changes during their historical life spans. Except for primitive communism, each was composed of a dominant ruling class(es) with the power to hold down the opposing classes who were oppressed and exploited by the dominant ruling class, or classes.
It has been assumed by some Marxist that Communism will emerge out of Socialism over a period of time as the element of capitalism within socialism (because socialism is a process) becomes unnecessary and disappear and the oppressive apparatus of the state will wither away and disappear, leaving on the need for an administration of things. Others suggest that the terms Socialism and Communism are interchangeable terms.
The terms that you presented "Civilization States" and "Global systems aka universally applied ideologies aka totalitarian techno-feudalism" are devoid of economic content, and as such is nothing but babble. It may well apply to forms of existence by future nations or states, or even a one world government, but it says nothing regarding the trajectory of economic systems until you provide it with an economic content, then we can consider it, and all become Scorpions, rather than Marxist.
Posted by: Ed | Nov 6 2023 1:48 utc | 70
Posted by: Scorpion | Nov 5 2023 19:59 utc | 32
This was precisely Conrad's point in Heart of Darkness: each manager represents a iteration of the structural logic of Capital's inexorable, contradictory, imperial logic. Kurtz was not an anomaly, rather he and all the other Kurtzes were the system functioning perfectly in its dysfunctional rapacity.
Posted by: Patroklos | Nov 6 2023 1:51 utc | 71
Posted by: bevin | Nov 6 2023 1:15 utc | 66
-----------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for responding, I suspected that you were a fellow traveler, I was just surprised with your Trotskyists background. By the way, I love Leadbelly, he is a national treasure like Woodie.
Posted by: Ed | Nov 6 2023 1:53 utc | 72
Posted by: Ed | Nov 6 2023 1:53 utc | 71
Don't forget Pete Seeger.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Nov 6 2023 1:55 utc | 73
Don't forget Pete Seeger.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Nov 6 2023 1:55 utc | 72
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of course, who could forget Pete Seeger? When I was a child, we sang his songs in class. Can you imagine that today?
Posted by: Ed | Nov 6 2023 2:00 utc | 74
Posted by: Ed | Nov 6 2023 1:48 utc | 69
Agree with much of your post, but I have my disagreements with the close adoption of the Marxist distinctions. Marx himself struggled a lot to come up with final definitions about aspects of the economic systems. His use of the term "Asiatic mode of production" to describe the absolute monarchies of the Byzantine empire or the oriental states reveals his ignorance of such parts of history and his inability to classify them in his categorization. Not to mention the fact that feudalism did NOT involve a struggle against the mass-slave-ownership system that existed previously, but included that too.
Much of that has to do with the lack of available material on such historical subjects or the insufficient study of the past societies. I guarantee you that Marx would be surprised (and have his curiosity picked) had he learned that the first recorded labour strike took place in ancient Egypt, close to the beginning of the 1st millenium BC, as this was considered to be the archetypal slave-owning society with most of the labour undertaken by slaves.
Posted by: Constantine | Nov 6 2023 2:03 utc | 75
@ Pacifica Advocate | Nov 5 2023 20:57 utc | 40
thanks! i am sort of sorry i asked, but i do appreciate all the input from everyone.. it worked and i read the nyt article.. it was indeed not worth it! glad i don't pay for that crap..
----------------
the marxist stuff is really a hit with some of the folks at moa.. i plead ignorance on it all and don't seem to have the appetite for any of it either.. not sure why.. i imagine it is like classical music according to the hotie totie folks about what is or isn't the best classical music.. i find just listening enough and skip with the talk around it, lol... is that a fair parallel with marxism? probably not..
Posted by: james | Nov 6 2023 2:41 utc | 76
james | Nov 6 2023 2:41 utc | 75
I tend to look at the multi-polar multi-ethnic world and see how different models with socists aspects are used depending on culture. I have come to look at anything that is not ideological capitalism nor ideological communism as socialism.
All too many have the tendency to believe in one socialism fits all. To me a balanced society, like a balanced diet will have aspects of communism and aspects of capitalism and that is what I call socialism.
China coined the term Communism with Chinese characteristics. I look at the likes of NK and Cuba and see the same. They have characteristics that works for them according to their cultures. Russia has seen both worlds communist and capitalist at their extremes. Since Putin came to power, Russia has reintroduced many aspect of socialism. Socialism that suits Russian culture. Socialism with Russian characteristics.
