Category Archives: Marxism

by | November 14, 2017 · 11:18 PM

A Motto of the Alt Left, Via Liberation Theology

La gente, unida! Jamas sera vencido!

The people, united! Will never be defeated!

– An old Castroite Marxist revolutionary chant from Central America and South America, with roots back especially to the great Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the FMLN in El Salvador (who I used to buy guns for), the URNG in Guatemala, probably the ELN in Colombia, and probably the great FARC in Colombia.

All of these movements except the FARC were “Christian Communists” or “Catholic Communists.” Most of the rank and file guerrillas all the way up to the leadership were Catholics. In Nicaragua, leader Daniel Ortega was and still is a practicing Catholic and one of the top leaders of the Sandinistas was Tomas Borge, a Catholic priest. The ELN was led by a former Catholic priest named Camilo Torres, who traded his frock for an AK-47 and led a guerrilla group in the mountains of northwestern Colombia. He was killed soon after he started the ELN in 1964. The ELN has never renounced its Catholic roots and is a de facto “Catholic Marxist” organization.

 

The Eastern Catholic Church or Eastern Orthodox have been much more progressive than the  Catholic hierarchy, but that was not so at the  beginning of the century when the Cheka executed over 12,000 top ranking Orthodox officials in first several years of the Revolution. The Russian Orthodox Church or at least many believers are quite leftwing these days. They often hobnob with Communists, Leftists and even monarchists. Even the monarchists are pretty leftwing in Russia today.  Russia is a place where everyone is leftwing. There is no Right in Russia. Well actually there is,  but the Right has only 10-15% support. Putin’s party is defined as “Russian conservatism” but Putin says he still believes in the  ideals of Communism and socialism which he regards as very similar to the Biblical values of the Russian Orthodox Church. This marriage is not unusual and high ranking Church officials even today regularly make pro-socialist and pro-Communist remarks. Sort of ” Jesus as a Bolshevik” if you will. Stalin himself was studying to be a priest in a sen\minary of the Georgian Orthodox Church when he gave it up to be a full-time bank robber/revolutionary.  The thing is that you cannot understand Stalin at all until you understand his deep background in the Orthodox religion. Although Stalin called himself an atheist, he remained deeply Orthodox in  his mindset until he died. He ever revived the Church during and after the war for patriotic reasons. Stalin was very much a social conservative and his social conservatism was deeply inflected by his Georgian Orthodox seminarian roots, which he never renounced.

The Orthodox Christian churches of the Arab World have always been leftwing, along with the Church in Iran and Turkey. George Habash, founder of the Marxist PFLP in Palestine, was a Greek Orthodox. Many of the rank and file even of the PFLP armed guerrilla have always been Orthodox Christians. The Greek Orthodox SSNP in Lebanon and Syria are practically Communists. Interestingly, this was the first group to widely use suicide bombings early in 1982 and 1983 in the first years of the Lebanese Civil War. Most of the first suicide bombings, up to scores or hundreds in first few years, were by Communists, often Christian Orthodox Communists. Many of these suicide bombers were even women. It was only later that the Shia adopted the technique.

The man who created the Baath Party, the Iraqi Michel Aflaq, was an Orthodox Christian. The party had Leftist roots as an officially socialist party. Tariq Aziz, high-ranking member of Saddam’s Baath party, was an Orthodox Christian and a Leftist. Assad’s party in Syria is a Leftist party. Most Syrian Orthodox Christians are strong supporters of Assad, the Baath Party and Leftism. Recently the Syrian Defense Minister was a Christian.

The few Orthodox Christians left in Turkey are typically Leftists.

Many Greek Orthodox are Leftists. Serbian Orthodox laypeople and hierarchy long supported Milosevic, who was a Communist.

The Russians who violently split away from Ukraine in the Donbass were so Leftist that they called their new states “people’s republics.” Most of the leadership and the armed forces are Orthodox Christians. The armed groups had priests serving alongside in most cases. They often led battlefield burials for the troops.

