Category Archives: Latin American Right

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.

1 Comment

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 | September 20, 2017 · 4:24 AM

Something Conservatives Will Never Understand: Armed Leftwing Revolutions Only Happen in Horrible Countries

I will grant that Colombia is more rightwing than the US, but at least they have a great Left. Hell, the Left down there is actually armed for Chrissake! They have guns, bombs, RPG’s full battle uniforms, you name it, and they use their weapons all the time to kill the conservative police and army, who very much deserve it.

This shows what happens when your society goes too rightwing or when your rightwing goes too rightwing. Not only do you get a monstrous, fascist, usually murderous Right, but, just as sure as night follows day, you end up with a very radical Left that in many cases arms itself against the murderous Right.

Extremes beget extremes. Do you really need to read Marx to figure that out? Hell, I bet I could explain that to a 5th grader and they would nod their head in agreement.

But show me an American conservative anywhere who agrees with that statement. Nope, according to the US Establishment, the radical Left rises out of ether for no apparent reason at all other than sheer fanatical evil to overthrow the capitalism that their ideology orders them to blindly hate.

While the USSR was still around, it was a convenient White Whale for any stirrings of the radical Left.

Why is the Left armed to the teeth down there, killing people left and right? Well, Number One is just because they are evil. Idiots, but evil idiots.

Are they taking up arms for any reason? Of course not, there is never an indigenous reason for any Left revolution. Well, what’s the cause of it? Cuba! And the USSR! The Cubans and the Russians put them up to it! Oh God, what crap this is. But this is the ideology of the entire US political establishment and the entire US media for decades now. And it is the lunatic ideology of the vast majority of the American people since 1946.

We lie like this because the truth is hard to swallow.

The Communists were not stupid. The individual CP’s in various countries generally felt that only when the capitalist conditions in the country approached a truly horrorshow of a Hell would there be reason for revolution. Otherwise they would always try to take power by peaceful means. Many a CP ruled many, many times that the country was not in a revolutionary situation and hence taking up arms was not justified. I can’t tell you how many documents I have read that said X country was not in a revolutionary situation right now so taking up arms was illegitimate.

Taking up arms was always an extreme last resort for any CP in any country. And when people did take up arms in what was seen as a non-revolutionary situation, as with the Shining Path in Peru, the vast majority of the Left lined up with the state against the Marxist rebels. Nevertheless, even in those cases there were variables. Towards the end the situation in Peru had gotten so horrific with the war and the monstrous turn of the state into a murderous charnelhouse that a number of parties around 1992 declared that the country was now in a revolutionary situation and it was acceptable to take up arms. That is why a number of other groups took up arms in 1992 at the peak of the war.

In many cases, CP’s even cruelly denied help to local CP’s on the grounds that they were not in a revolutionary situation.

Every American hates North Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh, but he was a rational man and North Vietnam was a reasonable state.

After the cancelled elections of 1954 which were ruined by the US (the UN ordered elections in the country, and the US ordered South Vietnam not to participate), the South Vietnamese Communist Party (really the Viet Cong) tried to obtain power by peaceful means. They were not armed with a single bullet. Nevertheless, with strong US support, the South Vietnamese government murdered 80,000 unarmed South Vietnamese Communist civilians between 1954-1960.

All this time, the South Vietnamese Communists were asking for permission from North Vietnam to take up arms. The North consistently refused armed support, so 80,000 Communists died. This shows you how grave most CP’s thought the decision to take up arms was. Finally in 1960, the North gave the South permission to take up arms, and the war was on. As you can see, South Vietnam started the Vietnam War by killing 80,000 unarmed civilians with the enthusiastic help of the US. The Viet Cong actually took up arms in self-defense. They simply got tired of sitting in their villages and waiting for the government to come murder them. They decided that if the state was going to try to kill them anyway, they might as well pick up a gun and defend themselves against the killers.

If you study most Communist revolutions in the 20th Century, this was the case in almost every single one of them. The decision to take up arms was only a last resort when conditions in the country deteriorated drastically and in particular when all peaceful methods of change were blocked. In the 20th Century, Communists almost always took up arms grudgingly, as a last resort and typically in self defense.

If you had a decent country, you never had to worry about an armed Left rebellion. If you had a shithole, well, a Left revolution was definitely something to worry about. The conclusion here is that every country that had an armed Left revolution in the 20th Century basically asked for it and got what they deserved. It was the fault of the leaders of every one of those countries for making conditions so horrible that the Left took up arms in the first place.

2 Comments

Filed under Asia, Capitalism, Cold War, Colombia, Conservatism, Economics, Fascism, History, Journalism, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Marxism, Modern, Peru, Political Science, Politics, Regional, Revolution, SE Asia, South America, US, US Politics, USSR, Vietnam, Vietnam War, War

by | June 25, 2017 · 10:21 AM

Repost: Average IQ’s of Liberals Versus Conservatives (with References)

Thought I would repost this with references. This finding is very robust in social science. Liberals are smart. Conservatives are idiots. That’s all there is to it, folks. But you knew that.

Jason Voorhees: Liberals in general have an IQ of 110 or above.

Quite an exaggeration. More like 105. 75% of the population has an IQ below 110. On the other hand, he is onto something.