To me, there is no one size fits all.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 6 2023 2:54 utc | 77
Posted by: Constantine | Nov 6 2023 2:03 utc | 74
------------------------------------------------------------------
Constantine, I do not disagree with your disagreements with my post. The thing about a post on a site like MoA is that they must be kept to a minimum, very hard to do considering the subject matter. But I learned something new from your comment and I am sure that Marx would indeed be "surprised to learn that the first recorded labour strike took place in ancient Egypt, close to the beginning of the 1st millenium BC," as I am too. Thank you for that information, it will be noted.
One of the things I would have liked to have pointed out to Scorpion is that I was only calling out the dominant economic systems. But all of these systems contained elements of other economic systems. A good example is Chattel Slavery in the USA, even as the USA was predominantly Capitalist and Mercantilism.
Also, Marx had almost nothing to say about what Socialism would or should look like. The only notable exception was in his letter to the SDAP in 1875: The Critique of the Gotha Program where he discussed "ideas" about the dictatorship of the proletariat (that is rule by the majority working class), and the period of transition from capitalism to communism, proletarian internationalism, and the party of the working class. All purely speculation on his part.
Posted by: Ed | Nov 6 2023 2:58 utc | 78
Posted by: james | Nov 6 2023 2:41 utc | 75
---------------------------------------------------------
Doesn't sound like James.
Posted by: Ed | Nov 6 2023 3:07 utc | 79
Posted by: james | Nov 6 2023 2:41 utc | 75
---------------------------------------------------------
Doesn't sound like James.
Posted by: Ed | Nov 6 2023 3:07 utc | 78
——
——
Sounds like real James to me.
Posted by: malenkov | Nov 6 2023 3:22 utc | 80
@ Patroklos | Nov 6 2023 1:43 utc | 67
re middle management:
You nailed it. Certainly in my experience the purpose of middle management is to pass on directives from On High, and to quash input from below.
Posted by: malenkov | Nov 6 2023 3:24 utc | 81
Sounds like real James to me.
Posted by: malenkov | Nov 6 2023 3:22 utc | 79
Yep.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 6 2023 3:30 utc | 82
@ Peter AU1 | Nov 6 2023 2:54 utc | 76 with his description of what Michael Hudson typed call mixed economies.
Mixed economies with the variants you describe have been the norm since Roman times. The key component to these mixed economies is whether finance is public or private as part of the mixed economy.
Private finance has dominated the Western mixed economies for the past 400 or so years. The private finance folk have developed social influence capabilities and ongoing control of the social narrative via wars and all the tactics we are seeing all over the world today...divide and conquer....until that doesn't work anymore.
And here we are.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 6 2023 4:34 utc | 83
@Bruised Northerner #2
The NYT knows the Americans reading it won't understand that the German Greens not only aren't really a niche Environmentalist Party (Indeed they pioneered the format with the "new left" 68er poster boy Cohn-Bendit who seemed a lot more interested in ethnically cleansing the Germans in revenge for the Holocaust than he ever did in Environmentalism he just saw the Greens as an easy mark for extreme anti-nationalism) but that the NYT loved them for their anti-environmentalist embrace of mass migration to Germany and the West (Both from a direct consumption perspective and from the perspective of creating inter-ethnic political conflict a major force in Germany, ruining the opening for environmentalism in ethnically-homogeneous Northern European countries that prevailed prior to the 80s.) and general identity politics.
We all know their new-found problem with the Greens is their being the most prominent voices of sanity on Gaza. (They might pick up a lot more votes in Germany if their support for the Palestinians right to their native soil was something they endorsed for Germans)
It also ignores for it's readers that in a proportional representation system a party need not be anything other than narrowly focused. But as I often note in the Britsh and American media, they always try not to educate their audiences on how voting is done in literally every other country.
There is a strong reassessment of "wokeness" now that Israel is being scrutinised under it's doctrines. Bari Weiss was the first to raise the issue, also in the NYT when she resigned from her plush job there to vaguely protest "wokeness" and got a very strangely warm reception in the media and allowed one last moment on the soapbox of it. In reality the only politics Weiss holds dear is her deranged Zionism.