There are deep roots of this sort of thing in Russia. Tolstoy is very Christian in an Orthodox sense, but he is also often seen as a socialist. Dostoevsky’s work is uber-Christian from an Orthodox point of view and he is not very friendly to radicals. However, before he started writing, he was arrested for Leftist revolutionary activities and sentenced to prison in Siberia. Most of his colleagues were hanged and Dostoevsky only barely escaped by the tip of his nose. Dostoevsky was not very nice to the rich either. No Russian writer of that time was, not even Turgenev. The rich destroyed 19th Century Russia. Anyone with eyes can see that. It would have been hard for any artistic heart above room temperature to not hate the Russian rich and feel sympathy for the peasantry. Turgenev’s first books were paeans to the Russian peasantry, and he was raised on an estate!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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by | November 14, 2017 · 11:18 PM

Liberation Theology: Jesus Christ as Marxist Guerrilla in the Jungle with a Machine Gun

From the Sandinistas of Nicaragua to the URNG of Guatemala to the guerrilla column in Honduras led by the Irish Catholic priest in 1983 to Father Aristide’s Lavalas in Haiti to the ELN in Colombia to the Chavistas in Venezuela, all of these radical leftwing groups had one thing in common: they all came out of Liberation Theology, more or less a “Jesus Christ, Marxist guerrilla in the jungle with a machine gun” type of armed to the teeth Catholicism.

Liberation Theology came out a movement of Professors of Pedagogy in Brazil in 1964, especially an influential book written by a priest named Gutierrez. The argument was that teaching in Latin America was an overtly political act, and teachers should ideally by Leftist revolutionaries. Out of this flowed many documents laying out Liberation Theology or “the preferential option for the poor.” It was most powerful among lay workers, of which there are many in Latin America. In heavily Catholic areas, Catholic lay workers are nearly an army.

The French Communist Party in  France long had Catholic roots as did the PCI in Italy. Near the end of his life, Fidel Castro praised Catholicism and said he was a “cultural Catholic.” Hugo Chavez and the Chavistas were of course a ferocious part of the Catholic Left. Chavez Leftism was heavily infused with the social teachings of the Catholic Church.

Even the viciously anti-Christian Sendero Luminoso in Peru had many supporters in the Catholic Church, mostly at the lay and priest level but surprisingly all the way up to the bishop level. Sendero killed many reactionary Protestant missionaries in their war, but they left the priests alone.

The great Edith Lagos, a 19 year old year revolutionary woman who led one of the first Sendero columns, was killed in battle in 1982. Her funeral in Ayacucho at night a bit later attracted 30,000 visitors, nearly the entire population of the town. Everyone was in line for the funeral – the local police, the local government and of course the entire local  Catholic clergy. The line wormed all through the city for hours far into the night. She was treated to an actual Catholic funeral right there in the church led by the local priest. Her casket stood next to the priest as he delivered his sermon. It had a Sendero Communist flag on it.

A communist flag on a coffin in a Catholic church! The crowd then filed out through the town to the graveyard where she was buried in the middle of the night. Her tomb exists to this day, although it has been repeatedly bombed by reactionaries. Local Indians make patronages to the tomb on a regular basis, leaving flowers at it. Rumor has it that she has obtained informal sainthood and is now Saint Edith Lagos in the local Catholic Churches.

FARC called itself officially atheist, although they had the support of many priests in the countryside where the FARC held sway. Nevertheless, most FARC rank and file were Catholics.

In Paraguay, a former guerrilla was elected president. He was also a former Catholic priest.

The armed Marxist Left in Uruguay and Brazil also had deep links to the Catholic Church.

In the US, we have something called Cold War liberals. This is the pathetic Left of the United States,  people who would be rightwingers or center-right anywhere else on Earth.

 

 

 

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Filed under Brazil, Caribbean, Catholicism, Central America, Christianity, Colombia, Conservatism, Cuba, Europe, France, Haiti, Honduras, Italy, Latin America, Left, Liberalism, Marxism, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Political Science, Regional, Religion, South America, Uruguay, USA, Venezuela

by | November 14, 2017 · 11:17 PM

The Reactionary Catholic Church Hierarchy and a Link to Secretive Syncretic Religions of the Middle East

The Catholic Church hierarchy nearly everywhere has been reactionary.  The Catholic Church had been in with the ruling classes in Europe forever. This was one of the main reasons why the Bible was never translated into the vernacular and why masses were always held in Latin. The people could neither read not speak Latin, hence there was a huge disconnect between the Church hierarchy and the people.