We don’t call em conservatards for nothing, I guess.

Liberals are actually smarter than conservatives! Quite a bit smarter. And the more liberal you are, the smarter you. And the more conservative you are, the dumber you are. It’s a linear curve.

               IQ
Liberals       106  
Centrists      99
Conservatives  96

Source

I would argue that the reason for that is that conservatism is basically stupid. So of course stupid people support it. Fiscal conservatism is intelligent if you are rich and possibly if you are upper middle class, but it’s idiotic for everyone else because only the top 20% make money under rightwing economics. The entire 80% of the population loses money.

Political ideology

Ha ha! Conservatives are stupid! Liberals are smart! Something we always knew. No wonder they are called conservatards. Neener neener. Conservatives are so stupid they probably spell dumb “dum.” LOL.

Rightwing economics is a massive wealth transfer system from the poor and middle classes to the upper middle class and the rich. It’s basically a scam. Pure class war. Incidentally this has been proved all over the 3rd World, especially in Latin America. Surveys in Latin America under the neoliberal decades of failure showed that only the top 20% benefited under rightwing economics. The entire bottom 80% lost money. Furthermore, death rates skyrocketed and education figures collapsed. Neoliberalism has killed many millions of people. We may not have yet found a good alternative to capitalism, but capitalism surely continues to kill as sure as night follows day.

Oh and there is a reason why liberals control most US institutions. Although the idea of a liberal media is pathetic, 89% of media whores, I mean journalists, call themselves liberal. But universities are liberal. The only major US institution that is not liberal is business, which is conservative for basically self-serving interests because conservatism serves to line their pockets better while it picks the pockets of the poor and middle class. Steal from the poor and give to the rich. Reverse Robin Hood. That’s conservatism in action. The fact that the people calling themselves Christians in the US support Reverse Robin Hood is truly pathetic. Obviously they know nothing about how the Main Man lived his life.

References

Carl, Noah. 2014. Verbal Intelligence Is Correlated with Socially and Economically Liberal Beliefs. Intelligence, Volume 44, Pages 142-148.

Stankov, Lazar. 2009. Conservatism and Cognitive Ability. Intelligence, Volume 37, Issue 3, Pages 294-304.

Thompson, James. November 29, 2015. US Academics: Lefty and Liberal Because of High IQ? Unz.com.

14 Comments

Filed under Capitalism, Christianity, Conservatism, Death, Economics, Education, Fascism, Health, Higher Education, Intelligence, Journalism, Latin American Right, Liberalism, Neoliberalism, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Social Problems, Sociology

by | June 18, 2017 · 4:20 PM

73% of Venezuelans Continue to Support Chavismo

Tulio: Robert, I have two friends from Venezuela, a married couple, the female is white, the male is dark brown. I assure you they are not racist, they have never called me “mono” and they have been completely and 100% kind to me as long as I’ve known them. I have even visited them and stayed in their home, and they have visited me and stayed in mine. Never seen their bank account but I’m pretty sure they are not rich.

They are probably middle class by Venezuelan definition. They are 100% opposed to Chavismo. I don’t even know where they fall on the left-right continuum per se. They really don’t even talk much politics with me outside of opposing the condition their country is in. They are now living in Santiago, Chile where they worked and resided since the rise of Chavez, but frequently go to Venezuela to see family. I’m not an expert of Venezuelan internal affairs by any means. I’ve gotten a lot of my info directly from them.

Neither of them seem “right wing” to me in any sense that I understand the term. They seem to want nothing more than a stable, functional and non-authoritarian government. I also see massive marches in Caracas. I can’t believe all those tens of thousands of people are rich, right wingers. When I see close up photos of the crowd, they look like just ordinary Venezuelans to me. You seem to be painting a broad brush here and assuming anyone against Chavismo is a hard right-winger

Any Venezuelan who has the money to travel out of the country to the US or back and forth to Chile all the time, all by plane, is by definition not middle class. I would call those people upper middle class.

There will never be a government like they want in there as long as Chavismo is in because the Opposition will always be rioting in the streets and tearing stuff up like they have been doing ever since he got in. These people say they want a non-authoritarian government, but they supported the coup against Chavez. The first things the putschists did was to dissolve Congress, the National Assembly and Courts and put in martial law. They put a dictatorship in as soon as the coup took power.

The poster’s friends say they want a non-authoritarian state, but they support the extreme dictatorship that took power in the coup. The Opposition riots in the streets and calls for a coup every time they lose an election. This is because every time they lose an election, they insist against all evidence that it was stolen from them. Their calculus is that the only legitimate elections are the ones that they win. If the other side wins, it’s automatically stolen due to fraud, and we need to have a military coup to put “democracy” back in power. That ideology does not sound very democratic to me.  To the Opposition,  the definition of democracy is “when we win.” The definition of dictatorship is “when the other side wins.” Sound like a democratic project?

streambe_701e8e79-0687-3fce-8148-a667ce920929--1399436008

A decptively large Opposition crowd in Venezuela. You will not find one working class, low income or poor person in that crowd. Everyone is middle class to rich. And no matter how big that crowd is, the Chavista march will always be a lot bigger. That crowd represents 27% of the population. That’s called a minority movement.

