Category Archives: Hungary

by Robert A. Lindsay | October 3, 2017 · 10:57 PM

Suicide: The Ultimate Enigma

Becoming suicidal is often but not always indicative of mental illness. Philosophically, it simply means that you do not want to live anymore, and you don’t have to be nuts to feel way. Life’s hard for everyone, and at some point, a lot of people just can’t take it anymore and want to bail out or end the pain. Indeed, a person certainly feels no more pain after suicide.

People kill themselves for all sorts of reasons. Only 70% of suicides are clinically depressed. A lot of people commit suicide simply out of boredom, believe it or not. Some people seem to do it for absolutely no reason at all. It’s as if they did it for shits and giggles or as a way of trolling the human race. I suppose in a way, suicide is the ultimate troll. Suicides are trolling the whole damn world, every one of us.

Suicide is a mystery.

We have been studying it forever, and we still hardly know a thing about it. A man wrote a big book on suicide a while back, and at the end of the book he said he didn’t understand suicide any better at the end than when he had started.

Some countries have high suicide rates, and no one seems to know why. Other countries have low suicide rates, and no one knows why.

Hungary had high suicide rates under feudalism, monarchy, fascism, communism and now democracy. People killed themselves at the same rate in all systems.

The Japanese have always had a high suicide rate, and no one knows why. Impoverished North Korea has an extremely low suicide rate while next door ultra-wealthy Japan has a very high rate. There is no good explanation for the difference.

It may be cultural. Some societies may be more pro-suicide than others.

Anti-socialists like to say that Swedes have a high suicide rate. They claim that Swedish socialism gives people everything they need and maybe want, but it leaves them bored and unmotivated and hopeless to improve their lot, so they end it all. But all places on Earth at that latitude have a high suicide rate. It is so dark half the year that the sun only comes out for a few hours a day, and it is cold all the time. There are high suicide rates in Norway, Iceland, Finland, Estonia, Russia (especially Siberia), Alaska, Northern Canada, and Greenland. Anyway, the Swedes had a high suicide rate even before socialism. Other countries have an identical system to Swedish socialism, and they have low suicide rates.

Actually, the suicide rate was comparatively low in the USSR and Eastern Europe under communism. However, with the transition to capitalism in 1990, suicide rates skyrocketed over the next 10-15 years as did forms of slow suicide such as drinking oneself to death. So the Communism/socialism causes suicide theory seems to be washed up. If anything, suicide seems to be linked to capitalism a lot more than it is linked to socialism or Communism.

Nigeria is one of the most hellish and nightmarish places on Earth at least from my perspective, and from any point of view, it’s basically a shithole. In fact, it is probably one of the foulest shitholes on Earth. Yet Nigerians typically among the happiest people on Earth. They’re smiling amid the stinking, crime-infested, ultraviolent ruins, while the Swedes and Japs are blowing their brains out in lavish apartments drowning in luxury.

Go figure.

Bottom line is that a lot of human behavior is either not easily explained or simply doesn’t seem to make much sense at all. People feel however they do for whatever reasons they do, and it’s often hard to figure out why.

At the end of the day, human behavior is largely a mystery.

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Filed under Africa, Asia, Canada, Capitalism, Culture, Economics, Eurasia, Europe, Finland, Hungary, Japan, Left, Marxism, NE Asia, Nigeria, North America, North Korea, Norway, Psychology, Regional, Russia, Siberia, Social Problems, Socialism, Sociology, Sweden, USA, USSR, West Africa

by Robert A. Lindsay | June 3, 2017 · 4:59 AM

No Conservatives Allowed on This Website!

We have had a few conservatives posting here in the past few days. These are US-style conservatives, which are the worst kind of all. US-style conservatives are absolutely banned from posting here in any way, shape or form.

Conservatism means different things in different countries, so conservatives from much of the rest of the world (except Latin America and the UK) can continue to post. Even Canadian conservatives can continue to post, as I do not mind them. It’s not conservatism itself that is so awful. Almost every country on Earth has people who call themselves conservatives, and there are conservative parties in almost every country on Earth. But being a conservative just about anywhere outside of the Americas is more or less an acceptable position for me. I probably won’t like their politics much, but I could at least look at them and say that this is an opposition I could live with.

US conservatives and their brethren in the UK, Latin America, the Philippines, Nepal and and Indonesia are quite a different beast.

I have to think hard about conservatives in Eastern Europe, especially Estonia, Latvia and the Czech Republic. These fools had such a bad experience with Communism that they went 180 degrees in the other direction. I would have to see the positions of these conservative parties in those countries to see whether they would be OK or not.

Just to give you an example, Vladimir Putin is considered to be a right-winger, and his party United Russia advocates a politics called Russian Conservatism. Looking at the party’s platform, this is not only a conservatism that I could live with but one I might even vote for!

Conservatives in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and most other places in Asia are acceptable. The conservatives in the Stans, Georgia, Ukraine, and Armenia can be rather awful, particularly in the nationalist sense, but I will not ban them.

I dislike Indian conservatives, but I will not ban them.

Conservatives from the Muslim World are all acceptable. In the Muslim World, conservatism just means religious and sometimes nationalist. I can live with that. Even the ones in Iran are orders of magnitude better than the US type.

Conservatives in the Arab World are acceptable. They are mostly just religious people.

Turkish conservatives are awful, but I will not ban them. They are just religious and a particularly awful type of nationalist.

African conservatives are OK.

Conservatives in Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Italy, Switzerland, Italy, the Balkans, Bulgaria, Greece, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Romania are sometimes good, sometimes pretty bad, but they are all acceptable here. Conservatism in Europe mostly means nationalism. I am actually rather fond of the conservative running Hungary, Orban. LePen conservatives leave something to be desired, but they are acceptable. They’re mostly just nationalists. Hell, I might even vote for Marine LePen! If it was down to LePen versus Macron, I would absolutely support LePen!

Conservatives from Indonesia, Nepal and Philippines are not OK. These are an “everything for the rich elite, nothing for anybody else” type of conservative. Some of them even hide under the labels of Socialist or even Communist.

The word conservative has no real inherent meaning. It means whatever people say it means.

Anyway, the conservatives in the US are pure garbage and recently they have become out and out fascists after moving in that direction for a long time. And a particularly horrible type of fascist at that, a Latin American/Filipino/Indonesian style fascist. I will not allow any US conservatives to post on this board. You all are lucky I even let you lurk here. That’s an idle threat as I can’t ban lurkers, but if they all stopped lurking, I would not mind frankly.

You all really ought to go back to the gutters you crawled out of.

PS This especially applies to Libertarians, the very worst of all the US conservative vermin. We shoot Libertarians on sight here, so you better watch out.

*This applies only to economic conservatives. If you are not an economic conservative, and your conservatism is only of the social variety or you are only conservative on race, religion, guns, law and order, respect for tradition, American nationalism, the military, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity issues, you can stay. I’m not crazy about some social conservatives, but I can live with them. I will probably even let patriotards post as long as they are not economic conservatives.

I am an American nationalist myself. I just don’t like patriotards. Of course, I very much dislike and even hate the country as it is right now, but I sure don’t want to make it worse! I have to live here too you now, and it might as well be as pleasant as possible as long I stay here.

I want what’s best for my country. I don’t want to harm this country or screw it over. That will be bad for me! And believe it or not, most US patriotards do not want what is best for the country! I have dreams of a greater and better America. It’s not impossible, but we will have to undergo some serious cultural changes. One of the reasons I am so against illegal immigration is because it is ruining my country and making this place even worse. Also illegal immigration is terrible for US workers and I am for the workers. I am against H-1B visas for the same reason – they are wrecking my country. IT workers are workers too, so they are my comrades. I want what is best for America and American workers.

I cannot live with economic conservatives. I like cancer way more than I like US conservatives. Cancer is much more decent and respectable.

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by Robert A. Lindsay | May 31, 2016 · 9:13 AM

Manufacturing Consent: What Good Is Freedom If No One Uses It?

SHI writes:

You do realize that Russia isn’t free in any sense of the word. That makes any comparison with the current situation in the West totally pointless.