This is similar to many other religions, especially eclectic religions of the Middle East such as Yezidism, Alawism and Druze. In all of these religions, the secrets of the religion are usually held in secret by a priestly caste of mostly men, though the Druze actually have female priests. For a long time, the secret book of the Yezidis was thought  to not even exist except perhaps only in oral form – this is how secret it was. This ended when an actual copy fell into Western hands around 1900.

In all of these religions, the “real true” religion is in the hands of the priestly caste and they make sure not to tell any outsiders what the religion is about. Hence it has been very hard to get good data on any of these religions. The people are fed some watered down version of the religion that doesn’t mean much of anything and  if you ask the average Alwai, Druze or Yezidi what their religion is about, you will only get some diluted harmless synopsis acceptable for outside ears. Usually what the people say the religion believes and what it really believes are two different things altogether.

The Catholic Church was in with the rich and in Europe especially in the Middle Ages it was very wealthy. It was this extreme wealth that enabled the Church to build those huge architectural masterpieces we see in the form of Medieval churches across the north of Europe, especially in France and England. They sold the peasants pie in the sky when you die like religions always do. It was this anti-people, pro-rich philosophy that made Marx so hostile to religion. He was not so much against it because he was a materialist and he thought it was superstition; he was also against it because he thought it was reactionary.

The hierarchy of the Church remained reactionary all through the  20th Century. Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador and the four Catholic priests assassinated in 1989 at the start of the great guerrilla offensive (a crime that was plotted in the US ambassador’s office of the US Embassy two days before) were the exceptions to this rule. The Church hierarchy in Venezuela and Nicaragua remain rightwing and hostile to the Sandinistas and Chavistas to this very day. Same with the church hierarchy in Spain to the best of my knowledge.

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Filed under Alawi, Catholicism, Central America, Christian, Christianity, Druze, El Salvador, Europe, History, Islam, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Marxism, Middle Ages, Nicaragua, Political Science, Regional, Religion, Shiism, South America, Spain, Venezuela, Yezidism

by | November 14, 2017 · 11:15 PM

Catholic Communism: The Story of the Catholic Left in Europe

The link between Catholicism and the Left has been ongoing for some time now. In Eastern Europe, especially in Czechoslovakia, Catholic Communists were common enough to form an actual movement. Obviously there were Catholic Communists in Spain and particularly in the Basque Country. The ETA was virtually a Catholic Communist revolutionary movement. The armed Left, especially the Communists, started killing priests in the Spanish Civil War. Although burning churches has been an odd tradition in Spain for a good century now, the actual killing of priests did not go over well. Of course the same could be said of the great IRA in Ireland, most of whom were Catholics.

In Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania, unfortunately, the Catholics were virulently anti-Communist for whatever reason. The Communists under Stalin brutally repressed the church, killing many priests and lay workers. In Poland and Ukraine, Catholicism got wrapped up in an anti-Communism in a horrible way. One of the main beefs against Communism particularly in Poland was that the Communists were not only anti-nationalists but mostly that they were anti-Catholic. At any rate, Catholicism and nationalism are so wrapped together in Poland that one can hardly see where one ends and the other begins.

Nevertheless, most of the virulent Polish nationalist Catholic anti-Communist were committed socialists. However, many of these folks who were often also anti-Semites as these Poles linked Communism with Jews. Anti-Semitism in Poland is as old as dirt. Yitzhak Rabin once noted that Poles learn their anti-Semitism at their mother’s breast – it’s that deeply rooted in the culture. There was a nationalist rally in Poland recently that drew a huge crowd of 50,000. One of the things that they demanded was a Judenfrei Poland. The problem is that there are probably no more than 4,000 Jews in Poland to this day. One wonders what evil effects such a tiny community could have on the national body politic, yet this shows you the intensity and paranoia of Polish antisemitism.