They lack majority support. That crowd is the upper class, the upper middle class and unfortunately a lot of the middle class. There are a lot of middle class people in those crowds.

This is where the poster is getting his ideology from. Them and their lies. The Venezuelan Opposition is out of their minds. They are not rational and they are not honest. They lie constantly. They are as bad as Trump and the Trumpster Republicans, and in fact, both movements are very similar.

The project of the Opposition is extreme rightwing. I told you that they regularly call Chavez mono and that they removed Bolivar’s portrait because he was a bit too swarthy and not White enough and replaced it with a more proper Nordic one. The poster’s friends may not be racist reactionaries, but a lot of the people in the Opposition are very racist, and the poster’s friends are not denouncing that. I guess they are OK with it.

The project of the Opposition is to dismantle all of Chavismo and to go back to the way it was.

They are going to take it all down – the free health care, the free education, the neighborhood councils and circles, the public housing, the redistribution of oil income to the people, the cheap government-subsidized food and household goods to the people, the free houses given to the people, the public spending on infrastructure, the whole nine yards. Before Chavez came in, you never went to the doctor, the dentist or the eye doctor because you could not afford it. You either got over the medical issue or you died. Raw sewage ran down the streets of the shantytowns on the hills. In 1989, 91% of the people could afford only one meal a day and that was the same percentage of people in poverty. Venezuela had always been like this since Independence. The oligarchy had always been in charge and had never lifted one damn finger for the people.

All of the opposition politicians want to go back to that. All of them. The poster’s friends may not realize this, or perhaps they do not care. The Latin American middle class has always lined up with the Extreme Right project of the rich and the oligarchs, much to their detriment. This is because they consider the opposition to that  project to be Communists, and they think that is worse.

In Latin America, it’s Commies or Fascists. That’s your choice. Pick your poison. That’s because moderation or a Centrist project never works down there. The problems are too severe, and Centrist projects never touch the power of the oligarchs, so nothing ever changes.

Venezuela has never been more democratic than under Chavez. Venezuela has the freest press in Latin America. The authoritarian dictatorship crap is another big fat lie the Opposition made up.

73% of the Venezuelan people continue to support the Chavista Project because it’s the only one that’s for the people. The Opposition has no numbers. Those people you see marching above are part of the 27% opposition, and that is why they never win. I would also point out that pro-government marches happen at the same time as those Opposition marches, and they are almost always much bigger. You just never read about them in the Western media.

Those 73% are not stupid. They remember life back when the oligarchy ruled. They know that the Opposition wants to go directly back to that and not change one thing. This has been their project from Day One. Yes, it is a very far right, reactionary project. Compared to what the Opposition wants, most of the people want to stay with Chavismo.

15 Comments

Filed under Chile, Conservatism, Fascism, Government, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Marxism, Political Science, Politics, Racism, Regional, Social Problems, Sociology, South America, Venezuela, White Racism

by | June 17, 2017 · 6:11 PM

Venezuela: The Lies Never Stop

Tulio: Left wing economics aren’t working out in Latin America either. Let’s face it, Latin America is dysfunctional whether it’s run by the left or right. I know Robert is a Chavista and all but the results speak for itself. They are probably a few clicks away from outright civil war.

The poster’s problem is that he gets all his Venezuela news from the Western media. You will not read one true thing about that country in the Western media. It is an all out propaganda war from Day One. If you want to read the truth about Venezuela, go to Venezuelanalysis. It’s all straight up 100% facts there, no spin. And many articles are quite critical of the government.

Yes, it is a civil war because the Right is running through the streets rioting, killing people, burning down buildings, buses and police cars. Let me ask you something. Suppose when Obama was in, Republicans went on a rampage all over the US, rioting, burning stuff down, killing people, firing guns, setting up snipers, setting off bombs, throwing grenades, killing lots of cops. Would you blame Obama for that? Because that is exactly what the commenter is doing.

This is part of the Right’s project down there. They lost the election, so they are trying to overthrow the government by force. What exactly is the state supposedly do about what is in effect a rightwing insurgency?

What they are trying to do is to create so much chaos that the military steps in and does a rightwing coup. Barring that, they are creating so much chaos and disorder that the US steps in with the military, invades and overthrows the Chavistas in the name of humanitarian intervention. It’s the exact same scheme we pulled in Syria when we turned ISIS and Al Qaeda loose on secular regime.

The US government’s official policy in Venezuela now is regime change. Mattis himself said so. The riots, destruction, arson, murders and political assassinations are all being coordinated with the US. We are the cause of all that violence down there.

There are no poor results of Chavismo. Things were booming along for many years. The rightwing has been sabotaging and boycotting the economy since Day One.

Norway is far more socialist than Venezuela. China is orders of magnitude more socialist than Venezuela. There’s nothing socialist at all about Venezuela. The economy is 100% capitalist controlled.

All Chavismo did was take a lot of that oil revenue and spend it on the people. If you think that’s a failed model, I do not know what to say to you.

After the oil price crashed, the government could no longer cover up for the business sector’s sabotage of the economy.

There are shortages? How can there be shortages in a 100% capitalist controlled economy? Answer me that. There cannot be. If there are shortages, why don’t they import some food? Why don’t they make some stuff that is in shortage?

