For the full record.
Arthur Dent deliberately set out to wreck this site early in 2016 and considering it was on life support at the time this was easily achieved.
Actually Arthur had for over 4 decades conducted himself in exactly the same manner over numerous projects that (with a couple of exceptions) inevitably drew in fewer people on more or less each round. I may get around to demonstrating the ‘when and how’ of this, but I can’t do so now but it’s important that such conduct be documented for when the next upsurge causes revolutionary youth to research what went wrong with past efforts. It ought to interest people who eventually land on the open honest and above-board square, after they discover how important revolutionary democracy really is and how serious some very few Australian self-declared Marxist-Maoist were about it.
The reason that I have kept posting to this ‘dead’ site is simply to keap a public record ‘diary’ of my thinking. It’s to hold myself to account. All the old blogs like this site have by now moved on and most did so many years ago. The trend has been for many years to VLOG. But that discussion and development slipped by as we few theoreticians stuck to the task of producing theory fit for our times. This was achieved best by those involved in Strange times at the previous site Lastsuperpower nevertheless it then continued at Strangetimes.
‘We’ older comrades probably have one last significant contribution to make based on an ongoing exposure of the pseudo-left and a restating of democratic revolutionary credentials that have currently vanished from the public space thus leaving the field open to all the green/woke/peace-nick poison that the disinterested masses incorrectly take to be the loony left. They may be loony but there is nothing left about these mostly feeble-minded forces.
Our failure was not in concluding that we had entered an unusual period where theory was primary, but in not then realising that when we did get the new theory it had to go back into practice! This is particularly startling over the Iraq issue where our correct theory of ‘Drain the swamp and there will be no more mosquitoes.’ is now hardly noticed. Since Hitchens died it’s almost vanished from the public discourse. The idiot view that the Iraq war was a disaster and similar to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is now common and that is what our practice ought to have been directed at as a No1 priority of all manner of practice that people ought to have immersed themselves in. Just as peoples health suffers if they don’t do some exercise so our production of more theory was and is harmed without a practice track to our work.
The current youth and older activists, right across the western world that are stirring particularly in response to the vicious actions of the Zionists in slaughtering the Palestinian people and the idiocy in response by the political forces of the ruling elites, most notably in the Anglo sphere that’s been exposed as a result, are having to rediscover all manner of issues that people who were once associated with this site and all its forerunners are in a position to make useful contributions to but are NOT making. The absence of useful ongoing practice has harmed the struggle for theory.
Theory was only ever primary till we got some useful new theory to test in practice and we regularly got that ‘some new theory’ starting decades ago!
Over the last 5 weeks ending 31 May there has been a very big uptick in the reported UAF stats re Russia; with the average daily loss of personal running at 1249! The 5 weeks prior to that saw an average of 835. People who have not noticed this are not following this war anywhere near closely enough to ‘get it’. The bottom line is that the summer fighting season is well underway, and the Russians are in all manner of trouble.
The dramatic uptick has also been apparent across all the other reported items and the failure of the northern Russian offensive has been obvious. This failure was easily predicted despite all the carry on from quite a few in the MSM and most of the usual suspects on SM platforms when it broke. The 30-50,000 Russian troop buildup on the norther border had been well reported and the attack was expected as was its failure and the price of its failure hence the uptick in stats is not any sort of departure from what reality ought to look like! We are getting the big picture delivered in the daily stats.
https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=E33161B435D127BA%21115352&ithint=file%2Cxlsx&authkey=%21AIUgFlGIk8-n1hM
Naturally ‘all the usual caveats apply’ to the DATA supplied by the UAF, but much of this is almost self-evidently happening as a result of the UAF getting up every morning in these better hunting conditions and going ‘Russian hunting’ in this more target rich environment. This is what the next level ‘new’ drone warfare that we are watching is all about. The UAF is better placed to take advantage of the new style of warfare that they are inventing! They are the best in the world at this fighting. The difference between WW1 and WW2 was revealed long before France was over-run but only to those that were paying close attention. We are now seeing the destruction of the Russian imperialist armed forces. This is the greatest gift to NATO and other western countries that could ever have been given. NATO was designed for one purpose only and that was to defeat the USSR (forget about its revolutionary past, that ended with certainty on Stalin’s death in 1953) but whatever one thinks of the revolutionary period of the Russian revolution and the creation of the USSR the ending of the USSR presented NATO with the stark enemy of Russian imperialism. What the likes of Mearsheimer thinks of as eternal great power self-interests or some such rot. IMV what we are witnessing is a nailing down of the lid on the coffin of imperialism. Unfortunately, there will be many more nails required because our ruling classes and ruling elites are such slow learners; I wrote about the non-viability of imperialism in the 21st C in about 2006 (I can’t find the article currently) and this now requires a review. I’m still of the view that it’s not viable but I have to admit that the west is being led by such appalling weak liberals in the likes of Obama, Biden etc and that’s brought on a consequent move in response from the openly anti-democrat ‘authoritarians’ and the alternates like the populists of the Trump sort who send me into headshaking that matches the woke drivel from the liberals! Good thing the West is now so powerful and that the first open aggressor that had Great Power status was the feet of clay Russian gangster regime of Vlad the Audacious Czar of all the Russians beloved by the Russian Orthodox church of course. What a great lesson for all the worlds dictators this would be, were it not for the blatant double standard of the western toleration of Zionist slaughter in pursuit of the failed imperialist undertaking of the War for Greater Israel! A 6-day war no less!
The masses can be forgiven their widespread confusion, and ‘they are all as bad as each other’ attitudes given what is being served up for all in 2023-24 and people will have to learn to walk and chew gum as they say because the next decade has all the Rumsfeld-ion problems both built in and still to surprise us.
Despite these good current results, this war will go on for quite some months more or less like this till the F-16’s start to add their effects as yet another layer. We are only 2.5 years into what I thought would take 5 to win. And I have to remind myself that I am by nature an eternal optimist.
We can be sure that the fighting will run into the US election now looming as a not so distant known known with unknown but known possible consequent subsequent ‘puzzlements’.
Leaving aside whatever we don’t know that we don’t know we ought to at least know that the current strategic focus of the war has swung to what it was ‘all about’ in the long distant first place and that is Crimea. Even if the deluded tyrant Putin mistakenly thought it was about something else and launched the war on the basis of his delusions nevertheless it has now become distilled and focused on keeping or losing control of this pivotal oblast! The other 4 constitute the required land bridge to this ‘power projection peninsular’ that requires Ukraine water and so forth to actually be viable.
I suppose we can say it was a good thing Putin did make this blunder or he may have got away with years more terrorist activity hiding behind his ‘I’m so powerful’ bluff. Right now, some of the Russian elites are having the deck chairs rearranged but that can’t help with any current offence, and it will not change where this war is going to be fought out to a finish. The southern front is NOW the focus and the UAF are slowly getting a new battlefield shaping result from their efforts.
The next 6-7 months are going to set conditions for what looks increasingly like a 2nd Trump term. The UAF must already realise they have to move mountains to ‘set the stage’ for when/if a new Trump Admin takes control and if he does not win then they are no worse off! In short prudence requires the UAF and political leadership to plan for what could be a worst-case scenario come next January!