In Eastern Europe, there is a big difference between a socialist and a Communist. Almost everyone you meet in Eastern Europe is a socialist or practically one, although Poland is particularly pathetic in this regard, a sorry habit in light of the centuries of abuse the reactionary feudal lords committed against the 95% serf Poles for centuries. The Polish ruling class is still feudal in nature and has changed little since the days of the lords of the land. It also has deep ties to a deeply conservative Polish army, which has always had strong links to the feudal royal ruling classes.

It is a little told story, but when Communism first came to Poland, it was quite popular, particularly among the downtrodden peasants. It was also very popular among the urban proletariat and to some extent among intellectuals. But the brutality of the Polish Communists working in the model of Stalin quickly doomed the project. The Polish Communists were hoist on their own petard. Even Stalin recognized the futility of the project. “Imposing Communism on the Poles,” Stalin said, “Was like trying to put a saddle on a cow.” Basically doomed from Day one.

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by | November 7, 2017 · 9:58 PM

Alt Left: 100th Anniversary of the October Revolution

Today, November 7, is the actual 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. They call it the October Revolution, but actually occurred in November because the Russians use a different calendar than we do.

I do not have a 100% negative view of the October Revolution. I think there were some good things about it. However, it was a military coup and it certainly was not democratic, but the Leninists never intended to be democrats anyway. The excesses of the Cheka, in particular the executions of 12,000 officials of the Russian Orthodox Church (12,000 priests and 500 bishops) must be condemned. Lenin started executing his political opponents pretty quickly. I don’t necessarily object to putting those folks in prison, but once in prison, they should have been afforded basic rights.

A high ranking member of the Bolsheviks, a Jewish man, was in charge of Legal Affairs. He interviewed an opposition member in prison and then went to talk to Lenin to ask what was to be done with this man. He was expecting Lenin to grant him the typical rights of the accused, but the man was shocked when Lenin was outraged at the suggestion that this man deserved any basic rights at all. To Lenin, he was a counterrevolutionary, and as such he was going to be shot. Lenin failed to understand what was so controversial about that.

I will never support the use of the Cheka, the organization of the firing squad, in killing opponents of the Revolution. Of course I will never support the Whites, but the excesses of the Cheka should not be supported by any fair-minded person.

With that said, I think the Alt Left should not see the October Revolution as 100% negative, and we should not support the Whites. And only 15% of Russians today say they are better off now than they were in the USSR. Anti-Communist propaganda in the US and the West leaves much to be desired. In particular, it is at odds with the testimonies of most people who actually lived under Communism. At the very least, most people think that they had it better under Communism than they do today based on polls taken in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Communism wasn’t paradise, but whatever replaced it doesn’t seem to have been any better and most people think it is worse.

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Filed under Christianity, Eurasia, Europe, History, Left, Marxism, Modern, Orthodox, Regional, Religion, Revolution, Russia, USSR

by | October 31, 2017 · 11:22 PM

Alt Left: Happy October Everyone!

This October was the 100th anniversary of one of the greatest moments of the 20th Century – the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in October, 1917. I recently rewatched the movie Reds. If you want to know what really happened at this time in Russia, you ought to watch that movie. There had been an election and the Mensheviks or Social Democrats had won. The Bolsheviks also took part, but they did not gain a majority. Despite antisemites ranting about how Jews caused Communism in Russia, in this election in 1917, 70% of Russian Jews voted for a Zionist party that was running at the time. So the vast majority of Russian Jews did not support the Bolsheviks (or even the other socialist parties for that ). So much for “Jewish Communism.”

Yes, Trotsky was a Jew, but he was a secular atheist Jew. He actually refused to identify as Jewish and said instead that his ethnicity was world proletarian. Lenin was 1/4 Jewish, but a lot of  people have a bit of Jew in them and it doesn’t make them Jewish. In Germany they have a saying, “There’s a little bit of Jew in every German.” This was actually such a problem in the Nazi era that they had to make all sorts of strict rules about who was a Jew. Nevertheless, ~150,000 half-Jews (not considered Jewish by the Nazis) not only served in the Wehrmacht but were actually members of the genocidally antisemitic SS!

There were a number of Jews heading the revolution but as you can see they did not even have the support of the majority of Russian Jews, or at least did not have that support in the earlier election. And there were as many Latvians of all people leading the revolution as Jews.