Maybe the Russians have always preferred it that way but for last three centuries, that entire expanse of land called Russia has settled for nothing but one strongman dictator after another. From the autocratic Tsars to tyrannical leaders like Stalin, Khrushchev and Putin now, if you’re a child growing up in Russia, you have not known freedom the way a Western child does. There are exceptions though, Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin broke away from Russian iron man traditions and tried to be benign leaders but their short-lived experiments failed.

There is no disputing the fact that Vlad the Putin is the biggest autocratic tyrant at the moment, not very different from Gaddafi, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Assad or Pinochet. This man oppresses his own people. Given a choice, most Russians would want to escape their country but they can’t as the State still puts a restriction on emigration. If you were born in Russia, you simply can’t defect to another country unless you’re married to a person over there. That is why the Russian mail order bride business has always been booming.

Why do you think the Polish, Lithuanian, Romanian and Hungarian people like to distance themselves so much from Russia? Not only are their countries most active NATO members but the people themselves are anti-Russia. Why do you think Ukrainians want to escape the shadow of Russia to merge with Western Europe and the Schengen region? While Britain can’t wait to escape from EU as the overall sentiment over there favors Brexit, the former countries of the Soviet Bloc can’t wait to join the Western Hemisphere.

Thing is, people in the West take their freedoms for granted. They simply have no concept of what it feels like to raise your child in a tyrannical, dictatorial regime. There are things like internet censorship, forced incarcerations and murders that you take as “normal”.

Maybe the recent US elections seem like a complete joke when you find that your Final 2 happen to be Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. But that’s a problem that can be fixed within four years. If you were born in Russia, you don’t have that choice in the first place. You have to put up with your autocratic government day in and day out. And so will your children.

It might sound cliched but the US is indeed a free society. Just check the annual rankings of Freedom House. There are other freedom indices including the UK-based Democracy index, Canada-based Fraser Institute’s “Index of Freedom in the World” and Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters without Borders. Countries like China, Russia and Islamic countries are consistently scoring “not free” in every independent assessment each year the rankings are prepared. Just check this year’s Freedom House map, no one really emigrates to any country that isn’t marked “blue”.

Let us take this apart one by one.

You do realize that Russia isn’t free in any sense of the word. That makes any comparison with the current situation in the West totally pointless.

Russia is far freer than we are. There is a huge dissident media, mostly funded by the West. There are large dissident websites that are very popular, and there are a number of dissident newspapers, radio stations and even TV from outside. You can buy dissident newspapers anywhere you want in Moscow. Dissidents are quoted every single day in the Russian media.

How many large dissident websites do we have? How many dissident newspapers are there in the US? How many dissident newsmagazines? How many dissident radio stations? One, Pacifica, and no one listens to it. How frequently are dissidents quoted in the US media. Never.

Maybe the Russians have always preferred it that way but for last three centuries, that entire expanse of land called Russia has settled for nothing but one strongman dictator after another.

Yes, they like it that way.

From the autocratic Tsars to tyrannical leaders like Stalin, Khrushchev and Putin now, if you’re a child growing up in Russia, you have not known freedom the way a Western child does.

It is far freer under Putin than it ever was under Communism.

There are exceptions though, Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin broke away from Russian iron man traditions and tried to be benign leaders but their short-lived experiments failed.

Yeltsin looted the country. The Communist Parliament was blocking all of his free market reforms, so he dissolved Parliament by decree and when they refused to accept his decree, he called out and the military and he attacked his own Parliament with tanks and guns. 600 people died, including a lot of legislators. That would be like Obama calling out the US military to open fire with tanks and guns on Congress and killing a bunch of Congressmen. Hell, even Putin hasn’t done that.

The US media cheered wildly. Not one single outlet failed to cheer. They had an election and the West sent over moneybags guys with literal suitcases full of illegal money for the campaign. These guys were photographed walking down the street carrying literal boxes of money. They flooded the campaign with illegal money and he won. 100% of the US media cheered for this. Yeltsin sold out the country to the US. He sold the whole place for 10 cents on the dollar to a bunch of Jews in the UK, the US and Israel and bankers in the US, UK and Frankfurt. They looted the whole country bare until there was nothing left to steal. Why do you think Putin came in. The Yeltsin supporters now have 1% support in the population.

87% of the population loves Putin. The opposition is miniscule.

Yeltsin was NOT a Democrat. He was way worse than Putin. Things are much freer under Putin than they were under Yeltsin.

There is no disputing the fact that Vlad the Putin is the biggest autocratic tyrant at the moment, not very different from Gaddafi, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Assad or Pinochet.

Those are actual dictatorships. And they also killed a lot of people. Putin has hardly killed anyone. Putin does not have a dictatorship. There are free elections, however most media is state media, and the state media is biased for Putin, but how is this different from the West? Putin wins all the elections because the dissidents are all seen as traitors.

This man oppresses his own people.

How can you oppress people with 87% support?

Given a choice, most Russians would want to escape their country but they can’t as the State still puts a restriction on emigration.

My understanding is that you can walk out of that place anytime you wish. Anyone can leave, it’s just that most do not want to. If 87% support the President, why would they all want to leave?

Why do you think the Polish, Lithuanian, Romanian and Hungarian people like to distance themselves so much from Russia?

Because they were formerly under the thumb of the USSR which more or less forced Communism on them. They got rid of Communism, and they have been mad at Russia ever since, although the Hungarian leader is pretty pro-Russian. They’re all just drinking the Koolaid.

Of those countries listed, only Poland and Lithuania are Russia-haters, and the Lithuanians are Nazis. They have statues of Nazis up all over the country. All of their big heroes are Nazis.

The Poles are simply insane. They hate Russia far more than they hate Nazis. The Nazis war on Poland killed 10 million Poles. The Soviets killed 275,000 Poles. So the Poles hate Russians. The Poles are insane.

Not only are their countries most active NATO members but the people themselves are anti-Russia.

Everyone in the West is anti-Russia because of the brainwash. There is not one single dissident pro-Russia media outlet anywhere in the West. With anti-Russian propaganda on every media outlet, how do you expect people to think?

However, most Hungarians are particularly anti-Russia because they elected a pro-Russian leader. Most Romanians don’t care about Russia.

Why do you think Ukrainians want to escape the shadow of Russia to merge with Western Europe and the Schengen region?

Because they hate Russia.

But they didn’t even want to join the EU. The EU supporters never had more than 35%. Ukraine was split between pro-EU and pro-Russia factions until the Nazi coup. After the coup, all of the pro-Russian parties were outlawed and a number of their legislators were murdered. The leader of the biggest pro-Russia party, the Party of Regions, fled to Russia after the regime tried to kill him by setting his house on fire, but they set his neighbor’s house on fire instead. Before the coup, the country was badly split between pro-Russian and pro-EU factions.

The Ukies think they will join the EU and get rich. But they are poor because all of their leaders have been stealing from them since Independence, not because they are close to Russia. They won’t get rich by joining the EU.

While Britain can’t wait to escape from EU as the overall sentiment over there favors Brexit, the former countries of the Soviet Bloc can’t wait to join the Western Hemisphere.

They’ve all already joined, not that it’s done them much good. The Greeks want out too.

Thing is, people in the West take their freedoms for granted.

What freedoms? If you have no dissident press, you have no free press. If you have no dissident press, you have no freedom of speech. If you have no dissident politicians, you do not have a free politics. Russians are far freer than any Western country.

They simply have no concept of what it feels like to raise your child in a tyrannical, dictatorial regime.

Yes but that’s not Putin.

There are things like internet censorship, forced incarcerations and murders that you take as “normal”.

There is no Internet censorship in Russia. The Russian-language web is flooded with dissident sites, all paid for by the West.

Hardly any dissidents go to jail in Russia. They might arrest a few from time to time, but dissidents are quoted in the Russian media every single day. Most of them are free to yap along all they wish.

Yes, there have been a few killings of dissidents, but Putin was not involved in the most recent notorious one outside the Kremlin. There have been a few killings of journalists, but there were many more killings of dissidents under Yeltsin than under Putin. Yeltsin had many of his opponents killed.

Maybe the recent US elections seem like a complete joke when you find that your Final 2 happen to be Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. But that’s a problem that can be fixed within four years.