The business sector is refusing to import products, and they are refusing to make products in short supply.

You need to go study how Kissinger and Nixon blew up the Chilean economy. They did the exact same thing, down to the letter. This is the Chilean Model down to the letter.

“We will make the Chilean economy scream.

–  Henry Kissinger.

Every week they seize huge warehouses full of products that are being hoarded by the capitalists in order to create artificial shortages. You heard of a shortage of syringes? A warehouse full of 21 million syringes was recently seized. If you read the Venezuelan papers, these seizures happen all the time, maybe every other day.

Why is there inflation? The capitalists have caused artificial shortages by hoarding stuff, refusing to produce stuff and refusing to import stuff. These artificial shortages of course caused inflation.

This economic sabotage has been going on from Day One, but when the oil prices were high, the government could cover up for the Economic War by importing their own products and selling them to people for cheap. Hence the state covered up all the artificial shortages caused by the refusal to import and manufacture products. When the oil price crashed, the state no longer had the money to import goods to cover up for the shortages, and furthermore, the Economic War went into high gear.

Furthermore, since Maduro has come in, he has made a hard turn to the Right from Chavez. His administration of full of rightwingers and representatives of the business sector. He caves to opposition demands over and over. They are always demanding hikes in the controlled prices, and he keeps raising them. No matter how much they raise the prices, the capitalists do not produce one more item. It’s all a scam.

Keep in mind that the economic crash has occurred against the background of a hard right turn in the government under a government that is now about 50% rightwingers and people from the business community. They can’t get a handle on things either. Did you hear what I said?

The economy crashed as the government turned Right and filled the executive with people from the business sector. According to the poster’s logic, rightwing economics is responsible for the crash.

That’s not really true either. Neither Right nor Left economics is responsible for the crash. The ministers from the business community can’t control the problems either. No one can.

There is a problem with currency, but that was created by the capitalists too. Currency controls were put in because the capitalists were taking all their money out of the country. No country can put up with that for long. So currency controls were put in, but that causes a black market in currency.

Price controls were put in because the capitalists staged a lockout strike that caused horrible shortages and sent prices skyrocketing.

Incidentally, despite currency controls, the business community still takes $50 billion out of the country every year. Do you know how much more they would take out if the currency controls were taken off?  The system would probably collapse.

The fake excuse all along was that price controls make it so the producing the price controlled products is not worthwhile. This is their fake excuse for the shortages. Now the price controls have been almost completely lifted, and they are still refusing to make stuff or import stuff. What’s their fake excuse now?

I agree that the standard Communist model caused a lot of economic problems, but the lie is that Venezuela is a Communist country like Cuba or the USSR, and this is the cause of all the problems. It’s caused by “socialist failure.” Why isn’t socialism failing in Europe? Why isn’t it failing in China? Why isn’t it failing in most of the world that runs social democratic systems?

The Chavistas were simply trying to produce a European style social democracy in Venezuela. Even that’s too much for the Venezuelan elite.

I will have you know that the rightwing Venezuelans the poster cheers for are some of the racist people on Earth. The commenter is Black. I assure you that the people he cheers for hate him because he is Black. Their word for Chavez was Mono. That means monkey. They call him monkey because his White blood is mixed with Indian and Black.

When they came into power, the first thing they did was take down the portrait of Bolivar because they said he looked too dark. They put up a new portrait that showed him as White as a Swede. These are the racists that this Black commenter is supporting.

The government is screwing up badly by not floating the currency, but that’s not a Right versus Left thing so it’s not a fault of Left economics. It would be a very unpopular decision, and Maduro is a weak and not very good leader and he does not have the balls to put in.

Hence I agree that the problems in part are caused by failures of the regime, but those failures having nothing to do with Right or Left economics. They’re not dealing with the currency problems, and that’s a failure on their part, but it has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism or any of that.

The price controls were put in to fight inflation. The Right screams about inflation and about price controls. They took all the price controls off, and the prices went way up. Now they are screaming because the prices went up. They criticize the problem, and they attack the solution to the problem.

You can’t win with these people.

I agree that the Communist model leaves a lot to be desired, and the lie is that the problems of Cuba and the USSR are being replicated in Venezuela. It’s a lie because Venezuela never even made it to social democracy. Venezuela is a capitalist country through and through.

I will ban any posters who attack Venezuela as a failure of Left economics because it’s nothing of the sort. Now if  you want to talk about problems with the Cuban model, go for it.

 

15 Comments

Filed under Asia, Capitalism, Capitalists, Chile, China, Conservatism, Cuba, Economics, Europe, Fascism, Geopolitics, Government, Journalism, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Marxism, Norway, Political Science, Politics, Racism, Regional, Republicans, Scum, Socialism, South America, US Politics, USA, Venezuela, White Racism

by | June 17, 2017 · 6:55 AM

Average IQ’s of Liberals Versus Conservatives

Jason Voorhees: Liberals in general have an IQ of 110 or above.

Quite an exaggeration. More like 105. 75% of the population has an IQ below 110. On the other hand, he is onto something.

We don’t call em conservatards for nothing, I guess.