Posted by: Altai | Nov 6 2023 4:43 utc | 84
@ Peter AU1 | Nov 6 2023 2:54 utc | 76
thanks peter... a mix of communism and capitalism in the form of socialism is my own take on the best way forward as well.. i don't understand marxism.. i haven't studied it.. it seems like getting lost in some utopian ideal or something.. the holy grail of a certain type of philosophy.. maybe it could work, but i think something that is non exploitative and can't be exploited would be the way to go.. maybe marxism is it, but i don't know enough to comment.. as for socialism - the public health system in canada would be a fine example of it, but i see this being encroached upon by capitalism at present.. it is like trying to get two parents to live together in harmony, as opposed to one dominating the other... i think russia and china are trying to do that. i wish them success, even if i am wrong on that analogy..
@ Ed | Nov 6 2023 3:07 utc | 78
a hint.. certain things about my posting style are not the same as the fake james.. it appears malenkov and peter au have figured it out, but not you yet! here is a hybrid of indian classical music with some elements of jazz - a friend sent me earlier today.. for those unfamiliar with the tiny desk concerts, you might enjoy this and get to see your favourite artists in an unusual setting..
hug for 20 seconds minimum.. apparently that is something my wife found out about recently.. you get the healing power of hugging this way, but it can't be less then 20 seconds..
Posted by: james | Nov 6 2023 4:44 utc | 85
@ james | Nov 6 2023 4:44 utc | 84 about the hugging thing.
You are hugging on the heart side, correct?
Barfly poll...which side do you hug on?
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 6 2023 5:05 utc | 86
Posted by: Tom3 | Nov 5 2023 19:42 utc
"I agree 100% with Paroklos. His description applies not only to politicians and the media "people" but to most universities in Western Europe nowadays."
... and to ALL universities in Australia. Any differences merely amount to a matter of the scale and extent to which this poisonous culture infests these institutions.
Posted by: General Factotum | Nov 6 2023 5:27 utc | 87
@ psychohistorian | Nov 6 2023 5:05 utc | 85
i hadn't thought of that, but as it happens - straight on, so yes.. thanks..
Posted by: james | Nov 6 2023 5:30 utc | 88
psychohistorian | Nov 6 2023 4:34 utc | 82
The monopoly of finance by the private sector... extreme capitalism.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 6 2023 5:41 utc | 89
As threatened, I've parsed some of the Znanie Society's Knowledge Marathon into an article, "Patrushev, Likhachev, Zakharova, and Others at the Knowledge Marathon". For those wanting to see much more than I provided (although this link's there too), Marathon event listings are at that link.
Posted by: General Factotum | Nov 6 2023 5:27 utc | 86
God yes. The university manager is the enemy of education and research.
Posted by: Patroklos | Nov 6 2023 5:46 utc | 91
>>> Posted by: Ed | Nov 5 2023 22:03 utc | 45
Stalin & the USSR won the war, but at such a great price that it’s unsurprising they lost the ensuing “peace,” which was quickly pushed into a lingering Cold War that was essentially a continuation of WWII by other means. The USSR was placed, along with China, under a withering sanctions regime that crippled both countries’ economic and social recovery from the active phase of WWII for generations. That’s the main reason why Washington and London (and Israel) place so much faith in the power of sanctions today, even though it’s clear they don’t work as claimed: because for pretty much the entire 20th Century they **DID** work, and rather well.
What is different today are two important changes that took place in the late 20th C:
A) Western oligarchs, thinking they had the ideological war against the Left fully conquered and subjugated, pushed Globalization. Now those Oligarchs are panicking as they discover Marxian thought to be stronger and more precisely scientific (I.e: inarguably more accurate and realistic) than anything propagandized by them as an alternative, and
B) IT and the Internet, which has sped up and de-centralized the spread of information to the point that we can now receive personalized, multimedia updates from places literally on the other side of the globe (Ukraine, Palestine, China, Africa) in near real-time.
Globalization and IT have entirely changed the structure of commerce making it much easier for countries under sanctions embargo to counter propaganda threats that might persuade local civilians to revolt against native leftist governments based upon perceived “incompetence” or ideological inferiority.