If the UAF make good progress and Trump both comes to a 2nd term and yet still can’t see what is blatantly in US interests and goes thru with his foolish (unspecified peace initiatives that ‘will end the war in 1 day’), then the EU+ could then step up and ensure a Ukrainian victory even effectively without the US.
-if thus required as a result of a Trump US pull back (and this would amount to a betrayal of any western values-
But the US ruling elites despite their huge internal splits would not like to be seen to be on the sidelines when the European powers brought forth a Ukrainian victory and so if that looked like being the emerging case (as IMV it already does) then the US under ‘the art of the deal’ rules would most probably return to throwing US weight behind the Ukraine/European/others effort.
After all it really is ‘good for all western countries that China gets the memo that starting a war is not good for anything’. Everyone ought to feal in their bones that the pathetic west is nevertheless still powerful but grows quick when forced to fight!
I just shake my head that Biden and Trump are what is on offer for this next round and hope for a surprise to break the spell. Then I look around and see all the others and know I’m dreaming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McQ0oUfRBh4 This requires a detailed response.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA6DI5bwrq8
Joseph Lindsley – Ukraine is Showing NATO how to do NATO, in Defending the Bleeding Edge of Freedom. Interesting thinking that points to revolution. Messy stuff looking for the bigger picture. The situation is one of ‘good v evil’ and Ukraine will win because they will fight harder and pay a bigger price for victory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxwcSLAsPwo good basic undertanding that was never fooled by the Putin lie of Russian oppression see Steve Owens take on the 2013-14-15 struggle for the detail.
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=michael+shellenberger+website&mid=4BBFBD176C1642F81BEB4BBFBD176C1642F81BEB&FORM=VIRE
He’s got it, and this is why despite my thoughts from 3.5 and 4 years back Trump looks like he will win!
I’m very torn by this prospect. Ukraine will have to persuade Trump that it really is in US and his interests to see the Russians defeated. And as for the war for greater Israel well if this is what winning looks like after near 60 years.
‘Talk back to the alarmism!’ is about right
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBEc-A98acY
Jul 6, 2024
Renowned US author and analyst, Chuck Pfarrer, a former squadron leader of SEAL Team 6, explains why Russia is continuing to fail in Ukraine and is struggling to advance despite all of its recent reinvigorated efforts. Pfarrer points out the many signs that Russia has neither the strategic nor tactical ability to execute complex missions. Russia, time and again, fails to make significant headway in Ukraine and is facing increasingly hostile troops unwilling to become cannon fodder.
Pfarrer, who has advised the “full alphabet soup” of US national security agencies and is a leading figure in the analysis of the war in Ukraine, is a new special correspondent for the Kyiv Post. Here, he explains why Russia’s losses so far have been disastrous and why an abysmal summer awaits the Kremlin. Russians soon to be mobilized should not delude themselves with fantasies of victory: Like nearly all of the Russian soldiers who participated in the initial full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the newbie Russian troops will be heading straight to the meat-grinder.
After his service in the US Navy, Pfarrer served public and private sector clients as a military and counter-terrorism contractor and non-proliferation expert. Pfarrer has written extensively on counter-WMD proliferation and gray zone operations. He has written an op-ed for the New York Times and the Knight-Ridder Syndicate and has appeared as a writer and counterterrorism expert on CNN, ABC, MSNBC, Fox, CSPAN, NPR, Voice of America, Al Jazeera, Al Hurra, IPR, and America tonight.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:25 Ukraine’s secret operation in Russia
02:23 How Russia missed its best opportunity.
06:26 Which weapons does Ukraine require now?
07:49 Do the Russians realize what a bad situation they are in?
10:15 What should we expect in the coming months?
11:44 Do you think the Russians are sincere in calling for negotiations?
14:20 Thank you
More stories on our site: https://www.kyivpost.com
Our Twitter: https://twitter.com/KyivPost
Our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KyivPost
David posted the following on his new Substack
Platform Suggestions for a Bona Fide Left
DAVID MCMULLEN
JUL 06, 2024
Preamble
When a genuine left finally emerges it will have nothing in common with the present masquerade. Below I look at its position on three matters of particular importance, namely, the working class or proletarian revolution, the battle for democracy and the pressing need for economic and social development on a global scale.
Working Class Revolution
First off, we have to stand by the Marxist view that proletarian revolution is the answer to the limitations of capitalism. Its central feature is the replacement of private ownership of the means of production with social ownership and the total transformation in how we work together. This is the basis of a more human society where we thrive when others thrive.
Communism did not fail in countries such as the Soviet Union and China. It was defeated, and the primary reasons were the unfavorable starting conditions and the emergence of a reactionary ruling strata opposed to the transformation that it required.
Because of the pull of old attitudes and ways of behaving, and the fact that the old division of labor between thinking and doing can only be gradually eroded, the transition from capitalism to communism after the initial seizure of power will be an intense and protracted struggle between supporters and opponents of revolutionary change. It will be a rocky road with the prospect of serious setbacks along the way.
A society where we transform our relations in production will have a far better economy than capitalism. It will perform well in terms of motivation, information and “economic calculation”.
We need to be thinking about the development of a revolutionary movement. This means, among other things, people not forming sects, the preservation of which becomes the primary purpose. Rather, the focus has to be on developing a movement geared to eventually taking power. An important task at this stage would just be thinking about the possible circumstances in which a revolutionary movement would come to power, and how it would consolidate power and keep the economic wheels turning.
The Battle for Democracy
We have to be stalwarts in the battle for democracy and civil liberties. A radical left would find it far harder if not impossible to emerge and grow under tyranny. Here are a number of fronts where we have to take a stand.
(1) In the case of Ukraine, we should excoriate NATO for its inadequate response to Russian aggression and demand it do what is necessary to ensure a speedy defeat for the Moscow regime. This would free both Ukraine and Belarus, and weaken the forces of national chauvinism and fascism in Russia and elsewhere.
(2) We should call for the establishment of a Palestinian state under UN auspices. A UN mandated force would provide security during the transition to an elected Palestinian government. The failure of this to happen would be sheeted home to the countries obstructing it. In particular, there is the US which could veto the process in the Security Council and fail to instruct its client state in Israel to pull out of the occupied territories.
(3) Events in Palestine should remind everyone that we are overdue for a second Arab Spring. There should be an extensive exposure of the tyrannies in the region should be put under the spotlight, particularly those Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. At the same time we should be holding the western powers to account for supporting rather than undermining these regimes, and demand they prioritize democracy in their dealings with them.
(4) The same treatment should apply to the corrupt tyrants and election riggers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
(5) We have to be the strongest opponents of the “communist” tyrannies in China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos and North Korea. There is nothing “socialist” about these regimes that needs to be preserved. The only desirable outcome is free elections and for them to stop pretending to be socialist, much as we saw in eastern Europe 30 years ago. China of course is the biggest problem. Its threat to democracy in Taiwan is best deterred by the western powers ensuring a Ukraine victory and imposing serious consequences for its present invasion preparations. This regime will pose a long term threat to the prospects of democratic and proletarian revolutions.