No dissident politician ever runs in the US, or at least one never gets very far. Trump is very interesting in that he is an actual US dissident politician who has made it into the final round. I cannot remember the last time that happened, but it was probably Kennedy, and he was murdered by the Deep State who run the US. See what happens to dissident politicians in the US? See what happens when the American people elect a dissident? The Deep State kills them. That’s why few politicians go against the Deep State and the System because they are afraid of getting the “Kennedy treatment.”

If you were born in Russia, you don’t have that choice in the first place.

Actually elections in Russia are quite fair other than the media issues. The worst dissidents you could possibly imagine run against Putin. I mean almost out and out traitors. We never have any dissidents like that running for President. Putin wins overwhelmingly because the population thinks the Opposition are traitors.

You have to put up with your autocratic government day in and day out. And so will your children.

Sure, but this is how they like it. I know Russians, and they tell me they are fine with the system.

It might sound cliched but the US is indeed a free society.

It isn’t. There is no dissident press, so there’s no freedom of the press. Because there’s no free press, there’s no freedom of speech. There are no or almost no dissident politicians, so we don’t have free politics, although Trump is changing that.

Just check the annual rankings of Freedom House.

You realize that Freedom House is run by the reactionary Reaganite Republican nuts, and their joke indexes are worthless, right?

There are other freedom indices including the UK-based Democracy index, Canada-based Fraser Institute’s “Index of Freedom in the World” and Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters without Borders.

Like I said, what good is some abstract freedom of press if you have no dissident media? What good is freedom of the press if there is no dissident media to voice it in? What good is free politics if there are few if any dissident politicians? You might as well be living in a dictatorship. Freedoms are no good if you can’t use them or if nobody ever uses them. When everyone goes along with the program automatically, you’re no different than North Korea.

Countries like China, Russia and Islamic countries are consistently scoring “not free” in every independent assessment each year the rankings are prepared.

I would agree that China is not free, however, there are many political protests. There are 100 political protests every single day in China. The authorities just let almost all of them go on, and they don’t do anything about it. There is no free press though, I agree.

Islamic countries are not free because they can’t handle freedom, and they do better under dictatorships. Look what happens when they try to do democracy in the Arab World. It doesn’t work. Malaysia is a pretty free country, and Pakistan does have dissident political parties that regularly get 15% of the vote. There is a large dissident political party in Turkey, though they are under siege. Lebanon is a free country, as is Tunisia. Algeria is free.

Yemen is such a free country that a dissident movement just overthrew the government by force! You can’t get much freer than that. In Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, dissidents are armed to the teeth and are threatening to overthrow the government. You can’t get much freer than that in a sense anyway! The Iraqi Parliament is split; Sadr’s party and the Sunni parties are very much dissident parties.

Just check this year’s Freedom House map, no one really emigrates to any country that isn’t marked “blue”.

This is not true. There is a lot of immigration to China from all over the world. There is also a lot of immigration to Russia from Ukraine and the former Soviet states to the south and east. Under Ghaddafi there was huge immigration from Sub-Saharan Africa. Egypt was the same – mass immigration from Black Africa to Egypt. There is huge immigration to the Gulf nations from all over the world to work. Before the crash, many Colombians had immigrated to Venezuela for a better life. There is huge immigration of Central Americans to Mexico.

Just check this year’s Freedom House map, no one really emigrates to any country that isn’t marked “blue”.

That map must be some sort of a joke. Venezuela is the freest country in Latin America. The opposition has many media unbelievably outlets, and they all resemble Fox News X10. They tell constant lies, and they have regularly called for assassinating the President. They continue to do so now, and now all of the Opposition press is agitating for a coup. Could you imagine if the US had huge media outlets that told the most vicious lies on a regular basis and regularly called for the assassination of Obama, and now were screaming for the US military to stage a military coup and overthrow Obama to put in a military dictatorship? Venezuela is a 10X freer than the US.

The Opposition has taken over Congress and stages constant demonstrations/riots in the streets. And recently the Opposition is armed and has started assassinating government officials.

Venezuela has the fairest elections on Earth.

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Filed under Algeria, Americas, Asia, Britain, Central America, China, Democrats, Egypt, Eurasia, Europe, Government, Greece, Hungary, Immigration, Iraq, Journalism, Latin America, Lebanon, Left, Libya, Lithuania, Malaysia, Marxism, Mexico, Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan, Poland, Politics, Regional, Republicans, Romania, Russia, SE Asia, South America, South Asia, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, US Politics, USA, USSR, Venezuela, Yemen

by Robert A. Lindsay | February 9, 2015 · 11:25 PM

There Are No Nazis in the Ukraine

There are a lot of reports out there that this is Photoshopped, but that is not the case.

The Azov Battalion above is one of the main militias fighting alongside the Ukrainian military in the Donbass. Please understand that of the entire Ukrainian force there, only 2/3 are regular Ukrainian army. The rest of mercenaries and volunteers of various types and there is a large contingent of these irregular militias. The militias fight right alongside the regular army and they are just as well-armed as the army if not better-armed. And most of them are, yes, real Nazis all right.

You have to understand that Ukrainian nationalism has its roots in fascism. Most of the main Ukrainian nationalist heroes were fascists or Nazis.

The same is true of many of the heroes of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian nationalism.

A lot of the modern Hungarian and Romanian nationalists are also Nazis – the Arrow Cross in Hungary and the Iron Cross in Romania. The Jobbik Party in Hungary, which won 17% in the last election, is the heir to the Arrow Cross.

Poland and Finland had fascist governments in the interwar period and Finland had a Nazi-allied government in World War 2. That was one of the main reasons that the USSR attacked them, but you never hear that.

Nazism is still extremely popular in Croatia. Some guess that 50% of Croatians today could be described as “Nazis” in the same way that the Ukrainians are.

Probably 70% of the Maidan crowd were Nazis. We know this because 70% of the people on the Maidan said that Stepan Bandera was a hero.

It is an unfortunate truism that in that part of world – in the eastern part of Europe – fascism, Nazism and National Socialism never went out of style and are still quite popular today – much more popular than they are in Western Europe, even in Germany. The non-racist type of fascism as in Francoism and Mussolinism is quite popular in Italy and Spain today. The roots of the Spanish Right are in Francoism and the roots of the Italian Right are in Mussolinism. These roots are carefully hidden by such folks as Mr. Aznar and Mr. Berlusconi, but they are there all right.

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Filed under Ethnic Nationalism, Europe, Fascism, Hungary, Lithuania, National Socialism, Nationalism, Nazism, Poland, Political Science, Regional, Romania, Ukraine, Ultranationalism, War

by Robert A. Lindsay | February 15, 2014 · 11:03 PM

Communism Doesn’t Work; Socialism Doesn’t Work

How many times has this crap been drummed into your head? It has been drummed into our heads so many times that most of us accept it as established fact without needing any backing evidence. The problem with this argument is:

Capitalism, especially conservative free market capitalism, doesn’t work very well either. In fact, if you say Communism doesn’t work, you would have to say that conservative laissez faire capitalism doesn’t work either. Neither of them work. Both are failed systems.

A reasonable argument to make could be that even as horrible as conservative capitalism is, Communism works ever worse than that horrible model. I would not be averse to such an argument. Indeed, some progressive liberals argue just that.

It is a much, much harder case to make that “socialism doesn’t work.” The conservative capitalists have been screaming this forever, but the arguments in support of their theory are very poor. A good argument could be made that social liberalism or social democracy or democratic socialism works better than either conservative capitalism or Communism. One could amass quite a bit of evidence in favor of this judgement.

Who says Communism doesn’t work? Who proved that? Name the scientists who proved this scientifically. They don’t exist.

One way we could determine whether a given system works is to ask the people who live under it or have lived under it.

By that measure, Communism does not appear to be a failed system at all.

Take note:

81% of Serbs say that life was better under Tito’s socialism than it is now under Serbian capitalism. You mean the wars of the 1990’s, 40% unemployment, rampant crime and drug addiction and a collapsing infrastructure are not superior to failed Communism?

63% of Romanians say that life was better under Communism than it is today. Many stupid arguments are given at the link for why the majority of Romanians are obviously mistaken about this opinion of theirs.