Liberals are actually smarter than conservatives! Quite a bit smarter. And the more liberal you are, the smarter you. And the more conservative you are, the dumber you are. It’s a linear curve.

               IQ
Liberals       106  
Centrists      99
Conservatives  96

Source

I would argue that the reason for that is that conservatism is basically stupid. So of course stupid people support it. Fiscal conservatism is intelligent if you are rich and possibly if you are upper middle class, but it’s idiotic for everyone else because only the top 20% make money under rightwing economics. The entire 80% of the population loses money.

Political ideology

Ha ha! Conservatives are stupid! Liberals are smart! Something we always knew. No wonder they are called conservatards. Neener neener. Conservatives are so stupid they probably spell dumb “dum.” LOL.

Rightwing economics is a massive wealth transfer system from the poor and middle classes to the upper middle class and the rich. It’s basically a scam. Pure class war. Incidentally this has been proved all over the 3rd World, especially in Latin America. Surveys in Latin America under the neoliberal decades of failure showed that only the top 20% benefited under rightwing economics. The entire bottom 80% lost money. Furthermore, death rates skyrocketed and education figures collapsed. Neoliberalism has killed many millions of people. We may not have yet found a good alternative to capitalism, but capitalism surely continues to kill as sure as night follows day.

Oh and there is a reason why liberals control most US institutions. Although the idea of a liberal media is pathetic, 89% of media whores, I mean journalists, call themselves liberal. But universities are liberal. The only major US institution that is not liberal is business, which is conservative for basically self-serving interests because conservatism serves to line their pockets better while it picks the pockets of the poor and middle class. Steal from the poor and give to the rich. Reverse Robin Hood. That’s conservatism in action. The fact that the people calling themselves Christians in the US support Reverse Robin Hood is truly pathetic. Obviously they know nothing about how the Main Man lived his life.

References

Carl, Noah. 2014. Verbal Intelligence Is Correlated with Socially and Economically Liberal Beliefs. Intelligence, Volume 44, Pages 142-148.

Stankov, Lazar. 2009. Conservatism and Cognitive Ability. Intelligence Volume 37, Issue 3, Pages 294-304.

Thompson, James. November 29, 2015. US Academics: Lefty and Liberal Because of High IQ? Unz.com.

64 Comments

Filed under Capitalism, Christianity, Conservatism, Death, Economics, Education, Health, Higher Education, Intelligence, Journalism, Latin America, Latin American Right, Liberalism, Neoliberalism, Political Science, Politics, Psychology, Regional, Religion, US Politics, USA

by | March 12, 2017 · 5:09 AM

Latin American Politics Finally Comes To America

I guess Chile has their version of the mighty keyboard warrior like the US. No shortage of white shit for brains running around say they’re going get rid of all the Jews and blacks.. then you have a fair number of blacks running around saying they’re going to get rid of their white oppressors.. etc. Totally delusional twats. Maybe rightists are a serious problem in Chile but I don’t consider YouTube comments a proper gauge of sentiment and support.

I have been engaged off and on in deep study of this region since 1989. 28 years.

You don’t understand Chile. You don’t understand Latin America.

Really the entire rightwing down there is exactly like this. The rich, elite Whites’ basic attitude in almost every country down there is “All Communists must be killed.” And Communist means anyone even slightly left of center. A huge % of the population in Chile is still pro-Pinochet, and this is precisely how they think.

The Left stages marches and protests all the time, often is support of Allende. Rightists, of whom there are many supporters still meet them and there is wild street fighting. Rightists then stage marches often in support of Pinochet. The Left shows up and there is wild street fighting.

Did some searches.. looks like the bigger demonstrations were over education and state (or lack of it) support. Seem to follow the US model – most of the protests are peaceful but then you have “the hooded ones” raising a ruckus. I couldn’t find anything that indicated there were large counter protests by rightists – not saying that didn’t happen but I just couldn’t find them If you have a link or links I’ll take a look.

Ok, well I think I may have read this some time ago. I do remember reading it, but it could have been a while back. It could well have been years ago, or a decade or more ago. But at one time in recent history, this is how it was.

Perhaps the Left vs. Right riots have quieted down in recent years, but that’s the way it was not long ago.

Protests in Chile have historically been far more riotous and violent than demos in the US. There’s not really any comparison. Anyway, violent riots on the US Left are a relatively new phenomenon. Trump is a corrupt, vicious, evil ultraright dictator ruling in a typical Latin American model. All of the Latin American Right is exactly like Donald Trump. That’s why the Left is so violent down there. Trump has succeeded in finally bringing Latin American ultraright fascism to America. So it follows that we are following the Latin American model in that the Left has grown militant, and Left demos now often turn riotous and violent just as they do in Latin America.

This sort of thing is so predictable that you can write near mathematical laws of political science predicting it. A nation can only go so far to the extreme right and it can only become unequal to a certain level. Once it passes that level, it has crossed some sort of Rubicon and now in most any nation you automatically get a militant, riotous and violent Left. It’s as close to a law as the sort you can get in mathematics and physics.

In Chile, the Indians are treated horribly and engage in continuous demonstrations which usually turn into riots.