(6) In bourgeois democracies the left has to defend democracy and civil liberties from the right and the fake left. It has to champion free speech and also counter the present toxic polarization of the population into “right” and “left” with their competing brands of lunacy.
Pressing Need for Economic and Social Development
The economic and social backwardness of quite large regions, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa, is a major problem. The higher the level of prior development the better the prospects for a successful communist revolution. The experience in Russia and China bears that out. You cannot create a society of equality when it means sharing poverty and toil, and when most people are still tied to traditional ideas.
The left in the rich bourgeois democracies would help see the emergence of a public opinion that presses government and “civil society” to adopt aid and other policies that contribute to speedy development. Included here among others would be battling kleptocracy, ensuring extensive and well chosen infrastructure investments, and removing trade barriers to imports from “the South”. Insipid “sustainable development” is not enough.
This point of view is completely at odds with “anti-capitalism” that wants to “stop capitalism”. Marxists do not want to stop capitalism because the more capitalism the more mature the conditions for proletarian revolution.
When it comes to impacts on the environment, the solution is the development of technologies that reduce them – “technofix”. “Degrowth” is an appalling idea. Fortunately support for it will always be confined to a green fringe. Although, it is a sufficient force to be quite a nuisance.
Georgia will come back into play and sooner rather than later me thinks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5fCKFL-GIk
Aug 17, 2024 ERIC.Women
As the world’s attention remains focused on Ukraine’s offensive into Russia’s Kursk region, is anyone noticing the developments in neighboring Georgia? For example, why is Russia building a naval base in Georgia’s Russian-occupied region of Abkhazia? And why is Georgia passing legislative initiatives that eerily resemble those adopted by Russia a decade ago?
Join@EuroResilience host Sergej Sumlenny as he invites Natia Seskuria to discuss Georgia’s pressing security challenges, Armenia’s withdrawal from the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the growing influence of Türkiye and China in the Black Sea region. Natia Seskuria is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute@RusiOrg and the founder of the Regional Institute for Security Studies (RISS), a Tbilisi-based think tank & official partner of RUSI.
The @EuroResilienceis a video podcast of the European Resilience Initiative Center. Learn more about ERIC: https://european-resilience.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHyPRnrLnzA
Rowan Atkinson JUST OBLITERATED The UK Government “He Refuses To Listen”
Really? Mr. Rowan Atkinson has Just Obliterated the UK government with a speech he delivered over a decade ago?
http://reformsection5.org.uk/2012/10/rowan-atkinson-rs5-video-goes-viral/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh9wYKACR0c
Premiered Aug 25, 2022 TRIGGERnometry – NEW episodes every Sunday and Wednesday 2 pm ET/7 pm UK
💥Join us on our Journey to 1 Million Subscribers💥 SPONSORED BY: Ridge Wallet Use Code “TRIGGER” for 10% off your order at https://www.ridge.com/TRIGGER
Harry Miller is a former police officer and CEO of the Bad Law Project and Fair Cop, organisations that aim to depoliticise democratic institutions, and support those facing discrimination for their political beliefs. Miller appeared on TRIGGERnometry in January 2020 after he was investigated by police over a poem that he’d posted on Twitter. The police officer told Miller, “I need to check your thinking.”
Who is in favour of police being stupid?
What I object to is the Crossroads News video. It is just a lying piece of shit.
1. It claims that this happened 1 hour ago. Reality was it happened 12 years ago
2. It claims that the UK is getting worse in corruption. Reality is that 3 months ago a thoroughly corrupt government was voted out of power
3. It mentions 2 tier policing. Reality is this is a dog whistle to the racist idea that the police have policy of treating people of colour well and white people poorly.
4. The video claims that people are rebelling against the government’s policies on immigration. Reality is that the Rowan Atkinson speech had nothing to do with immigration.
An interesting exposure of a pro-Russian US soldier now fighting with the Russians https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbj1-HAZta4
Steve Owens has pointed out above that one of these ‘Diary entries’ is a bit shady, in that it’s 12 years old and click bait style or worse; well people can see for themselves in the comments to it that others were quick to point this out. I was just storing it here for reference and content not recommending the site or any current implications other than it is the same problem I have been interested in for over 30 years!
Anyway, nice to hear from Steve and with Ukraine now 2.5 years into what I originally thought would take 5years at best (before I later got swept up in the very good progress and became more optimistic only to be sadly disappointed). And with this fight confusing such a lot of people both self-described as left, right and centrist, it may be a good time to see make our speculative predictions to then see what stands up in say 3 years time? I wonder how Steve thinks the war for the independence of Ukraine is going? Or he may prefer to speculate on the struggle for the revolutionary spread of democracy against the interests of the gangster ‘owning classes’ still rampant in that part of the world. He may wish to consider the improvement in the peoples fight for democracy now so apparent if one compares Ukraine 2012 when Rowan Atkinson was speaking above to Russia and contrasting the current comparison. How goes the struggle for more democracy and less gangsterism? What of the previous worries about the thinking of Russian nationalists? How is that working out? Much to think through! Where are the well-informed thinkers to be found? Who are the current standard bearers for progress in any of these 3 great fields? How goes the war for greater Israel? I wonder what Steve has been finding in his travels.
Well, I have to tell you that all my life I have seen people who are in favor of police being stupid! Nobody would say so, but to paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies they wouldn’t say that now would they. There are 2 sides to this dispute, and it looks to me Steve stands where he sits. A bit of a ring tone to this when 12 years on the issue is getting worse NOT better! BTW I don’t think they were trying to fool people after all they first showed a pic of an older Rowan A and then they played the old clip, and I think they have a point that you are going out of your way to mis in the big picture for the small issue niceties.
This ‘crime report’ issue is what it’s like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0wC7c9Sywk
Having not been in the UK for 40 years I don’t have much of a grasp on their free speech arguments. They seem to have their share of ludicrous moments from people being booked for praying near an abortion clinic to journalists being illegally arrested at Stop Oil demo’s.
Here in Australia some state governments have recently banned Nazi salutes which I find grotesque and I don’t support this piece of idiocy at all.
Yes I support the right of all Nazis to raise their arms stiffly without police intervention.
I should take this moment to thank you because it was you who put the argument to me about radicalism and to embrace radicalism one must embrace a commitment to defending civil rights. Since being turned on to radicalism I was involved in the campaign to free Tim Anderson, the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, the campaign against the not guilty decision for 2 men who almost bashed a man to death in Veale Gardens, the Campaign to drop the charges against the Auststudy 5 and the campaign to Free Julian Assange. My efforts in all these civil liberty cases was small but something I am proud of.
Just on the Auststudy 5 the police took 2 years to take Mr. Armstrong to trial while they had video evidence of his innocence which I think amplifies a point Rowan Atkinson made that the punishment is in the process rather than the outcome.
Currently I am not involved in any civil rights issues but I am aware that the state government here in South Australia has recently passed anti protest laws so I think a big civil rights campaign can’t be too far away.