72% of Hungarians say life was better under Communism than it is under capitalism.

57% of East Germans say that life was better under the GDR than it is in Eastern Germany today.

66% of Slovaks say that life was better under Communism than it is today.

66% of Armenians, 61% of Kyrgyz, and 56% of Ukrainians say that the fall of the USSR was a bad thing and only small numbers say it was a good thing.

60% of Russians said Communism is a good system that works well as opposed to a bad system that works poorly.

So you see, if we ask people who have lived under Communism whether Communism doesn’t work and capitalism does work, they don’t agree with us. Most of them say that Communism at the very least works better than capitalism.

Which is really why there are still socialists and Communists in the world today. We know how these systems measure up against capitalism very well.

If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site. This is my only job.

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Filed under Capitalism, Conservatism, Economics, Europe, Germany, Hungary, Left, Liberalism, Marxism, Political Science, Regional, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Socialism, USSR

by Robert A. Lindsay | February 11, 2013 · 4:24 PM

Gypsies in Romania

This is an excellent video about Gypsies in Romania, narrated by a young Romanian man who absolutely hates Gypsies, as do most Romanians. A number of commenters below chime in from various countries in the region to report that everything the narrator says about Gypsies is true based on their experience.

Gypsies in Romania are somehow getting ahold of some serious money, apparently mostly through crime, scams and various schemes. Almost no Gypsies go to school, even though there are slots allotted to them. And when they do go to school, they almost always do very poorly. Despite having satellite dishes, luxury cars and gold chains, they live in the most sickening hovels which they refuse to fix up. They even shit in the open just like people in India since they often don’t bother to build a toilet in their homes.

Their homes quickly become horribly overcrowded with all of their relatives and hangers-on. They start having sex at age 12-14 and the females spend most of their lives pumping out one baby after another. They openly refuse to work (85% are unemployed) and instead choose to live off the welfare system, beg, steal, con or run various scams. Many Gypsies for some reason never learn to speak, read or write Romanian properly. They send their children off at a very early age to beg for a living. The adults then collect the wages that the children earn from begging, which can be a considerable sum.

Many Romanian Gypsies are now migrating to other parts of the EU because those countries are richer and there is more to steal. In France, they gave the Gypsies $1000 to take off and start a new life. They immediately blew the money and then they were back in France. In other cases, the Gypsies were given a pig to start a farm. The Gypsies quickly killed the pig and then they were right back in France. Gypsies often squat in legitimate buildings. No matter what kind of a building it was beforehand, the Gypsies inevitably trash the place.

Perhaps the most disturbing revelation of all was when the narrator discussed on Gypsy Organized Crime steals houses from Romanians with the assistance of the Attorney General, the judges, the cops and all of the other authorities, all paid off with Gypsy stolen wealth. The Gypsies come into town and try force residents to leave by harassing them, throwing things at them, shitting on their doorstep, urinating on their walls, vandalizing their place, threatening them, etc.

They try to get the residents to sell the place for, say, 5% of the value of the home. Somehow the Gypsies are able, and I am not sure how, to get the residents to leave. Then they buy the home at 5% of the value and sell it at 100% of the value. Many crimes are committed along the way, and the bribed authorities let the Gypsies get away with all of it. I have heard that in Hungary, 85% of property crime (theft) is the result of Gypsies. The way that Gypsy Organized Crime is allowed to run amok in Romania is truly depressing and it suggests that with the return of capitalism, Romania has turned into a Third World nation. Congratulations, revolutionaries.

You will see many similarities between Gypsies and US ghetto Blacks, in fact, it is said that Gypsies are “the thieving ghetto Blacks of Europe.” However I dare say that Gypsies are vastly worse than Black people in the US. I make that comparison because it is true that Black people cause quite a few problems in my country. However, this is nothing compared to an overt criminal culture that the Gypsies lead.

Many Black people in the US are not dedicated to living a career criminal existence. Blacks do not ordinarily destroy all their homes and neighborhoods, nor do they shit in the streets and fields. Many to most Blacks are in school, at least until age 14-16 or so. Quite a few Blacks do well in school, and many go on to college, where quite a few even graduate and go off to work in various professions and good jobs. Blacks have not yet formed organized crime gangs that have paid off cops, DA’s, judges and other authorities. Blacks do not send their children out to beg in the streets all day and then live off the earnings.

Many Black people are in fact employed; indeed, most are employed. Black people in the US speak English well and generally learn to read and write it at least passably. Black criminal gangs do not, thank God, force legitimate homeowners to move so they can buy the homes at 5% of value, committing many crimes along the way. While some Blacks have many children, the Black fertility rate in the US is not particularly high. Blacks are not responsible for 85% of the theft in the US. There is a vast Black middle class and even a small upper class that is relatively to highly well-behaved and is far removed from ghetto culture.

It’s hard to say what to do with Gypsies. It’s anti-human to kill them, although that is frequently proposed. Hitler already tried that. Many countries such as France are throwing them out of the country (they are immigrants after all). This is a great idea; however, every time a country does this, the Left screams and hollers about racism. In fact, anytime anyone criticizes the deplorable behavior of the Gypsies, they are called racists. Considering how horrific Gypsies act, it’s hardly racism to dislike them. It would simply be a normal reaction. At the end of the day, there really is nothing to be done with these people who are obviously a criminal race and a plague upon nations.

One wonders how or why Gypsies have adopted this parasitic and criminal lifestyle. It appears to be cultural, but the roots of this hostile and anti-human culture are uncertain. They came from India 1000 years ago, but what this explains is unknown. One thing is for certain is that it is not due to their genes.

It is true that some small number of Gypsies are well behaved and believe it or not are not even criminals. A few have gone to college and gotten university degrees. There are even Gypsy university professors. These good actors should not be forced to bear the brunt of racist hatred against the Gypsy people, however well deserved it might be, as they are acting as responsible citizens.

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Filed under Blacks, Corruption, Crime, Culture, Europe, France, Government, Hungary, Organized Crime, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Roma, Romania, South Asians, USA

by Robert A. Lindsay | November 8, 2012 · 3:31 PM

Eric Hobsbawm Interview

Very nice interview with Michael Ignatieff (who I don’t like too much) interviewing the late, great Eric Hobsbawm. Hobsbawm joined the Communist Party at age 14 in Germany in 1933 and remained a party member for the rest of his life. He always supported the Communist cause.

He now admits that the Stalinist paranoia of the USSR was a disaster (beginning with the “Trotsky was a British agent” line soon after the Revolution). Stalin killed so many people for little or no good reason. As Hobsbawm points out, many of those killed by Stalin were Communists themselves, often the finest revolutionaries.

Hobsbawm’s statistics on the deaths in the USSR are exaggerated. There were at least 2.6 million excess deaths in the USSR from state violence, not including the population transfers during the WW2, various wartime deaths of the enemy, and the famine of 1932. That’s a lot, but it’s not 10-110 million as we often hear.

Hobsbawm took a lot of heat for this 1994 interview in which he implied that the deaths during the USSR might have been worth it if a better world had unfolded as a result. He meant this as an analogy to the 50 million deaths in WW2. Most say that those deaths were worth it in order to defeat fascism and rightwing militarism. So it is as an analogy to the WW2 statement that he wonders if the Soviet deaths might have been worth it if things had turned out differently.

Hobsbawm makes no apologies for the crimes of Stalin. He also says that the invasion of Hungary was a turning point among Western Communists. This is when they started to abandon the USSR. Hobsbawm says the Hungarian invasion was a catastrophe.

Hobsbawm is correct though, along Rosa Luxembourg’s lines, that the question is still one of a better world versus barbarism (Luxembourg said the choice is “socialism or barbarism). With the triumph of neoliberal capitalism the world over, what we are seeing is barbarism writ large spanning the planet. Hobsbawn says this is also a catastrophe, and I agree with him.

Hobsbawm was a famous Marxist historian who authored a number of famous books, including “The Age of…” series.

Does Multilingualism Equal Separatism?

Repost from the old site.

Sorry for the long post, readers, but I have been working on this piece off and on for months now. It’s not something I just banged out. For one thing, this is the only list that I know of on the Net that lists all of the countries of the world and shows how many languages are spoken there in an easy to access format. Not even Wikipedia has that (yet).