I was following Latin American politics a lot on the Net a few years back, and most demos in Chile seemed to turn into the typical Latin American demonstration -> riot progression. Most demos in Latin America turn riotous from my observation, at least in Venezuela, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, and even Mexico. The conditions are so insanely unequal down there that any working class demo quickly turns into a riot.

Violence, riots, coups, extremes of Left and Right politics, lack of democracy and extreme instability are typical of the entire region and now we are importing precisely this model to the US.

I am leaving out Argentina, but the Argentine Right was recently calling for a military coup against Kirchner.

In Paraguay, a legislative coup threw out the leftwinger.

A legislative coup just threw out Rouseff, the left president of Brazil.

There have been many coup and quasi-coup attempts in Venezuela. You could well say there has been a continuous coup since 2002.

In Colombia, yes, left demos usually turn violent or riotous. On the other hand, if you are on the Left down there, you can be murdered by the government at any time.

There was a military coup in Honduras, and now anyone on the Left can be killed at any time. Death squads have killed over 1,000 people.

A US coup removed Aristide in Haiti. The new US installed government quickly murdered 3,000 people.

Why the commenter is trying to polish this Latin American turd is beyond me.

96 Comments

Filed under Americas, Amerindians, Argentina, Brazil, Caribbean, Central America, Chile, Colombia, Conservatism, Fascism, Haiti, Hispanic Racism, Honduras, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Marxism, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Political Science, Politics, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Republicans, South America, US Politics, Venezuela

by | March 7, 2017 · 10:41 PM

A Typical Republican

Here.

Boy, the Republicans sure are friends of the working class, aren’t they? Not to mention the middle classes. Honestly, the rich all across time and space have always governed in the interests of the rich and the upper middle class (top 20% income earners), and they almost always screw the middle class, the working class, the low income people, the poor, the old, the disabled and the kids in the worst possible way.

The old, the disabled and the kids are often screwed hardest of all because they can’t fight back and are largely helpless. I remember under Republican governments here in California, year after year, one thing they always cut was state aid to the blind. It was like a ritual, every year: cut aid to the blind people. This is typical Republicanism. They always attacked those blind people because they are the weakest of all, they have no voice or power and they can’t fight back. Screw the weak, the helpless and the powerless. The more weak, helpless and powerless they are, the harder you screw them over.

My heart always sank every time I read that. “There they go again, cutting aid to the blind,” I would think. And after reading that, my faith in the decency of humanity would usually plunge lower than whale shit, and that’s at the bottom of the ocean. Screw the blind. How evil can you get?

If you make less than $75,000/yr and you vote Republican, you need to have your head examined. That’s the top 20% of income earners in the US. Repeated studies have shown the Republican policies only benefit the top 20% of income earners.

Republican policies are always class war policies. They always involve mass transfer of wealth from the bottom 80% to the top 20%. As a matter of fact, this seems to be true of neoliberalism as a whole. During the “lost decades” of Latin American neoliberalism, repeated studies showed that Latin American neoliberalism was only benefiting the top 20% of the population. The entire 80% of the population was getting reamed hard. The project was simply a mass wealth transfer project from the bottom 80% to the top 20%.

Why do you think Latin America went Left in the past 15 years? Because the policies of the Right had been ruining the people for 20 years. The Right failed them, so they put in the Left. How is that hard to understand?

And studies of neoliberalism globewide showed that it always resulted in dramatic loss of health care and education for the population. It was calculated a while back that neoliberalism had already killed millions of people, mostly by depriving them of health care.

It was fairly similar in Chile, the neoliberal poster child that the rightwingers like to wave around.

Chile is one of the most unequal countries on Earth. The rich and the poor don’t just hate each other, they literally want to murder each other. This is what always happens, without fail, as income inequality rises to high levels. It’s so reliable a finding that we could nearly call is a scientific law. You can see why Marxism claimed to be a science with actual scientific laws.

This glorious Chilean Miracle under Pinochet and successors resulted in mass transfer of wealth from the bottom 67% to the top 33%. The Chilean working class was ruined. I have been told that their wonderful social security privatization is not working out very well at all.

Medical care is to this day largely unavailable. I had thought they had some sort of socialized medicine, but a Chilean counseling client of mine, a regular working class guy, told me that Chilean medical care was largely fee for service, and you had to pay in cash at the time of your appointment. He said it was largely unaffordable, at least for him. I asked him what he did about this, and he told you try not to get sick, and even when you are sick, you don’t go to the doctor. He said he almost never went to the doctor. As you can see, Chilean health care is working out just fine.

This man had a very cynical and defeatist attitude towards the government. He said no matter who’s in power in the country, they only help the rich and they screw everyone else. His faith in the state was about zero.

GDP is largely a junk figure if all the money is going to the rich and the upper middle class. If the money never trickles down, what good is economic growth? It’s worthless.

I could go on and on about this stupid country. Chile’s no poster child or success story for much of anything if you ask me. To me, it’s a story of failure, not success, and it’s a nightmare state, not a showcase country.

78 Comments

Filed under California, Chile, Conservatism, Economics, Fascism, Government, Health, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Neoliberalism, Political Science, Politics, Regional, Republicans, South America, US Politics, USA, West

by | February 19, 2017 · 10:35 PM

A Few Countries Where US-Style Conservatives Are in Power

Juan: The Filipino government.

