Category Archives: Lithuania

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 | September 15, 2016 · 8:18 PM

The Hell with the Pentagon

As the agency which enforces US foreign policy at gunpoint, the Pentagon has always blown.

First of all, there is no such thing as the Defense Department. When has the Pentagon ever defended the country? Pearl Harbor? They did a fine job there, huh?

Obviously the task of the Pentagon is not to defend the US mainland, which is all it ever ought to do anyway.

Its task is to running around the world starting wars and killing people in other countries. Leaving aside whether that is sometimes a good idea (and I think it is,) what’s so defensive about that?

The real name of the Pentagon is the War Department.That’s what it was always called until World War 2, which the War Department won. After that in a spate of Orwellian frenzy, we named an army of aggression an army of self-defense and comically renamed its branch the Defense Department.

It’s like calling cops peace officers. You see anything peaceful about what a cop does in a typical day? Neither do I?

There was a brief glimmer of hope there in WW2 when we finally starting killing fascists and rightwingers instead of sleeping with them, but the ink was barely dry on the agreements before we were setting up the Gladio fascists, overthrowing Greek elections and slaughtering Greek peasants like ants.

Meanwhile it was scarcely a year after 1945 when the US once again started a torrid love affair with fascism and rightwing dictators like we have always done. We were smooching it up right quick with Europe’s fascists, in this case the former Nazis of Germany (who became the West German elite), Greek killer colonels, Mussolini’s heirs, actual Nazis in Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, Jew-Nazis in Palestine, Franco (who we never stopped sleeping with anyway), Salazar, the malign Mr. Churchill, the true repulsive Dutch royalty and disgusting European colonists the world over, who we showered with guns and bombs to massacre the colonized.

In 1945, a war against fascism, reaction, Nazism and malign colonialism had ended, and for some reason America had fought against these things instead of supporting them as usual.

1946, and we were back in old style again, hiring Nazis by the busload for the CIA, overthrowing democratic governments and putting in genocidal dictatorships, becoming butt buddies with fascist swine everywhere.

So you see we have always pretty much sucked. World War 1 was fought amidst one of the most dishonest propaganda campaigns the world had ever seen, the Korean War was a Godawful mess where we turned North Korea to flaming rubble with the population cowering in caves while slaughtering 3 million North Koreans.

The horrific catastrophe called the Indochinese Wars, such as the Vietnam War, the Secret War in Laos and the Cambodian Massacre, where we genocided 500,000 Cambodians with bombs, driving the whole place crazy and creating the Khmer Rogue.

Panama and Grenada were pitiful jokes, malign, raw, naked imperialism at its worst.

The Gulf War was a brief return to sanity but turkey shoots are sickening.

Of course that followed on with the most evil war in US history, the Nazi-like war on aggression called The War on the Iraqi People (usually called the Iraq War), the Afghan rabbit hole which started out sensibly enough but turned into another Vietnam style Great Big Mess.

I suppose it is ok that we are killing Al Qaeda guys and I give a shout out to our boys over there fighting ISIS or the Taliban and Al Qaeda in South-Central Asia, Somalia and Yemen. Some people need killing.

But I sure don’t feel that way about their superiors, the US officers who fund and direct ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc. out of an Operations Center in Jordan with Jordanian, Israeli (!), Saudi, UAE, and Qatari officers.

And it was very thoughtful of the Pentagon to cover up the Ukrainian Air Force shootdown of the jetliner which we saw on the radar of our ships in Black Sea.

And it was nice of the US to relay the flight path of the Russian jet to the Turks 24 hours in advance so they could shoot down that Russian jet and kill that pilot.

One hand giveth and the other taketh away. For every good thing we do in Syria and Iraq, we do 10 or 20 bad things. Pretty much the story of the Pentagon.

Sure if you fought in WW2 or one of the few other decent wars, you have something to be proud of, and I can even say, “Thank you for your service,” but the main thing is that you signed up for the rightwing army of the rich that is dead set against the people and popular rule everywhere on Earth. Sure, it’s a great army, professional, super-competent and deadly, but it’s generally tasked with doing lousy things. Why anyone would sign up for that reactionary nightmare of an institution is beyond me. America needs to level the Pentagon and put in a true People’s Army instead. Like that would ever happen.

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by | May 31, 2016 · 9:15 PM

Multi-Ethnic Fascism?