Whether or not states have the right to secede is an interesting question. The libertarian Volokh Conspiracy takes that on in this nice set of posts. We will not deal with that here; instead, we will take on the idea that linguistic diversity automatically leads to secession.

There is a notion floating around among fetishists of the state that there can be no linguistic diversity within the nation, as it will lead to inevitable separatism. In this post, I shall disprove that with empirical data. First, we will list the states in the world, along with how many languages are spoken in that state.

States with a significant separatist movement are noted with an asterisk. As you can see if you look down the list, there does not seem to be much of a link between multilingualism and separatism. There does seem to be a trend in that direction in Europe, though.

Afterward, I will discuss the nature of the separatist conflicts in many of these states to try to see if there is any language connection. In most cases, there is little or nothing there.

I fully expect the myth of multilingualism = separatism to persist after the publication of this post, unfortunately.

St Helena                        1
British Indian Ocean Territories 1
Pitcairn Island                  1
Estonia                          1
Maldives                         1
North Korea                      1
South Korea                      1
Cayman Islands                   1
Bermuda                          1
Belarus                          1
Martinique                       2
St Lucia                         2
St Vincent & the Grenadines      2
Barbados                         2
Virgin Islands                   2
British Virgin Islands           2
Gibraltar                        2
Antigua and Barbuda              2
Saint Kitts and Nevis            2
Montserrat                       2
Anguilla                         2
Marshall Islands                 2
Cuba                             2
Turks and Caicos                 2
Guam                             2
Tokelau                          2
Samoa                            2
American Samoa                   2
Niue                             2
Jamaica                          2
Cape Verde Islands               2
Icelandic                        2
Maltese                          2
Maltese                          2
Vatican State                    2
Haiti                            2
Kiribati                         2
Tuvalu                           2
Bahamas                          2
Puerto Rico                      2
Kyrgyzstan                       3
Rwanda                           3
Nauru                            3
Turkmenistan                     3
Luxembourg                       3
Monaco                           3
Burundi                          3
Seychelles                       3
Grenada                          3
Bahrain                          3
Tonga                            3
Qatar                            3
Kuwait                           3
Dominica                         3
Liechtenstein                    3
Andorra                          3
Reunion                          3
Dominican Republic               3
Netherlands Antilles             4
Northern Mariana Islands         4
Palestinian West Bank & Gaza     4
Palau                            4
Mayotte                          4
Cyprus*                          4
Bosnia and Herzegovina*          4
Slovenia and Herzegovina*        4
Swaziland                        4
Sao Tome and Principe            4
Guadalupe                        4
Saudi Arabia                     5
Cook Islands                     5
Latvia                           5
Lesotho                          5
Djibouti                         5
Ireland                          5
Moldova                          5
Armenia                          6
Mauritius                        6
Lebanon                          6
Mauritania                       6
Croatia                          6
Kazakhstan                       7
Kazakhstan                       7
Albania                          7
Portugal                         7
Uzbekistan                       7
Sri Lanka*                       7
United Arab Emirates             7
Comoros                          7
Belize                           8
Tunisia                          8
Denmark                          8
Yemen                            8
Morocco*                         9
Austria                          9
Jordan                           9
Macedonia                        9
Tajikistan                       9
French Polynesia                 9
Gambia                           9
Belgium                          9
Libya                            9
Fiji                             10
Slovakia                         10
Ukraine                          10
Egypt                            11
Bulgaria                         11
Norway                           11
Poland                           11
Serbia and Montenegro            11
Eritrea                          12
Georgia*                         12
Finland*                         12
Switzerland*                     12
Hungary*                         12
United Kingdom*                  12
Mongolia                         13
Spain                            13
Somalia*                         13
Oman                             13
Madagascar                       13
Malawi                           14
Equatorial Guinea                14
Mali                             14
Azerbaijan                       14
Japan                            15
Syria*                           15
Romania*                         15
Sweden*                          15
Netherlands*                     15
Greece                           16
Brunei                           17
Algeria                          18
Micronesia                       18
East Timor                       19
Zimbabwe                         19
Niger                            21
Singapore                        21
Cambodia                         21
Iraq*                            21
Guinea-Bissau                    21
Taiwan                           22
Bhutan                           24
Sierra Leone                     24
South Africa                     24
Germany                          28
Namibia                          28
Botswana                         28
France                           29
Liberia                          30
Israel                           33
Italy                            33
Guinea                           34
Turkey*                          34
Senegal                          36
Bangladesh                       39
New Caledonia                    39
Togo                             39
Angola*                          41
Gabon                            41
Zambia                           41
Mozambique                       43
Uganda                           43
Afghanistan                      47
Guatemala                        54
Benin                            54
Kenya                            61
Congo                            62
Burkina Faso                     68
Central African Republic         69
Solomon Islands                  70
Thailand*                        74
Iran*                            77
Cote D'Ivoire                    78
Ghana                            79
Laos                             82
Ethiopia*                        84
Canada*                          85
Russia*                          101
Vietnam                          102
Myanmar*                         108
Vanuatu                          109
Nepal                            126
Tanzania                         128
Chad                             132
Sudan*                           134
Malaysia                         140
United States*                   162
Philippines*                     171
Pakistan*                        171
Democratic Republic of Congo     214
Australia                        227
China*                           235
Cameroon*                        279
Mexico                           291
India*                           415
Nigeria                          510
Indonesia*                       737
Papua New Guinea*                820

*Starred states have a separatist problem, but most are not about language. Most date back to the very formation of an often-illegitimate state.

Canada definitely has a conflict that is rooted in language, but it is also rooted in differential histories as English and French colonies. The Quebec nightmare is always brought up by state fetishists, ethnic nationalists and other racists and nationalists who hate minorities as the inevitable result of any situation whereby a state has more than one language within its borders.

This post is designed to give the lie to this view.

Cyprus’ problem has to do with two nations, Greeks and Turks, who hate each other. The history for this lies in centuries of conflict between Christianity and Islam, culminating in the genocide of 350,000 Greeks in Turkey from 1916-1923.

Morocco’s conflict has nothing to do with language. Spanish Sahara was a Spanish colony in Africa. After the Spanish left in the early 1950’s, Morocco invaded the country and colonized it, claiming in some irredentist way that the land had always been a part of Morocco. The residents beg to differ and say that they are a separate state.

An idiotic conflict ensued in which Morocco the colonizer has been elevated to one of the most sanctioned nations of all by the UN. Yes, Israel is not the only one; there are other international scofflaws out there. In this conflict, as might be expected, US imperialism has supported Moroccan colonialism.

This Moroccan colonialism has now become settler-colonialism, as colonialism often does. You average Moroccan goes livid if you mention their colony. He hates Israel, but Morocco is nothing but an Arab Muslim Israel. If men had a dollar for every drop of hypocrisy, we would be a world of millionaires.

There are numerous separatist conflicts in Somalia. As Somalians have refused to perform their adult responsibilities and form a state, numerous parts of this exercise in anarchism in praxis (Why are the anarchists not cheering this on?) are walking away from the burning house. Who could blame them?

These splits seem to have little to do with language. One, Somaliland, was a former British colony and has a different culture than the rest of Somalia. Somaliland is now de facto independent, as Somalia, being a glorious exercise in anarchism, of course lacks an army to enforce its borders, or to do anything.

Jubaland has also split, but this has nothing to do with language. Instead, this may be rooted in a 36-year period in which it was a British colony. Soon after this period, they had their own postage stamps as an Italian colony.

There is at least one serious separatist conflict in Ethiopia in the Ogaden region, which is mostly populated by ethnic Somalis. Apparently this region used to be part of Somaliland, and Ethiopia probably has little claim to the region. This conflict has little do with language and more to do with conflicts rooted in colonialism and the illegitimate borders of states.

There is also a conflict in the Oromo region of Ethiopia that is not going very far lately. These people have been fighting colonialism since Ethiopia was a colony and since then have been fighting against independent Ethiopia, something they never went along with. Language has a role here, but the colonization of a people by various imperial states plays a larger one.