I just thought that the most of the above civil liberty cases are well known except for the gay bashing in Veale Gardens so here is a story about it
https://www.sbs.com.au/voices/creative/out-of-sight-the-untold-story-of-adelaides-gay-hate-murders/vw9etx2cw
The demo was held outside the Attorney Generals Office. It was a most heinous case 2 young men staked out Veale Gardens. One hid while the other attracted the victim. They then set on him and beat him with a metal bar. In court they were found not guilty.
I joined the committee that organised the demo.
I don’t have any expertise in the UK freedom of speech issues. The video you posted is 4 years old and you claim is that the problem is getting worse. It seems to me that the problem was in how the police interpreted their guidelines it may be that the guidelines were the problem I don’t know. But I do know from a cursory search that the previous government changed the guidelines so as to emphasis a person’s right to free speech rather that a person’s right to not be offended. As I said I’m pretty new to the freedom of speech issue in the UK and am happy to learn. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/police-will-prioritise-freedom-of-speech-under-new-hate-incident-guidance
My favorite commentator on UK politics is Jonothan Pye. Here’s a sample
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKAeO-5saqQ
The type of loon that you endlessly promote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23nDxPSIoAw
Jonathan Pie: The World’s End (COP26 short film with George Monbiot, Caroline Lucas & Ed Miliband)
Why you bought this shit is well beyond me.
In February/March of 1917 the Bolsheviks had a theory and the theory was to defend and extend the gains of February because Russia was not developed enough to sustain a socialist revolution. In April Lenin turned up and argued that they could have a revolution because a Russian revolution would spark a revolution in Germany. How on earth did he come to that understanding? Germany was without a revolutionary party. Germany’s leading revolutionaries were in prison. The break away leftists were led by Kautsky and Bernstein. Democratic revolution would come but in April it was 18 months away. A communist revolution would come but after claiming 180 lives it was over. Pathetic.
There is no way that basing a Russian revolution on the chance that it might spark a German one made any sense. It was fantasy. But Lenin believed this nonsense and so do you.
Russia is a democracy! Just ask President Vlad ‘the audacious’ Putin; he’s won many elections to this once 2 term position. 110 years ago 1 man made all the important decisions across ‘his’ Russian Empire. He did so by virtue of being the hereditary monarch of the Romanov dynasty. Czar Nickolas chose to go to war, and millions were then sent to their death in the ruling class bloodbath that became the Great War. How to get that rotten society past one man rule into the uplands of a recognizably genuine democracy might be considered the principal problem for those interested in the project AND wanting to stay alive in the doing. Those who pretend they are part of the project but who nevertheless only ever focus on what they believe is the errors of those that have had a red hot go at it actually expose themselves in the process of attempting to argue that Lenin was just a bad egg with no real interest in transforming our world in the direction of genuine democracy.
The chances of stopping that war -later named World War 1 when the 2nd even bigger ruling class planned mass murder was underway- a war that virtually all progressives saw coming, was zero! But as its months turned into years and the casualties rose into the tens of millions the horror of this massive slaughter called for drastic and urgent actions. All now lost sight of. This was all long after the abomination of the ruling/owning classes worldwide disgusting conduct in their various ‘colonies’ was denounced by revolutionary progressives. In the US they even tore the country asunder trying to preserve ownership of their direct human possessions, standard property rights argument really. Not for one moment forgetting there is always the objectively positive sides to consider as Marx pointed out re India. But the positive is always despite the gross intent of the owning classes!
Never mind Abe Lincoln let loose the killing and ‘the workers of the world were behind him’ yet only formal victory emerged after the that predictable but actually stupid bloodbath of reaction. To listen to the BLM crowd almost nothing has even changed now!
Nevertheless, with the US civil war in the recent past and the KKK as a major social force still as witness Birth of a Nation, the great war grew to a scale beyond comprehension and for the likes of the revolutionary Lenin presented opportunity of a Nicolae Ceaușescu type moment. One month it didn’t look like revolution and the next the leader and his wife are being stood against a wall for their crimes and shot. Revolution is both necessary in dealing with gangster societies, unpredictable in any specific way and always has unique features when it does spring forth; so it’s about the most complicated and dangerous of all human activities but without which we humans would still be up against one man tyrannies! Hmm…
The beloved by some owning classes otherwise known as the born to rule ruling classes and the oligarch classes of the early 20th Century had no interest in uniting with the hated communists in making a revolutionary advance into democracy. I think it reasonable to say that often as not they wouldn’t even give women a vote, let alone proletarians any proportional representation in most western countries and 100 years on the anglo sphere is still (NZ recently excepted) essentially two party dictatorships with no end in sight. Women’s emancipation was conceded because it would aid conservative politics! PR and suffrage were exactly the sort of basic communist demands that were always rejected and emphatically backed up with baton and bayonet and hangman’s rope! As a matter of fact even when making a bourgeois democratic revolution and riding a country of warlord thugs the class enemy could not help themselves and quickly reverted to butchering communists. 1927 China never gets a mention by the likes of our modern rabid anti Leninists bourgeois democrats like Jordan Perterson and the Steve Owens style ex trots.
I kid you not, the regime run by Vlad Putin was elected in what could only be described as a modern environment where there are opposition personalities and parties that are known across the wide world. The reality is of course that Russia is a blatant gangster society where people get thrown out of windows, gunned down, poisoned etc as and when the ‘Don’ requires. One man makes all the important decisions like whether to invade Georgia or Ukraine or level an apartment building in Moscow and blame someone else.
Steve has no idea of how to overcome this but he does know that rather than struggle with this reality he wants to point out that Lenin won the wrong way!
Since Steve was so wrong about what Vlad the honest was about to do in Ukraine on 24.2 22 why not focus on the modern elected tyrant?
I have been watching the Netflix series Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War. It concerns events in 1881 and that was as far distant from 1914 as we are from Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. The world was quite a different place in the Robber Baron era of JP Morgan and the Gunfight at OK corral.
So rather than try to make sense of Lenin and his era tell the world how to get past the current crop of mass murdering Putin types!
Marxism was theoretically tied to the idea that the working class would become a revolutionary class and that it’s political representatives would form revolutionary parties.
Bernstein a prominent Marxist theorist declared that Marx was wrong and that workers were reform minded and that their parties despite the lip-service to revolution were reformist parties. Bernstein was wrong the workers parties were not reformist they were reactionary and when in 1917 the SPD split between pro and antiwar factions Bernstein that radical leftist was a leader of the antiwar group good but hardly revolutionary.
So, in April 1917 there is only one European country with a revolutionary party, the Bolsheviks with a mere 24,000 members yet Lenin steps forward and says Russia should have a revolution not to create socialism but to spark a revolution in Germany.
Other Bolsheviks opposed Lenin and argued that they should be defending the gains of February you know overthrow of the Tzar, Universal suffrage, free speech with the prospect of a Constituent assembly and land reform. Quite impressive gains for the most backward country in Europe.
What I’m saying is if you want to correctly analyse historical events you have to analyse class forces. In October 1917 the revolutionary workers had the power to overthrow the government but the Bolsheviks with 25% popularity did not have numbers to introduce socialism. They had the cities but were almost nonexistent in the countryside in a country where the masses mainly lived in the country.