That simply wasn’t true back in the post-WWII era. Thus we get the Purges in the Soviet Union, and the Cultural Revolution in China—and I say that not as someone who fully accepts the typical Western slasher-film nonsense taught as “history” regarding those events, but rather sees them as more of a mixed bag of clearly justifiable positive and less-justifiable negative effects. My point is that such extreme policies were required because of the Western economic and ideological onslaught—strictly violent, colonialist, and imperialist in nature—that was (and still is) so steadily and fiercely directed against those counties.
Globalism brought a slight easing of the violence, for a bit, and has been laudably, heroically exploited by Continental Asia to erode the Western hegemony—but that region could not maintain their current independence without IT and The Internet.
So: won the hot war, lost the Cold War, but now are winning the Cold War II by slowly-but-surely dismantling the ideological foundations on which Wester colonial imperialism has been built.
The Walls Came Down, 1983
https://youtu.be/8EyqFM02mtc?si=txI03USFuPWFThs0
I don’t think there are any Russians
and there ain’t no Yanks
just corporate criminals
playin’ with tanks
Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | Nov 6 2023 6:06 utc | 92
>>> Globalism brought a slight easing of the violence, for a bit…
Note: Against Russia and China; certainly this is not true in the Global South and much of Eastern Europe, where the US sharply ramped up its ideological, economic, and military violence.
Posted by: Pacifica Advocate | Nov 6 2023 6:11 utc | 93
Pacifica Advocate | Nov 6 2023 6:06 utc | 91
well said. succinct yet still accurate overall. I wish I could sum up my longterm knowledge and thoughts that well.
Posted by: Lavrov's Dog | Nov 6 2023 6:44 utc | 94
In response to
"
The monopoly of finance by the private sector... extreme capitalism.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Nov 6 2023 5:41 utc | 88
"
You are scratching an itch here, sir.
Capitalism, socialism, communism, Marxism, Catholicism, etc. are all mythical concepts that have never existed in reality and never will...they are concepts we share views about the details of. They are not the reality of global private finance, US Fed, City of London Corp, BIS, Wall Street/Shadow finance, IMF, World Bank, Pope Frank, King Chuck......the God Of Mammon cult
Like the sex thing Peter, there cannot exist a slightly pregnant (private) utility of finance......public or pregnant with exceptionalism.....another of those ism things we talk about that applies here, IMO.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 6 2023 7:07 utc | 95
You should see the types that run schools. I can’t wrap my head around _why_ they act “often with an enthusiasm that exceeds their brief”?
Posted by: Rae | Nov 6 2023 7:35 utc | 96
For last two days I cannot access RT.com from a U.S. server. After a while I get the message that server (meaning rt) stop responding. Anybody knows what’s happening?
Posted by: RB | Nov 6 2023 8:33 utc | 97
the anti-human agenda
They’ve outlined their plan for the GR & it’s an insane dystopian nightmare of enforced passivity, medical & climate tyranny.
15-minute cities.
Little or no access to wild spaces.
Strictly monitored & limited travel.
Little to no real meat or dairy.
https://off-guardian.org/2023/11/06/the-anti-human-agenda-twitter-x-thread/
Posted by: ld | Nov 6 2023 12:42 utc | 99
Posted by: psychohistorian | Nov 6 2023 7:07 utc | 94
"Capitalism [is] a mythical concept that [has] never existed in reality and never will..."So said the Slave Masters of ancient days. Neither could the Feudal Kings and Lords during the medieval days imagine that Mercantilism would lead to global private finance, the IMF, World Bank, the Petro Dollar, production of goods and agriculture sufficient to feed eight billion human beings, international consumerism, and its consequences of climate change and pollution due to overproduction. No one back then could imagine war technology sufficient to destroy the whole planet, yet here we are flirting with that very possibility today.
It is true, some people can never see past the end of their nose. Thay can't understand the necessity for change as a dialectal process (in fact they can't even understand the dialectics) that must and will happen: It may be blocked for a time, reversed, slowed down. and otherwise misdirected, but unless the antagonisms between the haves and the have nots are somehow resolved, the process of change will continue, this is especially true as our resources become diminished.
Even when class antagonisms are resolved the iron law dialectics continues in social relations will continue. Why? Because change is the only constant.
Posted by: Ed | Nov 6 2023 15:02 utc | 100
The comments to this entry are closed.
As it says above: "Use as open (not Ukraine or Palestine related) thread ..."
Posted by: b | Nov 5 2023 13:56 utc | 1