Hasbrudal writes: Isn’t fascism just a kind of ultra-nationalism, the most important thing is what defines the nation, if it’s a multi-ethnic nation, the fascism will reflect that. If the nation is defined in very narrow terms, e.g. how the Croatian fascists during WW2 viewed Serbs, despite having much more in common on the surface than a Tartar and a Slav from St Petersburg, then it can get very granular. I don’t think Mussolini or Franco gave too much thought to the “Jewish Question” without prompting from Berlin.

There is no such thing as multi-ethnic fascism as far as I can tell. There has never been one single case of multi-ethnic fascism recorded in history. This is probably because the phrase is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. If it’s fascism, it’s not multi-ethnic. If it’s multi-ethnic, it’s not fascism. Period.

In a fascist state, when there are multiple ethnicities, religions or languages spoken, the fascists always, always, always, try to wipe out all of the ethnicities and turn them into a single ethnicity and wipe out all the religions and get everyone to speak one national language. For instance, Franco tried to turn everyone in Spain into a Spaniard who spoke Spanish. Hence he waged war on all of the other ethnicities and their languages. Mussolini waged war on all of the other languages in Italy (falsely called Italian dialects), not to mention the non-Italian languages in Italy. I think he went easy on the Germans in the north so as not to anger Hitler.

Fascism is a sort of nation-building run wild, or you can think like I do and say that all nation-building in the modern era is basically fascist, which it is. This is because all nation-building projects try to dissolve all of the ethnicities in the country and turn them all into one ethnicity and try to wipe out all of the languages in the country and make everyone speak one language.

In the case of religion, fascists would probably try to wipe out all of the other religions and force everyone to be a particular religion. The Croatian Ustashe actually ordered Serbs to convert to Catholicism or die in a similar way that Islam was converted by the sword (convert to Islam or die). ISIS is practicing this sort of convert or die Islam right now. This convert or die method of spreading Islam is very much in the Muslim historical tradition no matter how much Muslims lie and say it isn’t.

As you can probably tell, I do not think too much of nation-building projects. However, I have met people from the 3rd World who justified nation-building projects in strong terms. One man I know was an Iranian Azeri who spoke Azerbaijani but justified the Iranian government’s attempt to wipe out the Azeri language as a necessary step that Iran would have to go through in order to build a nation.

Nation-building projects are also often accompanied by mass killings. The emergence of the state of Israel, birthed in blood like so many new nations, is a good contemporary example of bloody nation-building.

Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, Abkhazia, Kurdistan, Lithuania and Latvia are all modern examples of it. The first four were all quite bloody. One of the disgusting things about nationalism and nationalists is that when the nationalists are a minority in state dominated by another ethnic group, they are all about minority rights, decentralization, regionalism, federalism, autonomy, etc.

Then as soon as these nationalist punks get their independence, what’s the first thing they try to do? The first thing they do is persecute all of the new minorities in the land where they are now a majority. Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, and Kurdistan are excellent examples of this. Kurdistan is a particularly awful example, as in Southern Kurdistan only Sunni Muslim Kurds have full rights. Non-Kurds? Of course not. Kurdish Yezidis? Nope. Kurdish Christians? No. Kurdish Shabakis? No. Kurdish Shia Muslims? Nope. Assyrian Christians? Are you kidding? They are not even Kurds. Sunni Muslim Arabs? Not at all. Shia Muslims Arabs? Even worse.

In the first elections in Southern Kurdistan, everyone except for Sunni Muslim Kurds was seriously disenfranchised. I mean in a lot of places they were actually denied the right to vote. Non-Kurdish Sunni Muslims were also driven out of many villages in order that they could be populated by Sunni Muslim Kurds.

With independence, Georgia immediately said that everyone in Georgia was a Georgian and revoked the ethnic and linguistic rights of everyone else. This was the cause of the Ossetian and Abkhazian rebellions. Russia had nothing to do with either of them, especially as they started back in 1991 when Gorbachev was President.

With the new fascist Nazi coup in the Ukraine, the rights of Russian speakers were revoked, and their supporters and politicians were murdered. Keep in mind that the CIA was up their knees in all of this. Everyone was a Ukrainian. No one else had any rights. Hence the declarations of independence in Crimea and the Donbass. Russia had nothing to do with those declarations of independence. Those are Russian speakers in those areas, and they despise Ukrainian nationalists who they call Nazis (because they are).