There was a war in Southern Sudan that has now ended with the possibility that the area may secede.

There is a genocidal conflict in Darfur that the world is ignoring because it involves Arabs killing Blacks as they have always done in this part of the world, and the world only gets upset when Jews kill Muslims, not when Muslims kill Muslims.

This conflict has to do with the Sudanese Arabs treating the Darfurians with utter contempt – they regard them as slaves, as they have always been to these racist Arabs.

The conflict in Southern Sudan involved a region in rebellion in which many languages were spoken. The South Sudanese are also niggers to the racist Arabs, plus they are Christian and animist infidels to be converted by the sword by Sudanese Arab Muslims. Every time a non-Muslim area has tried to split off from or acted uppity with a Muslim state they were part of, the Muslims have responded with a jihad against and genocide of the infidels.

This conflict has nothing to do with language; instead it is a war of Arab Muslim religious fanatics against Christian and animist infidels.

There is a separatist movement in the South Cameroons in the nation of Cameroon in Africa. This conflict is rooted in colonialism. During the colonial era, South Cameroons was a de facto separate state. Many different languages are spoken here, as is the case in Cameroon itself. They may have a separate culture too, but this is just another case of separatism rooted in colonialism. The movement seems to be unarmed.

There is a separatist conflict in Angola in a region called Cabinda, which was always a separate Portuguese colony from Angola.

As this area holds 60% of Angola’s oil, it’s doubtful that Angola will let it go, although almost all of Angola’s oil wealth is being stolen anyway by US transnationals and a tiny elite while 90% of the country starves, has no medicine and lives unemployed amid shacks along former roads now barely passable.

The Cabindans do claim to have a separate culture, but language does not seem to be playing much role here – instead, oil and colonialism are.

Syria does have a Kurdish separatist movement, as does Iran, Iraq, and Turkey – every state that has a significant number of Kurds. This conflict goes back to the post-World War 1 breakup of the Ottoman Empire. The Kurds, with thousands of years of history as a people, nominally independent for much of that time, were denied a state and sold out.

The new fake state called Turkey carved up part of Kurdistan, another part was donated to the British colony in Iraq and another to the French colony in Syria, as the Allies carved up the remains of the Empire like hungry guests at a feast.

This conflict is more about colonialism and extreme discrimination than language, though the Kurds do speak their own tongue. There is also a Kurdish separatist conflict in Iran, but I don’t know much about the history of the Iranian Kurds.

There is also an Assyrian separatist movement in Iraq and possibly in Syria. The movement is unarmed. The Assyrians have been horribly persecuted by Arab nationalist racists in the region, in part because they are Christians. They have been targeted by Islamo-Nazis in Iraq during this Iraq War with a ferocity that can only be described as genocidal.

The Kurds have long persecuted the Assyrians in Iraqi Kurdistan. There have been regular homicides of Assyrians in the north, up around the Mosul region. This is just related to the general way that Muslims treat Christian minorities in many Muslim states – they persecute them and even kill them. There is also a lot of land theft going on.

While the Kurdish struggle is worthwhile, it is becoming infected with the usual nationalist evil that afflicts all ethnic nationalism. This results in everyone who is not a Kurdish Sunni Muslim being subjected to varying degrees of persecution, disenfranchisement and discrimination. It’s a nasty part of the world.

In Syria, the Assyrians live up near the Turkish and Iraqi borders. Arab nationalist racists have been stealing their land for decades now and relocating the Assyrians to model villages, where they languish in poverty. Assad’s regime is not so secular and progressive as one might suspect.

There is a separatist conflict in Bougainville in New Guinea. I am sure that many different tongues are spoken on that island, as there are 800 different tongues spoken in Papua New Guinea. The conflict is rooted in the fact that Bougainville is rich in copper, but almost all of this wealth is stolen by Papua New Guinea and US multinationals, so the Bougainville people see little of it. Language has little or nothing to do with it.

There are separatist movements in the Ahwaz and Balochistan regions of Iran, along with the aforementioned Kurdish movement. It is true that different languages are spoken in these regions, but that has little to do with the conflict.

Arabic is spoken in Khuzestan, the land of the Iranian Arabs. This land has been part of Persia for around 2,000 years as the former land of Elam. The Arabs complain that they are treated poorly by the Persians, and that they get little revenue to their region even though they are sitting on a vast puddle of oil and natural gas.

Iran should not be expected to part with this land, as it is the source of much of their oil and gas wealth. Many or most Iranians speak Arabic anyway, so there is not much of a language issue. Further, Arab culture is promoted by the Islamist regime even at the expense of Iranian culture, much to the chagrin of Iranian nationalists.

The Ahwaz have been and are being exploited by viciously racist Arab nationalists in Iraq, and also by US imperialism, and most particularly lately, British imperialism, as the British never seem to have given up the colonial habit. This conflict is not about language at all. Most Ahwaz don’t even want to separate anyway; they just want to be treated like humans by the Iranians.

Many of Iran’s 8% Sunni population lives in Balochistan. The region has maybe 2% of Iran’s population and is utterly neglected by Iran. Sunnis are treated with extreme racist contempt by the Shia Supremacists who run Iran. This conflict has to do with the fight between the Shia and Sunni wings of Islam and little or nothing to do with language.

There is a separatist movement in Iran to split off Iranian Azerbaijan and merge it with Azerbaijan proper. This movement probably has little to do with language and more to do with just irredentism. The movement is not going to go very far because most Iranian Azeris do not support it.

Iranian Azeris actually form a ruling class in Iran and occupy most of the positions of power in the government. They also control a lot of the business sector and seem to have a higher income than other Iranians. This movement has been co-opted by pan-Turkish fascists for opportunistic reasons, but it’s not really going anywhere. The CIA is now cynically trying to stir it up with little success. The movement is peaceful.

There is a Baloch insurgency in Pakistan, but language has little to do with it. These fiercely independent people sit on top of a very rich land which is ruthlessly exploited by Punjabis from the north. They get little or no return from this natural gas wealth. Further, this region never really consented to being included in the Pakistani state that was carved willy-nilly out of India in 1947.

It is true that there are regions in the Caucasus that are rebelling against Russia. Given the brutal and bloody history of Russian imperial colonization of this region and the near-continuous rebellious state of the Muslims resident there, one wants to say they are rebelling against Imperial Russia.

Chechnya is the worst case, but Ingushetia is not much better, and things are bad in Dagestan too. There is also fighting in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia. These non-Chechen regions are getting increasingly radicalized as consequence of the Chechen War. There has also been a deliberate strategy on the part of the Chechens to expand the conflict over to the other parts of the Caucasus.

Past rebellions were often pan-Caucasian also. Although very different languages are spoken in these areas, different languages are still spoken all across Russia. Language has little to do with these conflicts, as they have more to do with Russian imperialism and colonization of these lands and the near 200-year violent resistance of these fierce Muslim mountain tribes to being colonized by Slavic infidels.

There is not much separatism in the rest of Russia.

Tuva reserves the right to split away, but this is rooted in their prior history as an independent state within the USSR (Tell me how that works?) for two decades until 1944, when Stalin reconquered it as a result of the conflict with the Nazis. The Tuvans accepted peacefully.

Yes, the Tuvans speak a different tongue, but so do all of the Siberian nations, and most of those are still with Russia. Language has little to do with the Tuvan matter.

There is also separatism in the Bashkir Republic and Adygea in Russia. These have not really gone anywhere. Only 21% of the residents of
Adygea speak Circassian, and they see themselves as overrun by Russian-speaking immigrants. This conflict may have something to do with language. The Adygean conflict is also peripherally related the pan-Caucasian struggle above.

In the Bashkir Republic, the problem is more one of a different religion – Islam, as most Bashkirs are Muslim. It is not known to what degree language has played in the struggle, but it may be a factor. The Bashkirs also see themselves as overrun by Russian-speaking immigrants. It is dubious that the Bashkirs will be able to split off, as the result will be a separate nation surrounded on all sides by Russia.

The Adygean, Tuvan and Bashkir struggles are all peaceful.