Center-left economics but far-right socially (law and order, etc.)

This does not remind you of Trump?

There is absolutely nothing even 1% left or even centrist about Trump. He’s basically the most rightwing man on Earth, and the Republican Party is one of the most rightwing ruling parties on Earth.

There are some contenders now in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Honduras and Haiti, but they have vast opposition among the people. I doubt if they have majority support in any of those countries.

Two of them came to power in legislative coups – in Paraguay and Brazil.

Honduras is a military dictatorship, as is Haiti. Both governments are hated by the majority of the population.

Yes, far right parties were elected in Argentina, Chile and Colombia.

But in Argentina the far right was replacing the Hard Left with Kirchner and the government has huge opposition.

There is a lot of support for the Right in Chile, but I doubt if it’s the majority. Chile has been governed by members of the Socialist Party for most of the last 20 years. Furthermore, the Left is radicalized, activated huge and often violent in opposition.

Colombia has long been probably the most rightwing country on Earth. Probably the majority of the population supports the Hard Fascist Right. Why this is, is not known, but it is a long tradition down there. Nevertheless, the Left is huge, extremely radicalized and activated, and in fact, they have taken up arms. Actually, they have been armed to the teeth for the last 52 years. The armed Left is powerful and deadly, and they have killed 10,000’s of soldiers and police. They are so powerful that a while back, they fired mortars at the Capital building at the very moment that the new President was being sworn in. Some of the mortars actually struck the building.

158 Comments

Filed under Argentina, Asia, Brazil, Caribbean, Central America, Chile, Colombia, Conservatism, Fascism, Haiti, Honduras, Latin America, Latin American Right, Left, Paraguay, Philippines, Political Science, Politics, Regional, Republicans, SE Asia, South America, US Politics

by | February 19, 2017 · 9:58 PM

Glimpsing the Truth about Venezuela Amidst the Blizzard of Lies

Tulio: Venezuelan socialism was authoritarian and proto-communist. Scandinavian social democracy is not at all. I don’t think Chavez looked to Norway for inspiration but rather to Castro.

Keep in mind that nearly everything you read about Venezuela in the US Controlled Media unfree press is a lie. I have yet to see even one story written about that country that was not a lie from start to finish.

The last sentence is completely untrue.

Chavez himself said that Cubans have their way, and we have ours. Different systems for different countries. He never tried to copy the Cuban model. He was trying to do something completely different.

An Eternity of Lies from the Venezuelan Opposition

The first sentence is also completely untrue.

It was never even 1% authoritarian.

Venezuela has one of the freest presses on Earth, and all in all, it is one of the freest countries on the planet. I have read the Opposition press, and it is simply shocking. The Opposition media is so openly dishonest that frankly they probably ought to be shut down on that basis alone. They shameless lie in the wildest ways you could imagine every single day of the year. Their lies have provoked riots, arson and murder. Imagine Fox News during Obama except 5X worse, and that will give you some examples.

There were regular calls to assassinate Chavez and other government officials and nothing was ever done. Yes, the Opposition press regularly, almost daily, called for the murder of the President, and the government did not lift one finger against them.

All of the Opposition press participated in an illegal military coup. They should have been shut down on that basis alone. How can you allow an openly traitorous press?

The Opposition down there is so evil that they even fake exit polls in order to validate false charges of electoral fraud. Venezuela is the only on Earth where I have seen the actual faking of exit polls. Faking exit polls is a grievous crime against democracy because they were one of the few ways that we can tell if an election was honest or not.

Venezuela’s elections are said to be the freest on Earth. I agree. In the last election when the US and Opposition lied and said there was massive fraud, a recount was done. Fully 60% of the ballots were recounted under careful observation and there was not one single ballot in error. The Supreme Court then said, “Ok, 60% without one single error is good enough, no need to count the rest.” The Opposition then screamed fraud, and Obama Administration stomped their feet and screamed fraud also. Do you really think there was 1% chance of fraud in that election?

“Liberals” Hillary Clinton and John (Satan) Kerry led the charge in demanding new elections and demanding that the Chavistas share power with the Opposition. That’s like the Democrats lose an election, and they demand that the Republicans share power with them by filling half the Executive Branch with Democrats.

True, he replaced a lot of the army, but those people who were replaced had participated in a military coup. The army needs to support the regime.

Yes, he replaced most of the judiciary, but this has to be done everywhere in Latin America. An insanely corrupt elite judiciary is a major part of the problem down there, and every time they have a revolution,  one of the first things they do is a “judicial reform.” This means throwing out all of the corrupt judges of the elite and putting in some real judges. You know, people who believe in laws and stupid stuff like that.

Venezuela is vastly more democratic than the US has probably ever been. We have probably never had one day of democracy in this stupid country, and it’s getting much worse. This is because our class enemies who run this country do not believe in democracy. In fact, they have an extreme hatred of democracy.