The Bolsheviks actually seized power by force. They had the help of masses of demobbed soldiers, home from the Front where they were running out of food, clothing, ammunition, everything. To say they were disenchanted would be an understatement. Rallies were being held all over Moscow and Saint Petersburg. These rallies were often joined by large numbers of industrial workers who also helped take part in the coup. So it was not a democratic takeover. It was actually a putschist regime. However,  I would say that they had huge and possibly even majority support at least when the Civil War got started. The Reds only won the Civil War because huge numbers of peasants went over to their side.

The Bolshevik Revolution was both good and bad. I agree that there were some bad things about it. I am appalled at how Lenin’s Cheka started murdering people very early on. An early Bolshevik, a Jew at that, was an attorney. After a prominent contra had been arrested, he visited the man in jail and then went to Lenin and asked what his plans were for the man.

The attorney, who worked for the Bolsheviks, thought the man would be granted the protections of the rule of law.  He was shocked when Lenin was outraged that the attorney thought that the man deserved such protections in the first place. Lenin said the man, along with all of the rest of the contras, should be executed. This was a Revolution! It was time for revolutionary justice. There was no time for the niceties of the rule of law and so forth. The attorney was stunned at Lenin’s brutality.

The Cheka executed a number of people in the early days by firing squad. Anti-Communist kooks give very high figures in the hundreds of thousands (including 50,000 Orthodox priests) but that cannot be correct. Instead a better figure may be ~4,000 executions.

While I am not happy at all with the brutal turn of the Revolution, I think there were some good things about the Russian Revolution. It definitely changed the course of history and humanity has not been the same since. It was surely one of the great events of the 20th Century.

I think most Alt Leftists, at least those on the Leftist (not the liberal) wing of the movement, would find at some positive things about the Russian Revolution. It is part of our heritage on the Left, for better or for worse.

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Filed under Anti-Semitism, Eurasia, Europe, Germany, History, Jews, Left, Marxism, Modern, Nazism, Political Science, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Revolution, Russia, Zionism

by | October 29, 2017 · 11:57 PM

Alt Left: Capitalism: A Smashing Success the World Over

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Whoops, I guess not.

That part about five vacant houses for every homeless person is particularly striking. Furthermore, this strikes me as a profound inefficiency, something the capitalists are always accusing socialism of.

And the fact that we grow enough food to feed the whole world, yet 1 billion go hungry and 18 million die of poverty every year also strikes me as profound inefficiency.

I would add that those homes are indeed occupied – they are occupied by the dead hand of Capital.

“Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”

– Karl Marx

Kind of hard to argue with Marx. That cold, head hand of Capital, that zombie plague that sucks out everything vital that makes our lives worth living, is one of the things that capitalist fanboys swoon about the most. It makes you wonder what sort of person is a capitalist fanboy? A sociopath?

Obviously the system is working. Working for someone, that is. The 1%. The question is, is it working for you?

One wonders how aliens would react if they landed here and we gleefully told them about how wonderful our system was. I mean, the greediest, cruelest, most sociopathic of all succeed and end up ruling society while almost everyone else fails relatively speaking?

In what sane universe could that possibly be a logical system? What’s so rational about it? It’s about as rational as a Goddamned wild jungle. With all of our vast intellect and knowledge, we cannot even improve on the brutality of the raw, cruel world of Nature – dirt, weeds, bugs, birds, minnows, and critters? We can’t even beyond that bullshit? Pathetic.

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Filed under Agricutlure, Capitalism, Capitalists, Death, Economics, Health, Left, Marxism, Scum, Social Problems, Socialism, Sociology

by | October 15, 2017 · 11:55 PM

Just Got a Lifetime Ban from Daily Kos

Daily Kos is Ground Zero for the Base of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party’s Base is more leftwing than the party itself in the same way that the Republican Base is more rightwing than the party itself. Party Bases tend to be like that. The Base of the Democratic Party would best be called the Left Wing of the Democratic Party. Now granted, there are some decent people on there. There are actually a fair number of Marxists and socialists hanging out in the Democratic Party Base.  After all, they have nowhere else to go. But this is a quite small percentage of the Base.