The conflict in Georgia is complex. A province called Abkhazia has split off and formed their own de facto state, which has been supported with extreme cynicism by up and coming imperialist Russia, the same clown state that just threatened to go to war to defend the territorial integrity of their genocidal Serbian buddies. South Ossetia has also split off and wants to join Russia.

Both of these reasonable acts prompted horrible and insane wars as Georgia sought to preserve its territorial integrity, though it has scarcely been a state since 1990, and neither territory ever consented to being part of Georgia.

The Ossetians and Abkhazians do speak separate languages, and I am not certain why they want to break away, but I do not think that language has much to do with it. All parties to these conflicts are majority Orthodox Christians.

Myanmar is a hotbed of nations in rebellion against the state. Burma was carved out of British East India in 1947. Part of Burma had actually been part of British India itself, while the rest was a separate colony called Burma. No sooner was the ink dry on the declaration of independence than most of these nations in rebellion announced that they were not part of the deal.

Bloody rebellions have gone on ever since, and language has little or nothing to do with any of them. They are situated instead on the illegitimacy of not only the borders of the Burmese state, but of the state itself.

Thailand does have a separatist movement, but it is Islamic. They had a separate state down there until the early 1800’s when they were apparently conquered by Thais. I believe they do speak a different language down there, but it is not much different from Thai, and I don’t think language has anything to do with this conflict.

There is a conflict in the Philippines that is much like the one in Thailand. Muslims in Mindanao have never accepted Christian rule from Manila and are in open arms against the state. Yes, they speak different languages down in Mindanao, but they also speak Tagalog, the language of the land.

This just a war of Muslims seceding because they refuse to be ruled by infidels. Besides, this region has a long history of independence, de facto and otherwise, from the state. The Moro insurgency has little to nothing to do with language.

There are separatist conflicts in Indonesia. The one in Aceh seems to have petered out. Aceh never agreed to join the fake state of Indonesia that was carved out of the Dutch East Indies when the Dutch left in 1949.

West Papua is a colony of Indonesia. It was invaded by Indonesia with the full support of US imperialism in 1965. The Indonesians then commenced to murder 100,000 Papuans over the next 40 years. There are many languages spoken in West Papua, but that has nothing to do with the conflict. West Papuans are a racially distinct people divided into vast numbers of tribes, each with a separate culture.

They have no connection racially or culturally with the rest of Indonesia and do not wish to be part of the state. They were not a part of the state when it was declared in 1949 and were only incorporated after an Indonesian invasion of their land in 1965. Subsequently, Indonesia has planted lots of settler-colonists in West Papua.

There is also a conflict in the South Moluccas , but it has more to do with religion than anything else, since there is a large number of Christians in this area. The South Moluccans were always reluctant to become a part of the new fake Indonesian state that emerged after independence anyway, and I believe there was some fighting for a while there. The South Moluccan struggle has generally been peaceful ever since.

Indonesia is the Israel of Southeast Asia, a settler-colonial state. The only difference is that the Indonesians are vastly more murderous and cruel than the Israelis.

There are conflicts in Tibet and East Turkestan in China. In the case of Tibet, this is a colony of China that China has no jurisdiction over. The East Turkestan fight is another case of Muslims rebelling against infidel rule. Yes, different languages are spoken here, but this is the case all over China.

Language is involved in the East Turkestan conflict in that Chinese have seriously repressed the Uighur language, but I don’t think it plays much role in Tibet.

There is also a separatist movement in Inner Mongolia in China. I do not think that language has much to do with this, and I believe that China’s claim to Inner Mongolia may be somewhat dubious. This movement is unarmed and not very organized.

There are conflicts all over India, but they don’t have much to do with language.

The Kashmir conflict is not about language but instead is rooted in the nature of the partition of India after the British left in 1947. 90% of Kashmiris wanted to go to Pakistan, but the ruler of Kashmir was a Hindu, and he demanded to stay in India.

The UN quickly ruled that Kashmir had to be granted a vote in its future, but this vote was never allowed by India. As such, India is another world-leading rogue and scofflaw state on a par with Israel and Indonesia. Now the Kashmir mess has been complicated by the larger conflict between India and Pakistan, and until that is all sorted out, there will be no resolution to this mess.

Obviously India has no right whatsoever to rule this area, and the Kashmir cause ought to be taken up by all progressives the same way that the Palestinian one is.

There are many conflicts in the northeast, where most of the people are Asians who are racially, often religiously and certainly culturally distinct from the rest of Indians.

None of these regions agreed to join India when India, the biggest fake state that has ever existed, was carved out of 5,000 separate princely states in 1947. Each of these states had the right to decide its own future to be a part of India or not. As it turned out, India just annexed the vast majority of them and quickly invaded the few that said no.

“Bharat India”, as Indian nationalist fools call it, as a state, is one of the silliest concepts around. India has no jurisdiction over any of those parts of India in separatist rebellion, if you ask me. Language has little to do with these conflicts.

Over 800 languages are spoken in India anyway, each state has its own language, and most regions are not in rebellion over this. Multilingualism with English and Hindi to cement it together has worked just fine in most of India.

Sri Lanka’s conflict does involve language, but more importantly it involves centuries of extreme discrimination by ruling Buddhist Sinhalese against minority Hindu Tamils. Don’t treat your minorities like crap, and maybe they will not take up arms against you.

The rebellion in the Basque country of Spain and France is about language, as is Catalonian nationalism.

IRA Irish nationalism and the Scottish and Welsh independence movements have nothing to do with language, as most of these languages are not in good shape anyway.

The Corsicans are in rebellion against France, and language may play a role. There is an independence movement in Brittany in France also, and language seems to play a role here, or at least the desire to revive the language, which seems to be dying.

There is a possibility that Belgium may split into Flanders and Wallonia, and language does play a huge role in this conflict. One group speaks French and the other Dutch.

There is a movement in Scania, a part of Sweden, to split away from Sweden. Language seems to have nothing to do with it.

There is a Hungarian separatist movement, or actually, a national reunification or pan-Hungarian movement, in Romania. It isn’t going anywhere, and it unlikely to succeed. Hungarians in Romania have not been treated well and are a large segment of the population. This fact probably drives the separatism more than language.

There are many other small conflicts in Europe that I chose not to go into due to limitations on time and the fact that I am getting tired of writing this post! Perhaps I can deal with them at a later time. Language definitely plays a role in almost all of these conflicts. None of them are violent though.

To say that there are separatists in French Polynesia is not correct. This is an anti-colonial movement that deserves the support of anti-colonial activists the world over. The entire world, evidenced by the UN itself, has rejected colonialism. Only France, the UK and the US retain colonies. That right there is notable, as all three are clearly imperialist countries. In this modern age, the value of retaining colonies is dubious.

These days, colonizers pour more money into colonies than they get out of them. France probably keeps Polynesia due to colonial pride and also as a place to test nuclear weapons and maintain military bases. As the era of French imperialism on a grand scale has clearly passed, France needs to renounce its fantasies of being a glorious imperial power along with its anachronistic colonies.

Yes, there is a Mapuche separatist movement in Chile, but it is not going anywhere soon, or ever.

It has little to do with language. The Mapudungan language is not even in very good shape, and the leaders of this movement are a bunch of morons. Microsoft recently unveiled a Mapudungan language version of Microsoft Windows. You would think that the Mapuche would be ecstatic. Not so! They were furious. Why? Oh, I forget. Some Identity Politics madness.

This movement has everything to do with the history of Chile. Like Argentina and Uruguay, Chile was one of the Spanish colonies that was settled en masse late. For centuries, a small colonial bastion battled the brave Mapuche warriors, but were held at bay by this skilled and militaristic tribe.

Finally, in the late 1800’s, a fanatical and genocidal war was waged on the Mapuche in one of those wonderful “national reunification” missions so popular in the 1800’s (recall Italy’s wars of national reunification around this same time). By the 1870’s, the Mapuche were defeated and suffered a devastating loss of life.

Yet all those centuries of only a few Spanish colonists and lots of Indians had made their mark, and at least 70% of Chileans are mestizos, though they are mostly White (about 80% White on average). The Mapuche subsequently made a comeback and today number about 9% of the population.