Sins of the Organized Crime Gang Called “The Opposition”

All of the Opposition figures participated in the military coup and they all should have been put in prison if not shot on that basis alone. Instead they were all set free. All of the Opposition figures who are now in prison were guilty of extreme corruption and financial crimes or abuse of the judiciary. And almost 100% of them were guilty of participating in plots to assassinate the President. One of them ever raised an entire army of hundreds of men on her rural estate. Their purpose was to assassinate the President and seize power. Those few who were not guilty of money crimes or trying to kill the President are guilty of provoking violent riots in which ~40 people died. They were behind those riots all the way down to organizing them at the ground level and distributing guns and bombs to the rioters.

 

The Opposition gets away with murder down there and nothing is done. They rioted in their neighborhoods for years on end, and the police mostly stood there and watched them burn stuff down. Almost no country on Earth except pre-coup Ukraine has gone as easy on rioters as Venezuela has. Even with the latest riots, the police were very hands-off. Once again, they were probably more moderate in putting down those riots than any other police force on Earth. The regime knows that if they do anything heavy-handed at all, the US will scream “police brutality” and “civil rights abuses.”

Bolivarian Economics: China Is Vastly More Socialist than Venezuela

With the exception of oil, the whole economy is in the private sector. China is orders of magnitude more socialist than Venezuela.

All they did was create some social democracy. They built a lot of free to cheap housing, upgraded a lot of infrastructure, wired up the whole country for electricity, subsidized food prices for the poor, sold cheap household furnishings as My Happy Home stores. They created free public education and spent massively on educational facilities. They created free health care and spent hugely on medical care for the people. They promoted a lot of organizing and governing at the local level. They did a land reform by confiscating a lot of untilled land and turning it over to landless peasants to farm. They gave land titles to some local municipalities to grow their own food and run their own factories and enterprises. That’s more or less what China has done.

Chavez did great things for civil rights in Venezuela. Rights for Blacks, mestizos, mulattos and zambos were dramatically increased. Indian rights were expanded greatly, and they were given title to much of their land.

Women’s rights were also expanded dramatically, and the country even introduced civil rights for gays, which is hard to do in Latin America.

73% of the population still supports socialism and Bolivarianism.

The Chavistas massively improved lives in all ways for the poor, the lower middle class, the working classes, and in some ways for the middle classes though the latter do not realize this.

True there was a lot of talk about building socialism, but frankly the consensus on the Left is that they never got around to it. Bolivarianism was never Communist. It was always 100% democracy.

There was a lot of criticism on the Hard Left saying that all Venezuela had done was create a social democracy instead of going to socialism. Comparisons with Norway and Sweden were common.

In Latin America, Liberalism = Communism = Death

You must understand that if you even try to implement the mildest social democracy down in the Latin America, you are a Communist terrorist who must be shot dead. Anything even hinting at liberalism or Left is called Communism, and the attitude of the Right down there is “Kill all Communists.”

If you are in a labor union, you are a Communist because all labor unions are Communist. All human rights organizations are Communist. Everyone preaching Liberation Theology is a Communist. Most professors and students and public universities are considered to be Communists as are most public school teachers, especially because they have very militant unions. All peasant organizations are Communist. Really, every single grassroots popular organization down there is Communist.

PS The US supports this ideology 100%.

The Opposition’s History and Future Project

The Opposition never lifted one finger for the people. They ran that country for decades or really over a century and they did do one damn thing for the people the whole time. Before Chavez took power, 89% of the population lived in poverty in an oil rich nation. 91% of the population could afford only one meal per day. Malnutrition was rife. Health care was for fee for service and simply unavailable to people without the money to pay for it. Same with optometry, dentistry, the whole thing. Educational facilities were poor and falling apart because the elites in government all sent their kids to private schools, and paid no taxes, hence there was no money for public education.

here was no public housing. Sewage ran down the gutters of the streets on the hillside slums where most people lived. There was no clean water. Higher education was expensive and out of the reach of most of the people. In the rural areas most people were landless peasants and a tiny group of rentier rich owned almost all of the fertile land, much of which lay fallow. Death squads roamed the countryside and every year, they murdered ~50 peasants.

The system was profoundly racist, and if you were not White or mostly White, you stood little chance of making money or succeeding in politics. It was a Whites-only elite with no openings for non-Whites. In fact, much of the Opposition was openly racist. The Opposition openly called him “Mono” which means “monkey.” This is a reference to the fact that he is of mixed Indian, White and Black blood. Most of their fury over Chavez was because some guy who looked like the gardener or the maid was running the country and telling the White rich what to do.

I am surprised because the commenter is a Black man who apparently supports the viciously racist Venezuelan Opposition.

And you Americans are mystified at why countries go Left? Why in the Hell do you think?

The Opposition has no project. The project of the Opposition has always been to roll back all of Bolivarianism and take things back to the good old days described above. They have no other project because they cannot have another project. The Opposition are elites who support a project that is “everything for the elites, nothing for anybody else.”

24 Comments

Filed under Amerindians, Asia, Black-White (Mulattos), Blacks, Bolivarianism, China, Democrats, Economics, Education, Fascism, Geopolitics, Government, Health, Journalism, Labor, Latin America, Latin American Right, Law, Left, Mestizos, Mixed Race, Nutrition, Obama, Political Science, Politics, Race Relations, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Social Problems, Socialism, Sociology, South America, US Politics, USA, Venezuela, Whites, Zambos