But Germany is key here. I think it is probable that the majority of workers supported the war despite the growing antiwar sentiment which never reached more than absence of support rather than active opposition at least until Germany had lost the war.
Just on the war which I agree was a massive waste the Brest/Litovsk treaty did not diminish the fighting. It allowed Germany to transfer 1 million troops for a renewed offensive in the West. It allowed for German intervention into the Finish civil war without Soviet interference and in secret parts of the treaty it allowed for German troops to be stationed on Soviet territory. It is no surprise that Lenin could never get majority support for the treaty from the Bolshevik Central Committee, and it led to the expulsion of the left Social Revolutionaries from the government.
The rest is history.
Honestly you need an editor so much of your contribution is waffle
“Russia is a democracy! Just ask President Vlad ‘the audacious’ Putin; he’s won many elections to this once 2 term position. 110 years ago 1 man made all the important decisions across ‘his’ Russian Empire.”
Or meaningless vitriol “Those who pretend they are part of the project but who nevertheless only ever focus on what they believe is the errors of those that have had a red hot go at it actually expose themselves in the process of attempting that Lenin was a bad egg with no real interest in transforming our world.”
How the fuck does India get a run “Not for one moment forgetting there is always the objectively positive sides to consider as Marx pointed out re India”
Then Nicolae Ceaușescu gets a run and on it goes.
I am trying to help you so just concentrate on the topic. The topic is was Lenin justified in arguing for a revolution on the grounds that revolution would spread to Germany. No need to talk Putin, India, Ceausescu, China in 27, Jordan Peterson, or Netflix or the gunfight at the OK corral. Just stick to Lenin, Russia and Germany that’s all I ask not every stray idea that randomly pops into your head. Rewrite your stuff and just delete stuff that is not theoretical Marxism what the people of Russia did and what the people in Germany did.
Lenin was correct and won!
Why did you get Putin so wrong in 2014-22 what have you learned apart from your anti Lenin anti communist usual simplifications and ultimately diversions.
The most important issues for you are around why you got all this stuff so wrong and yet rather than propose a realistic course forward to democracy you hide in anti communist land. You know that Russia is not a democracy now so what makes you think there was any prospect in Lenin’s day. You can’t even come up with a difference between one man rule Putin and 1914. What is to be done? Stop belly aching that I keep dragging your sorry self back to complexity and reality and try to deal with what you are being told. The world was in an unpredictably revolutionary situation and Lenin had the best handle on what to do about it! Also it is important to try to put yourself in the time and space. You don’t any more than you have shown any signs of doing so in Ukraine over the last decade.
Try to get this. Lenin was correct. You on the other hand in YOUR TIME have made blunder after blunder with zero prospect of bringing any democratic advance anywhere! Why do you think you could do better with the past when you do so badly with the present?
I think you have no intention of telling the world how you think humanity ought ‘to get past the current crop of mass murdering Putin types.’
The Bolshevik party in March 1917 had a policy of supporting the Constituent Assembly. After seizing power Lenin argued against holding elections but he lost that argument and the elections were held. Lenin had the Constituent Assembly shut down after one session.
At the time Lenin argued that the Constituent Assembly had been surpassed by the Soviets as a higher form of democracy. This seems like a reasonable argument but free elections to the Soviets were never held again. Plenty of people within the Soviets and within the Bolshevik party argued that Lenin’s opposition to free speech, his opposition to other parties, his opposition to normal democratic practices within the Bolshevik party and his opposition to workers organisations like factory committees and unions would lead to a one man dictatorship. Oh dear.
When militant sailors at Kronstadt put forward demands after they had held mass meeting was he correct to crush them rather than enter into talks as they asked. After Kronstadt was over was he correct to execute prisoners?
If Lenin was correct on everything then there is no need to think we just need to learn.
All hail Lenin he was correct he won he won because he was correct he was correct because he won all hail Lenin
There are so many things that an orthodox communist just needs to STFU and keep believing. Here’s my list.
1 Mao breaks with USSR because Khrushchev has adopted a peaceful co existence theory. 11 years latter Nixon visits China all the while still bombing Nth Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. He said “These bastards have never been bombed like they’re going to be bombed this time.” He said that was after visiting China.
2 Mao restores the Number One Capitalist roader to vice Premier the number 3 position in the party hierarchy.
3 The number 2 comrade’s plane falls out of the sky after the number one guy closes all airports in the middle of the night
4 The leadership group in the Hungarian Communist party are shot after being promised safe passage after they had led a Nazi revolution. All cool and normal.
5 Beria is arrested by a group of soldiers hiding in an adjacent room to the politburo meeting. He is placed in the boot of a car and driven away for trial as a British agent, and no one has any objection to this.
“I think you have no intention of telling the world how you think humanity ought ‘to get past the current crop of mass murdering Putin types.’”
This is a good question. I make no secret of the fact that I have made many mistakes in my assessments of what is going on in the world from thinking Putin was bluffing to thinking that prosperity in China would lead to political reform to thinking that Trump would not win a state to thinking that NATO bombing in Libya would improve the situation. Yes many, many mistakes.
I fully support Ukraine as the way most dictators are toppled is after a loss in war. I note that efforts to oppose Putin are still half measures as he still makes a ton of money pumping gas through Ukraine. The Europeans still haven’t found an alternative to this gas.
I’ve started watching that Netflix show you recommended thanks for the tip.
I have seen people who are in favor of police being stupid!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv0TW2LF_dE
Aug 30, 2024 The Dr. Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
Foundations of the West is out now on DailyWire+: https://bit.ly/3ABnIgR
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with British journalist and activist Tommy Robinson. They discuss how peaceful demonstrations have been relentlessly tarred as extremist events, how the captured media and U.K. government have colluded to oppress and silence the majority population, how multiculturalism has not failed but activist communities have, the slew of controversies levied against Tommy — and why he keeps fighting for the truth.
Tommy Robinson is a British journalist and activist who first became an establishment target after reporting on the grooming gangs in Luton. From then on, he and his family have been smeared and punished for attempting to out those who are enabling Islamic extremism.
This episode was recorded on August 16th, 2024
Watch our first episode with Tommy Robinson here: https://www.dailywire.com/episode/dw-…
Tommy Robinson is a journalist? Well then I’m the King of England. Tommy Robinson is a Fascist, a criminal and a general all round piece of shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Robinson
Jordan Peterson is a POS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO9j1SLxEd0
“In 2019 he appeared to show support for an ex-British soldier facing prosecution for the murder of Irish civilians on Bloody Sunday (1972) in Northern Ireland. Robinson wore a badge that said “I support soldiers A–Z” after “Soldier F” was set to face charges for the murder of civilians.”
For 47 years the British state covered up the murder of civil rights demonstrators. Good old Tommy is supporting the murders not criticising the cover up but upholding the real British establishment position that murdering Irish civil rights protestors is OK
But do go on and tell me how poor Tommy is being persecuted by those nasty people at you tube.