Because they held out so long and so many of them survived, they are one of the most militant Amerindian groups in the Americas. They are an interesting people, light-skinned and attractive, though a left-wing Chilean I knew used to chortle about how hideously ugly they were.

Hawaiian separatism is another movement that has a lot to do with colonialism and imperialism and little to do with language. The Hawaiian language, despite some notable recent successes, is not in very good shape. The Hawaiian independence movement offers nothing to non-Hawaiians (I guess only native Hawaiians get to be citizens!) and is doomed to fail.

Hawaiians are about 22% of the population, and they are the only ones that support the independence movement. No one else supports it. It’s not going anywhere. The movers and shakers on the island (Non-Hawaiians for the most part!) all think it’s ridiculous.

There are separatists in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, but I doubt that language has much to do with it. Like the myriad other separatist struggles in the NE of India, these people are ethnically Asians and as such are not the same ethnicity as the Caucasians who make up the vast majority of the population of this wreck of a state.

This is another conflict that is rooted in a newly independent fake state. The Chittagong Hill Tracts were incorporated into Bangladesh after its independence from Pakistan in 1971. As a fake new state, the peoples of Bangladesh had a right to be consulted on whether or not they wished to be a part of it. The CHT peoples immediately said that they wanted no part of this new state.

At partition, the population was 98.5% Asian. They were Buddhists, Hindus and animists. Since then, the fascist Bangladesh state has sent Bengali Muslim settler-colonists to the region. The conflict is shot through with racism and religious bigotry, as Muslim Bengalis have rampaged through the region, killing people randomly and destroying stuff as they see fit. Language does not seem to have much to do with this conflict.

I don’t know much about the separatist struggle of the Moi in Vietnam, but I think it is more a movement for autonomy than anything else. The Moi are Montagnards and have probably suffered discrimination at the hands of the state along with the rest of the Montagnards.

Zanzibar separatism in Tanzania seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with language, but has a lot more to do with geography. Zanzibar is a nice island off the coast of Tanzania which probably wants nothing to do with the mess of a Tanzanian state.

The conflict also has a lot to do with race. Most residents of Zanzibar are either Arabs or descendants of unions between Arabs and Africans. In particular, they deny that they are Black Africans. I bet that is the root of the conflict right there.

There were some Talysh separatists in Azerbaijan a while back, but the movement seems to be over. I am not sure what was driving them, but language doesn’t seem to have been a big part of it. Just another case of new members of a fake new state refusing to go along for the ride.

There were some Gagauz separatists in Moldova a while back, but the movement appears to have died down. Language does seem to have played a role here, as the Gagauz speak a Turkic tongue totally unrelated to the Romance-speaking Moldovans.

Realistically, it’s just another case of a fake new state emerging and some members of the new state saying they don’t want to be a part of it, and the leaders of the fake new state suddenly invoking inviolability of borders in a state with no history!

In summary, as we saw above, once we get into Europe, language does play a greater role in separatist conflict, but most of these European conflicts are not violent. In the rest of the world, language plays little to no role in the vast majority of separatist conflicts.

The paranoid and frankly fascist notion voiced by rightwing nationalists the world over that any linguistic diversity in the world within states must be crushed as it will inevitably lead to separatism at best or armed separatism at worst is not supported by the facts.

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by Robert A. Lindsay | December 18, 2010 · 10:27 PM

The Socialist International

The Internationale is one of my favorite songs of all time. This is the Billy Bragg version. The Internationale is the international anthem of:

The international Communist movement in all its varieties
The international Left anarchist movement (not the right-anarchist movement)
The international socialist movement
The international social-democratic movement

Unfortunately, the song is associated with Commies, so it’s widely hated, particularly in the US. However, it’s a fact that it’s also the anthem of socialists and social democrats all over the world.

The video lists the parties in the Socialist International. Some of those parties have badly sold out – the Labor Party in the UK is a catastrophe. The Australian Labor Party has sold out in the worst way, and the New Zealand Labor Party is the same. Accion Democratica is a horrible anti-Chavez party in Venezuela. I don’t think they ever belonged in the SI. The MSZP in Hungary is not a socialist party. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany has serious problems, and many would say they don’t belong in the SI.

As you can see (obviously) the US Democratic Party is not a member of the Socialist International. I’m honestly sick and tired of hearing how Barack Obama is a socialist. 53% of Americans in a recent poll said Obama is a socialist. That shows that not only are most Americans retarded, but they’re also insane. I don’t know anyone on the Left who thinks that Obama is a socialist. We think the “Obama is a socialist” line is some kind of a sick joke.

He’s a neoliberal capitalist politician slightly to the left of the reactionary sociopaths in the Republican Party. To be fair and honest, I think he is on the center-right of US politics. You see the US Right is so insane that they think center-right pols like Obama are socialists!

The fist clenching a rose is the symbol of the Socialist International.

People think that greeting people with “comrade” is an exclusively Communist type greeting. Hence, it is widely disparaged in the US. However, it is perfectly acceptable for socialists to call each other “comrade” also. “Comrade” is not an exclusively Commie term.

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by Robert A. Lindsay | November 30, 2010 · 11:06 PM

Jews, European, Americans, National Difference, and Accomplishment

A very interesting comment by Wade From MO. I happen to agree with him, but feel free to discuss. I get so tired of IQ reductionism. Nature provides the clay, cultures the sculptor! It’s so true, I don’t even see why we bother debating except for all these ideologues with axes to grind.

I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the impact of national characteristics in types and ‘flavor’ of accomplishment?I think it is quite an interesting question. Look for example at Germany/Austria. German philosophy is widely know as being highbrow and almost impenetrable (read Kant). It is traditionally more idealistic in outlook. In Germany/Austria, at least early in the 20th century, there was the tradition of the philosopher-scientist. Men like David Hilbert, Albert Einstein, and Gottlieb Frege made great breakthroughs in science that also had a huge philosophical significance.

Of particular interest is the relationship between Albert Einstein and the great logician Kurt Godel. Both were extremely interested and inspired by Kant. Their work has almost mystical overtones, at least when it first came out. Godel was a well known Platonist and this is said to have been a large influence on his philosophic views.

England, however, is quite different. The English have always been a more practical people. Metaphysics has been looked down upon at times there. Originally Isaac Newton only wanted to talk about experiments. He thought the ideas of atoms and other unseen things was unscientific. England has had a lot of physicists and engineers who were great, but a considerably lower, but still significant, number of pure mathematicians.

The United States has gone to the extreme. Americans, at least until a few decades ago, were probably the most practical of scientifically advanced peoples. Americans abound in the annuls of technology and engineering from about 1850-1950 but have almost a total dearth of significant mathematicians. While America did have some significant theoretical physicists, it seems most of out most important ones at this time were experimental physicists.

America has gotten better on theoretical things in this past half century though. If you want an idea of the people in this era look at Charles Murray’s “Human Accomplishment.” Some people don’t like the methodology, but the figures closely resemble things I’ve read about.

What does this have to do with Jews?

It just seems to me that, while they may have higher IQ’s, Jews can’t overcome their host societies. Something I thought was interesting in Murray’s book was that he points out that while Jews may have disproportionately high amounts of influential people, they all existed in societies that were already producing influential people.

Jews were great physicists and mathematicians in Germany and Hungary, but those entire societies were known for physicists and mathematicians. Jews became important figures in the United States, but they begin to come out after the civil war when all of America began exploding with scientists, especially inventors and engineers.

I’ve never heard of Jews making great contributions to science or culture where the rest of society is not. How many great Jews scientists have come from Latin America? Historically there were some Jews down there and there are today, but they don’t put out geniuses like they do in the US. Even Israel doesn’t seem to produce smarter Jews like the US. Maybe it’s because the US has a higher proportion of Ashkenazi Jews and Israel has more Arab Jews. I don’t think this can account for it all though.

I don’t think even Jewish intelligence can break out of a fundamentally dumb culture. There has to be something more than just IQ in the air to make a society that will contribute fundamentally to the intellectual and cultural life of mankind.

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Filed under Americas, Britain, Culture, Europe, European, Europeans, Germany, History, Hungary, Intelligence, Israel, Jews, Latin America, Middle East, Modern, North America, Philosophy, Psychology, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, Science, The Jewish Question, USA

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