Keep in mind that Crimea never agreed to become a part of an independent Ukraine. As soon as Ukraine declared its independence, the Crimeans said they were not a part of this new country. Several referenda were held in Crimea early on, and the votes were 80-90% for independence.

The new Ukrainian state subsequently calmed them down, and for the next 20-some years the Ukraine was in a stalemate with maybe half the population supporting radical Ukrainian Nazi nationalists and the other half more pro-Russian or wanting a federal state, including all of the non-Russian minorities in Ukraine, of which there are quite a few. So Crimean independence has nothing at all do with Putin, as it started way back in 1991 under Gorbachev as with the Georgian separatist splits.

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by | May 31, 2016 · 9:13 AM

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

SHI writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let us take this apart one by one.

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

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

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

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

Yes, they like it that way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This man oppresses his own people.

How can you oppress people with 87% support?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because they hate Russia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes but that’s not Putin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just check the annual rankings of Freedom House.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Venezuela has the fairest elections on Earth.

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by | April 16, 2015 · 7:32 PM

The Jewish Languages of the Jewish Diaspora

Sam asks:

Robert I should have asked you this before but I had forgotten it. This post jogged my memory. I read once…somewhere…that all Jewish languages were bastardizations of whatever language they were using at the time. The idea being that they could converse amongst themselves without others knowing what they are saying. Seems also the way they transformed the language was supposed to be a bit tricky so as to make it even harder to understand. Does that sound as if that scenario is true or could be true?

I am not sure if they did it on purpose so as not to be understood or if their versions are bastardizations (a term we linguists do not use) of the native tongue, but in just about every nation in which Jews were living in a large number, the Jews were speaking a different language than the natives. In Europe, the Ashkenazim were speaking Yiddish in the north and the Sephardics were speaking Ladino in the South. In the Crimea, the Karaite Jews spoke Ukrainian Karaim and other Jews spoke Krypchak, both of which are closely related to but not the same language as Crimean Tatar. In other parts of Ukraine and in Lithuania and Poland, other Jews also spoke Lithuanian Karaim, a different language from Ukrainian Karaim.

In the Arab World, in each nation where the Arab Jews reside, they speak a different form of Arabic than the natives, for instance, Moroccan Jews might have spoken something called Moroccan Jewish Arabic instead of Moroccan Arabic. They also spoke their own forms of Aramaic where they were living with a lot of Arab Christians in the north of Iraq, Syria and Iran. The Jewish language often had many Hebrew loans in it and was different in other ways. In each case, Ethnologue regards the Jewish language as actually a separate language from the native tongue of the land.

In Northern Europe, Jews took Palatinian German and fashioned a new Jewish language out of it. In the South, they did the same with Spanish. In Ukraine, the Jews melded Crimean Tatar into three separate Jewish languages. In the Arab Muslim and Arab Christian worlds, the Jews took the common and Arabic or Aramaic languages of those lands and fashioned them into separate Jewish languages.

It seems as though everywhere they lived, the Jews desired to be different and set themselves apart from the rest, even in a linguistic sense.

N.B. Most of these Jewish languages are now in very bad shape and by the year 2100, most will probably be extinct with the probable exception of Yiddish and Lithuanian Karaim.

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by | February 18, 2015 · 11:55 PM

The Criminal NATO Baltic States of Estonia and Latvia

From the Web:

In Latvia, one third of the population is stateless due to the staggeringly racist definition of citizenship. In Estonia, even native-born citizenship is alienable upon being found also to hold a Russian passport; the last Patriarch of Moscow, Alexy II, was from Estonia, and he had previously been the Archbishop of his native Tallinn, a city with a world famous Russian Orthodox Cathedral.

Soviet Republics from 1944 to 1991, the Baltic States became independent a few months before the dissolution of the USSR. Their brief independence between the Wars had been part of the humiliation inflicted by Germany and Austria-Hungary on defeated Russia at Brest-Litovsk in 1918.

Latvia and Estonia became fascist dictatorships in 1934, and Lithuania became a fascist dictatorship as early as 1926. Although Lithuania has a different history, Latvia and Estonia had never existed as independent states before 1918. After having been ruled by the Teutonic Knights and then by Sweden, they had become parts of the Russian Empire from the 1720’s onwards.