You have to laugh when Peterson complains about the video being obstructed from viewing as I read that he has 8 million subscribers and that in 3 days the video has had a million views.
Over the century since WW1 plenty with impeccable credentials and good intentions have made the anti-Lenin arguments. But so have people who have no such credentials or intent.
We know Russia went back to a one-man dictatorship and as that was where they were trying to move on from there is undoubtedly a case to answer.
But IMV the mistake in the ‘Lenin is the problem’ critique is that the Russian Empire hadn’t ‘moved on’ from where Lenin then slammed the process into reverse! Rather his actions really brought an end to WW1 and did so in as much of the remaining Russian Empire as he possibly could.
You evidently believe ‘Oh dear.’ that this common western ruling class critique of Lenin is exactly what happened and then you point to China as the other great example of the ‘anti-democratic’ problem of my lot. So, us unreconstructed Marxist-Leninists of the Maoist stripe are your arch anti-democratic enemy. How dare we talk about democracy?
Yet internationally the recent case of Nepal proves that we are serious and you as usual are hiding from the present reality with your appeals to the past. You promote your contextless crusade while hiding in plain sight your own promotion of letting anti-democratic actions stand and even giving them a fig leaf of respectability that I will return to later.
It also goes without comment or notice from you that ‘our’ national contribution to the democratic struggle stands head and shoulders above your own!
Internationally you do not point to the shining example of where your alternative works. It only exists in failure and is the usual complaint that the bad communists won when they ought to have handed over power (without all the fighting) to those who now run the shows anyhow! Rather than genuinely propose a better fight you actually complain that these long dead communists chose to fight.
I applaud their ‘choice’ that personally, in Leninist manner I look at as no real choice at all. This deadly game was being played for keeps and the alternative was always the 1927 option that the owning / ruling classes seems to me to usually have preferred in dealing with the lower classes. They resort to mass murder often enough and then hide their direct connection to the dead and blame the communists. You bought the ruling class product and have tried to make it work for you but like a boomerang it continues to return directly to you.
Bit like the vile actions in Gaza and the ongoing horror show being visited on the Palestinian people! The war for greater Israel still goes on and there is less and less prospect of fooling anyone that it is not the work of an apartheid state! Hamas is pure poison to be sure but how goes the war for greater Israel? What is to be done other than focus attention on that failed war?
To demonstrate that this anti-communist crusade of yours is your start and finish point, one only has to consider your inability to see what was going on in front of your very eyes in Ukraine back in 2014-15. Just as the ½ theorists could not deal with the Putin method of war in Syria you could not see what was to be done when such a big power as Russia moved into what you in 2014-15 really regarded as more or less Russian territory…at any rate not worth fighting about. You even reminded us of where Sevastopol ranked in Russian hero cities. In 4th place as I recall! Your focus was on the bad Ukrainians who were fighting with Russian separatist types in Odessa and so forth. Your focus was on ‘negotiations’ and there was in your view no military solution anyway!
Even with a decade of experience now behind you the stand you take is NO real change to your original position. You even call Winter on Fire – Winter white-wash – or some such denigration.
How a real revolution develops escapes you as does ruling class measures to prevent them and derail them when underway. Hence Putin’s 2021 war plans all appeared as nothing but bluff to you and not surprisingly very many other right wingers and pseudoleftists! You all lost your bearings and consequently your collective shirts. The reason you have not truly adjusted your thinking (in proper detail mind) is because you are afraid of where such an effort will lead you. So, you return to your anti-communist crusade in the belief that here you’re on firm ground. You’re not!
I have always been an independent thinker and painted as quite the opposite by the ratbags that I have had to deal with. For example, I represented the democratic side at Flinders, your side was the undemocratic thug side! Naturally I got charged with assault till it was dropped and your side united with the top ALP rat Chubb as he misused hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds towards legal actions to keep me off campus etc. The Student Association was corrupted in the ‘process’ as was the University Union as were many of the Staff of that University. All the ratbag conduct was done in plain sight and easily demonstrated for anyone open to defending a free speech and democratic stance. You played ‘blank stare’ games instead.
Having been put through the ‘process’ several times, I have to agree ‘that the punishment is very often in the process rather than the outcome.’ This was particularly notable in the case of my undoubted enemy David Hicks who was treated despicably because he was a white western male on the wrong side in a war! He committed no crime at all and yet all the bullshit was endlessly spread about him by our so-called liberal elites who were quite happy to turn their collective blind eyes and continued to do so even when they had to release him! Civil rights in war conditions are naturally where the rubber hits the road hardest of all! After all, one minute we are trying to set a trap and kill the enemy -in a totally unfair fight where possible- and the next, when they have properly surrendered, we are responsible for their care etc.
The debate that Churchill had with Dowding over the right of an airman to shoot a parachuting airman was pretty well the spear tip of this issue. As soon as that airman hits the ground in his territory the opposite airman may strafe him in fact that is his job as a standard soldier! But according to an anomaly in the current laws of war NOT in the air! In a self-evidently ludicrous manner one has to wait till he lands and then you can lawfully kill him! How about that! Dowding thought that where the enemy airman was descending into your territory and would become a POW it was impermissible to shoot whereas it was perfectly reasonable for the enemy to kill your airmen and prevent them descending to a new airplane to return to the fray as it were. I have always thought that Dowding had the sound reasoning side of this dispute irrespective of what ‘gas the lesser races’ Churchill had to say about the ‘special’ right of lords of the air when it came to being caught out in the open while parachuting to safety. James Ira Thomas Jones – Wikipedia not a ‘by definition war criminal’ at all but nevertheless an anti-Bolshevik! Killing the enemy while he is dangling all depends on where he dangles!
A confused position on killing the enemy (modern ‘law’ or not) in this manner IMV reflects an inability to deal properly with the killing issues of war generally. Time and again the anti-war type ‘peace people’ made the wrong call. Trot Steve even justified his betrayal of the Falkland Islanders and the people of Kuwait with a cost benefit analysis no less. Some manner of proportionate response ‘logic’ I suppose. A less bloody invasion in the first part than was the fight to expel the invader is supposed to be relevant. Democrats are presumably not supposed to escalate. Utter nonsense. You were on all occasions that I can recall except in the case of Libya 2011 against standing up to the fascists and the one that you did get right you now retract from. For you Putin was not a fascist, but the British journalist and activist Tommy Robinson is! Why do you scoff that he is not entitled to be presented as a ‘journalist and activist’?
Back in 2014-15 nothing could reasonably be done was your call! So, working people ought to shrug their shoulders and not unite with our ruling elites and fight the fascists. The owning class is still in the leadership roles (and will be forever in your more recent take on humanity I presume) but here it all gets a bit murky.
Once upon a time the defense industries ought not in your view be praised and expanded but rather the opposite. Now, you’re a bit wiser and the world looks a more dangerous place for Australians, so you have no objection to upping the military budget. Now you can see the merit of Australia investing more in the ADF and building a better alliance structure founded on the US link! But if you would not approve of dealing with 1991 events, what would you approve of? You’re not banging a drum about your change but it’s not something you can hide very well. Credible western military forces were never your concern but now things have changed from the days of Kuwait and ‘no blood for oil’ marching in 2003!