I have been banned for life from Daily Kos, and honestly it is a blessing because I absolutely despise most Democratic Party liberal types. The problem with them is that there’s nothing liberal about them. In any sane system, they would be something like what used to be called a Liberal Republican. They just flat out suck!

Their foreign policy is horrific. Almost all liberal Democrats are ((neocon)) fanatics. The whole left wing of the Democratic Party is completely overrun with a ((certain type of people)). As usual, they destroy that wing of the party as a result. They love Israel! The Democratic Party can’t get enough of wonderful Israel. Wonderful Israel is the greatest country on Earth.

Almost 100% of them support the war against the Syrian people we are waging with our Al Qaeda and ISIS allies. They hate Russia! They love the Ukrainian Nazis! Yeah, I know, makes no sense. They love Israel and they also love Al Qaeda, ISIS and real actual Nazis in the Ukraine. But that’s the exact geopolitics of (((certain people))) in the US, and as (((these people))) control this wing of the party, (((their))) values become everyone’s values. The love NATO! They hate North Korea, and some of them want to attack North Korea! They love US imperialism! They love the Pentagon! They love the CIA! They love the FBI!

Everyone on Kos loved this maniac named “Mad Dog” Maddis, the new general heading  up the Pentagon under Trump. Personally, I think he’s psycho, and he’s just another War Pig. Actually he’s worse than your ordinary War Pig. He’s a particularly belligerent type of militarist War Pig. A very frightening man.

And of course that whole wing of the party has been taken over by some time now by the most insane of the SJW’s.

They love free trade agreements! I would say 85% of Kossacks love the TPP, all because their hero Hitlery was pushing it. Kossacks suck! They love globalization!

They are all for Open Borders and Amnesty! As a matter of fact, I believe it has been a bannable offense on there for some time now to oppose illegal immigration.

I will say though that there are now some anti-Israel and anti-Zionist types on there. There are a few who support Syria and even some who support Russia. These might be 20% of Kossacks. However, Israel has become such a divisive hot button issue that I believe all discussion of the Israel-Palestinian Question has been banned. It’s nice to see that the Israel-Palestine Question has become incendiary at all in the Democratic Base though. Things are slowly changing.

There was actually a huge Bernie Sanders movement on Daily Kos, and there was a near civil war between Killary and Sanders supporters on there. Mods were continually having to wade in and sort out wild shouting matches and near virtual fistfights on the site. I did enjoy seeing the emergence of a Bernie wing. The one redeeming feature of the Base right now is this Bernie wing. Hope springs eternal!

On most economic type issues, Kossacks are generally very good. Of course they’re correct that this current crop of Republicans is worse than cancer. I agree. In fact, these Kossacks are the closest thing to “my people” anywhere on the Web. Which is partly why the ban was so painful.

OK, now for the ban story.

A Kossack wrote a typical article on there about one of the many false flags the (((US))) and Al Qaeda have been staging in Syria. This one was one of the many fake chemical weapons false flags. Unbelievably, there have been ~40-50 chemical weapons false flag attacks in Syria so far. The (((US government))) helped to propagandize every single one of them, and we were apparently directly involved in others.

I know that the DIA was directly involved in the famous Fake Sarin Gas Attack in Ghouta in the Damascus suburbs a few years ago. As has been the case in a number of these attacks, not only did Assad not shoot any Sarin or any other chemical weapons that day, even more bizarrely than that is the fact there was no Sarin of chemical weapons attack by anyone, Syria or the rebels, in Ghouta that day. The Fake Sarin Attack was like the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and all sorts of staged false flag bullshit the US engages in.

This was an attack that, incredibly, never even happened! We are talking about an event that never even occurred! Isn’t that incredible? The recent “Sarin” attack in Khan Sheikoun was similar. Once again, not only did Assad not shoot Sarin or any other chemical weapons (he has none to shoot), but the rebels didn’t either. Once again we are talking about an attack that never even happened. What happened instead, as in Ghouta, was a fake staged phony attack which was meant to portray the real one.

Anyway, this (((good goy))) on ((Kos)) was going on about the evil Assad, how he launches chemical weapons on his people and how we need to send our close allies ISIS and Al Qaeda in to finish him off. The usual Zionist jerkoff on (((Kos))). The place is swarming with Zionists. They are practically crawling all of the walls and even up on the ceiling of the place.

So I posted a comment where I said something like:

“What’s the name of your hometown? Tel Aviv?”

Basically questioning his loyalty to America and suggesting that he was guilty of dual loyalty.

Well, the other (((Kossacks))) absolutely flipped out and called in some (((moderators))). I was immediately labeled a Republican Trump-supporting troll. The (((commenters))) were beside themselves about my “outrageous, bizarre and appallingly anti-Semitic remark.” On the contrary, I was quite proud of that remark. Hey, if you are running interference for Israel, we have a right to check you out to make sure you do not have dual loyalty as so many of those types do.

So now I have a lifetime ban at ((Daily Kos)) for “anti-Semitism.”

Fuck ((Daily Kos)). Fuck the ((Democratic Party)). Fuck ((liberal Democrats)).

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by | October 4, 2017 · 8:54 PM

Jesus Was a Socialist

Modern Protestant Prosperity Doctrine is such a perversion of the spirit of Christianity that it can only be seen as a heresy.

Jesus famously said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into Heaven.” This comment is very poorly understood – most seem to think he is talking about a camel actually walking through the eye of a sewing needle, which is of course not possible. However, at the time, “The Eye of the Needle” was a pass high in the mountains of Palestine. It was indeed passable, but it was such an ardous climb over such rugged mountains that many camels simply could not hack the trek and were not able to accomplish the journey. Hence, it was possible for a camel to go through the Eye of the Needle, but it was not an easy task at all, and many simply could not cut it. And so it was with the rich and their chances of heavenly grace and redemption according to Jesus.

Liberation Theology, the Catholic doctrine of the Social Gospel updated and radicalized in Latin America to “Jesus with a machine gun” was utilized by many armed guerrilla groups as a religion of revolution, even armed revolution.

The philosophy of this doctrine was to preach for “the preferential option of the poor,” and this is right in accord with Catholic Social Gospel if not a supercharged form of it. It is seen in Latin America as a nearly subversive and even insurrectionist doctrine, and in a sense it is, although most LT preachers and lay people are not armed.

In fact, Venezuelan Bolivarianism or Chavismo was profoundly influenced by Liberation Theology and there is evidence that many of the other New Left regimes in Latin America were also. LT was a huge influence on the Sandinistas, the FMLN guerrillas and now politicians in El Salvador, the ELN in Colombia (founded by an actual priest with a machine gun, Camilo Torres), the PT of Lula and Dilma Youssef in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia, possibly Correa in Ecuador and certainly Paraguay under Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, a former priest and guerrilla who ruled that land until a US sponsored coup removed him.

The Lavalas Movement in Haiti of Jon Bertrand Aristide, also removed in a US-sponsored coup, was profoundly influenced by LT; in fact, Aristide himself was a preacher of Liberation Theology.

In recent decades, there has been a lot of discussion in Cuba about a “Catholic Communism” and now that believers may join the party, this movement seems to be on an upswing. The novel doctrine was that Catholicism and Marxism were indeed compatible with each other instead of being oxymoronic. Castro himself stated that he was a “social Catholic” a few years before he died.

The extent to which LT has influenced the regimes of Batchelet in Chile or Fernandez in Argentina, the former guerrillas in power in Uruguay under Jose Mujica, or Ollanta Humala in Peru is not known, although there were many LT preachers in Peru a few decades ago, and incredibly enough, many priests actually supported the Shining Path.

But the Social Gospel, Liberation Theology, and the “Catholic Communism” that developed in some European lands in the 20th Century have much more in common with a pure interpretation of Jesus’ teaching than the individualist and materialist Protestantism that developed in the US. “Jesus was a socialist” always makes more sense than “Jesus was a capitalist,” although most Evangelicals are loath to admit this. Nevertheless, they squirm and act uncomfortable when you bring it up, so it shows that on some level they at least worry it is true.

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Filed under Argentina, Bolivarianism, Brazil, Caribbean, Catholicism, Central America, Chile, Christianity, Colombia, Cuba, Economics, Ecuador, El Salvador, Latin America, Left, Marxism, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Regional, Religion, Revolution, Socialism, South America, Uruguay, Venezuela

by | 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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