Obviously the fully autocratic gangster societies like Russia or China, would have just shot Hicks; but our western ‘democracies’ were thankfully hemmed in somewhat, not so much by the rule of law which they broke time and again, by keeping him where he was and for torturing him for all the years they did but in the interactions of that in a constitutional environment that has a separation of powers. What the ruling elites wanted and what they could do and get away with were two different things. They did what they could get away with for as long as they could be sure that they could get away with it. Once they were not so sure it was in their interest to keep wronging Hicks they stopped.
The grand scale of this can be seen in the current dilemma faced by my current number two world class shit Netanyahu. Once again, after events provided him conditions where he could get away with yet another mass murder of ‘the other’, he proceeded to mass murder his way into the history books.
In his book RUNNING THE WAR IN IRAQ, the late Jim Moland demonstrated how to make that desperately required war of liberation. It was fought against the obvious collection of enemies of any and all human progress that infested this part of the swamp. Given the difficult conditions of Iraq’s urban centers there was never going to be a better way forward to democracy given the size and quality of the Baathist and Islamofascist enemies involved. You of course were against the liberation of the Iraqi peoples (not even noticing what the massive role of the 20% Kurds was). Liberation also for 90% of the 60% Shia and say perhaps 80% of the 20% Sunni. That still left many thousands of enemies to fight and kill. All you could see was the bloodshed but not the destruction of the tyranny and the birth of a feeble democracy. Every year you would just scoff at the very notion that making war on that section of the Iraqi population was a revolution.
You must look back further to see how a just birthed ‘democracy’ was snuffed out by Lenin no less. All you could see from 2003 was a failed state and years of fighting in this swamp of reactionary god botherers. You present no realistic alternative but that does not concern you. Nothing to do with you!!
Consider the death toll in Syria with Assad STILL in control of his large enclave and much of the rest nothing but Russian enabled rubblestan. How has the alternative method been so much better? It has not and you know this or bloody well ought to. Who is going to predict the bigger pile of bodies and with not a communist in sight?
How is it, after all these years of election cycle after election cycle in Iraq and we still have people claiming to be of the left and thus ‘for the oppressed against the oppressor’ and yet such a revolutionary transformation from murderously undemocratic Baathist terror society to at least a society up one rung on the ladder of what the left is on about is met with a goat like bleat from western ‘rights activists’ denouncing the ‘failed’ war fought in Iraq. They even say it was the war against Iraq! Revolution anyone? Not on your nellie!
And the ‘mighty’ don’t just fall in inter-ruling-elite power struggle either. The separation of powers and the susceptibility of humans to herd type hysterias that can produce the madness of a Pell charge list AND conviction AND failure at an appeal when one of the judges spelt it ALL out for the other 2! Our Anglo world may well be better than most but is still an incredible and dangerous place for everyone involved! Where was Wally? There again Steve was supposedly unable to spot the Wally’s!
This level of looking the other way hypocrisy has been the staggering reality I have been witness to all my life. Most notably I think when it came to the war launched in 1967 for the conquest of greater Israel and less clearly in the case of the struggle for civil rights in Ireland’s northeast. There, over the decades for those paying attention, the British ruling elites had pointed the way to this ‘modern dilemma’ as it unfolded across the 60s, 70s, and 80s till the 1990s left them stark naked and the Good Friday agreement saw them finally start the short distance, slow moving ‘long trip’ home! ¼ century further on and that remains the direction of movement!
So the long struggle for basic civil rights for divided and ruled proletarian sorts is just a start to the struggle for democracy and naturally defending those rights against all who would take them away is very much part of the deal. That is where the divided routine returns. Lots of people don’t notice when it’s someone else’s rights being taken. Working people can’t have them taken away by a mugger or a planet savior any more than by a King or police thug acting for the anti-democratic parasites of the 2 party dictatorships. Yet consider the idiocy of the KASAMA type ‘maoists’ (loonatic refugees from the Bob Avakian school of full-blown delusion otherwise known as the Revolutionary Communist Party USA). When it came to dealing with pirates, they had not one clue that working men and women staffed ships. Despite their self-labeling these loons were anti-democratic to their bootstraps and functioned as just another Trot sect with almost all the trot views including a Mao got WW2 wrong line!! Sheesh.
It has long struck me that the struggle for proportional representation is central to any defense of civil rights won less they be taken back from us ungrateful proletarians.
Now it’s 2024 and the Zionist enemies, having in their depraved manner nurtured the pure poison that is HAMAS, are reduced to committing a blatant genocide that in the act of being committed under the glare of social media is so obvious that an entire life of soft headed apologism is now confronting people across the Anglo world in particular. Mearsheimer ramming ‘reality’ down their throats is a delight to watch! Switzer was visibly squirming in front of a stunned into silence audience; what joy to watch (amid such horror) as the rightists squirmed!
Revolutionary democrats -most notably Marxists like me- do not fear the realm of theory and insist that words do have meanings or if they are to change must be seen to do just that. The concept that had a word remains. A bit like women really!
So, I am always interested in uniting the many to defeat the few and am loath to see the activities of the sectarians and have shunned them for many decades.
My enemies have always included the pseudoleft who are -in no way- on about winning a democratic struggle but are about enforcing their will on me just as they do on all the faceless proletarians, they often lay claim to speak for! They are usually not insane and so they know full well they can’t win any open debate so they are reduced to thuggery. The list of these rats is very long and the misuse of the term protest is as often on their lips as democracy is on the perpetrators of the 2 party dictatorships. They all revolt me. And they do so in equal measure! They are not misguided fellow travelers. In the big picture sense, they are just as often on the wrong side of a struggle because they are not fundamentally on the side of any struggle that could animate a genuine proletarian democrat. So even garden variety rightists and leftists like Alex Epstein and Mihael Shellenberger stand head and shoulders above the reactionary Trots and ‘Commies’ that people mistake for radical leftists.
But this latest 4 decades of descent into woke thuggery and sheer stupidity is now so way beyond contempt as to be laughable. Just stop oil! Extinction rebellion. ANTIFA. Stoke the War. TDS. An explosion of the old sectarianism into the total disgrace of the current cancel culture all are but the tip of the iceberg. When the fascist Argentinian Junta invaded the Falkland Islands these lot wanted more than nothing done about it, they actually were blatant apologists even accepting the idiocy of the ‘Malvinas’ and anti-colonialism tropes.
None of them can win an argument let alone a democratic contest and so they reject the very notion that they are subject to any proletarian discipline and any truly democratic constraints. This fools me not one bit and never has.
The politics that they exude stinks and has been intellectually dishonest for so long now that they all could no more bring democracy to any table than fly to the moon.
Who brought democracy to Nepal with a population the size of Australia? The Maoists that’s who and they did so through armed struggle.
The pseudoleft engagement in the economic struggle is now most often a negative as they want to put a ‘price on carbon’. They attack the very gas of life and treat it as a pollutant!
Lenin was quite right in putting a stop to the duplicitous game playing and in pulling the empire out of WW1 He was right to get firm control of all the military formations that he could and to swiftly demonstrate that military rebellion would be stopped without delay.
I am ‘an orthodox communist’ and I don’t ‘just need to STFU and keep believing.’ I have always worked through issues independently.
1. Mao broke with the USSR because it was then run by a revisionist political party that had reversed direction and had actually reconstituted the USSR as a new Russian Empire. It had now become a state capitalism and an aggressive imperialist power. Everyone knows Mao had no time for US imperialism and stood up to it BUT he was always happy to work with one imperialism to stand up to a currently more aggressive power. 1970’s was no different to the 1940’s WW2 era. He was of course correct. Trots always opposed his actions and can never forgive this because he won! Trots, being ‘never unite with the ruling elite/class’ types, always get this ‘unite the many to defeat the few’ stuff wrong. Nothing to see here move on.
2. Mao waged an ongoing struggle against the capitalist roaders in his party and this did not mean he had found a path to eternal victory. On the contrary, the high-level theory produced in the GPCR is vital study material for those who want to make revolution. Revolutionary struggle will be needed as far into the future as we can see. That escapes our reactionary anti-communists who tend to hide behind fine words like democracy while being anything but democratic themselves. The proof of this is in what you propose to do in the case of the wars that we have disagreed about and now won’t look into in depth in the case of Ukraine. From 2014 I have been firm in my advocacy of resistance to Russian gangster aggression; others have waffled!
3. In these once revolutionary societies the fight between revolutionaries and counter revolutionaries was of course right inside the communist party. Those in power taking the capitalist road were the enemy of communists and they won. All these years later they now demonstrate in their actions all of the charges that we leveled at them AT THE TIME. That goes back to 1976 and we were 20 years old. The lying ‘communists’ otherwise known as the moderates no less, have owned and run China as ‘communists ever since’. Sheesh… China the anti Maoists run the joint that is now an aggressive imperialist power that threatens world peace. Yet you carry on with your ridiculous crusade against those who warned of who and what they really were.
4. All manner of bad things went on before I was born and this is especially true of the period after the counter revolutionaries took power.
5. If Stalin was a revolutionary and I feel sure he was, he was by all measure a flawed one -as Mao put it 70% good 30% in error- so nothing pure existed when he died that is for certain. Beria was arrested after the most revolutionary period had long ago ended. The ‘Union’ was an old empire. All manner of the peoples (in that vast 1/6th of the worlds land surface + now the eastern bloc and China, North Korea, etc) were entitled to be suspicious of the Russians and they rightly were. The USSR had also been driven to the wall by the terror activities of the imperialists in planning and launching the horror of WW2 (ALL OF THEM) and then making atomic bomb threats using defenseless Japanese civilians as their proof of viciousness. There was no longer any hope of open honest and above board politics in the USSR. Western communists who did not independently think for themselves contributed little past this point but rode on the back of the anti war anti imperialist / colonial struggles that were still relevant. No western communist party was worth a cracker. No Trot party had ever been worth bothering with. Now they are all just anti this or that and can’t find anything possessive to bring to any debate.
Being an atheist and communist my anti communist, DLP type enemy was George Pell. He was blatantly wronged by the woke bureaucracy in the context of widespread herd mentality hysteria promoted by the mainstream mass media and dishonestly fanned by the ABC in particular. A scandal of world wide significance (even surpassing the Lindy Chamberlain case in the basic negligence required from all involved) unfolded in the process of Pells persecution. Both cases are similar to Kathleen Folbigg in that beyond reasonable doubt went out the window. Folbigg spent 20 years in prison with zero real evidence! She never really had a case to answer!
Neither do Maoists of my type of stripe who can already lay claim to having brought democracy to Nepal! Consider the role played by Maoists and trots in the Portugal revolutionary period of the 1970’s and then in the events in Egypt in the Arab spring. The Trots disgraced themselves. Well done Marxism and the Nepalese practitioners who fought that revolution and won! Well done Arthur in particular for exposing both betrayals and the cluelessness on both occasions. It was Trots splitting ASAP instead of following the Maoist policy of ‘unite and don’t split’.
I had no trouble working the issues through in any of this stuff because I was prepared to be what Steve is not; that is; prepared to be open, honest and above board. The crass anti democrats at Flinders University were -you guessed it- the Trots.
I know of no ‘leftist’ involved in collaborating with that criminal assault on the democratic rights of students to organise who has revisited their activities and recanted. None of them, as far as I know, have explained how they got the issues of democracy so totally wrong and explained why they were carrying on as such thugs.
When Steve Owens was smart enough to support NATO military actions in Libya it was because a tyrant running a one man dictatorship had launched his tanks towards the revolutionaries with predictable results. The counter-revolution was heading towards an imminent slaughter of the democratic revolutionaries. Without that intervention the revolution would have been crushed. Now instead of pride at making the right call after so many errors the trot brain in Steve produces a version of his history that says NATO bombed Libya! NO. NATO assisted the locals (who are religious in the same way as the Irish, the Americans or the English were in their day etc.) in protecting the democratic revolution from the counterrevolutionaries. Democratic revolution in the MENA is and will be waged by the locals who are very backwards and mostly Islamic.
Counter revolutionaries popped up in the course of the conflict -as usual- and 13 years later the struggle goes on. But note this well. Erdogan is on one side and Putin and the Egyptian thug regime on the other and that is how you could tell who to support if you had half a brain. Instead, you lost sight of what revolution is all about yet again.
When I was at Flinders I advised you not to touch anyone. I advised Stephen M not to cooperate with legal action against you. Is it my fault that no one takes my advice?
Distorting what was going on is your fault!
At Flinders Uni Students association a team was elected to run the office. These elected people were the General Secretary the Womens Officer the Education officer and a team to edit the student newspaper.ET
One ET editor left and later stated that she had left due to sexual harassment
A second editor left on stress leave due I believe to a claim of harassment and intimidation.
The Coordinating Group COG suspended the General Secretary pending a general meeting of students to remove him from office. The meeting was held and supported the General Secretary.
My assessment was that the Student Association was dysfunctional.
I met with the General Secretary and he asked me to sign a petition calling for all positions to be declared vacant and new elections to be called. I signed the petition.
Interactions were pretty heated I actually received hate mail not about anything particular just a general comment about me being a cunt.
The COG meeting that suspended Michael the General Secretary was barely quorate. To suspend the General Secretary at a barely quorate meeting is opportunism. To dismiss a General Secretary at a general meeting rather than at an election is a coup. Yes, I opposed opportunism, and I opposed the coup.
As to Marxism and the pseudo-Marxist countries it is simple. All the pseudo-Marxist countries support the idea of Socialism in one country a theory that never occurred to either Marx or Lenin. Why well it is obvious to transform a peasant society into a modern industrial society you would have to lead an agricultural revolution followed by an industrial revolution. Both these revolutions are intense class struggles where the peasants and the workers are crushed and remodeled often using slavery or near slave like conditions and a dose of famine here and there for discipline.
Inevitably you turn the party into managers of state capitalism. It’s a bit rich to embrace this process and then shock horror it has reached its obvious conclusion.