In other words and in order to give some perspective, they had done so only very slightly after the Union between England and Scotland. Therefore their incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1944 was nothing more than the restoration of the centuries-old status quo ante. It was warmly welcomed by much of the Baltic political class, which contained many committed Communists. That the Polish city of Wilno, now Vilnius, should have become and remained the capital of Lithuania was and is entirely pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939.

It is the case that the large Russian minorities in Lithuania and especially in Latvia and in Estonia increased during the Soviet period, very much at the request of the local Communist Parties, which sought them to fill various positions in the economy. But those minorities had existed and had been numerically considerable for centuries.

Upon independence in 1991, the Baltic States adopted the founding constitutional principle based on a lie: that they had been occupied by the USSR rather than incorporated into it, so that they were merely reverting to their interrupted sovereign statehood. In 1993, Latvia even elected a President, Guntis Ulmanis, who was a great-nephew of Kārlis Ulmanis, the Inter-War fascist dictator. He had come up through a rapidly reconstituted party which his great-uncle had banned.

But the laws of occupation are comprehensively set out in the Hague Conventions of 1907. The powerless citizenry of an occupied state remains a separate legal entity from its occupier. Whereas incorporation makes the members of that citizenry into citizens of the incorporating state. That was what happened in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

From 1944 to 1991, their inhabitants were Soviet citizens simply as a matter of legal fact. As they had been from 1922 to 1940 and as they had been de facto even if not de jure along with everyone else in the territory concerned from 1917 to 1922. Those states therefore share in the responsibility for the Soviet regime during most of its history.

All over the Soviet Union, there were monuments to the Red Latvian Riflemen who had fought in and for the Revolution. Latvians had been one of the largest ethnic groups in the Bolshevik secret police despite comprising a very small proportion of the population of the new Soviet state.

“Russian” and “Communist” were obviously not interchangeable terms, while the Russian Empire had always defined all as equal if they served the Tsar, which was how it had managed to incorporate the Balts, among so very many others. They were never victims of imperialism as the term is ordinarily understood.

Yet like many Austrians in relation to the Third Reich but without the excuse that most people involved are now dead, the Balts are determined to pretend that they were indeed victims.

The crimes the Balts commit against Russians are endless: Russians are denied citizenship, Russians are not allowed to vote, Russians are not eligible for amenities and social services, Russians are not allowed to have Russian-medium schools, and so on. Inside NATO. Inside the EU. The land of “European values.”

These are not even racist measures against small minorities or against recent immigrants with their children and grandchildren for whose rights in these spheres the advocates of Eurofederalism and Atlanticism normally, and in most cases rightly, fight with such vigor. Rather, these are racist measures against large population groups that are several centuries old.

The headlines read Russia a Threat to Baltic States. Although I doubt if it is true and there is not much Russia can do anyway as if she gets involved in a hot war in the Baltics just like she has in Ukraine she risks having NATO declare war on Russia. Hence I do not expect any sort of hot war in the Baltics. But I am wondering what the Russians in Latvia and Estonia are going to do about their predicament. Will they begin armed struggle of some sort. Obviously all peaceful routes to change in these nations are blocked. And what happens if the Baltic struggle becomes violent? Then what? It should be interesting.

I do not want to see a hot war in the Baltics but as far as destabilizing those nations, they are asking for it. They deserve to be destabilized. And if Russia is in on it, we know that the only entities at fault are the Balts themselves for their apartheid policies against native Russians.

Destabilize the Baltics! Yes!

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Filed under Eurasia, Europe, European, Europeans, Fascism, History, Latvians, Law, Left, Lithuania, Marxism, Political Science, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Russia, Russians, USSR

by | February 9, 2015 · 11:25 PM

There Are No Nazis in the Ukraine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by | July 30, 2014 · 2:06 AM

In the Ukrainian Conflict, the West Is Lining up with the Nazis Against the Antifas. Why?

In the Ukrainian conflict pitting the Nazi Ukrainian regime against Novorussian antifa separatist self-defense forces in the East, all of the West is has lined up with the Nazis, oddly enough. This is really a re-run of the times right after WW2, when much of the West supported the Banderist Ukrainian nationalist Nazis fighting the USSR in the Ukraine. The Nazi nationalist forest fighters of the Baltic states such as Latvia and Estonia also received a lot of Western support, as did the rightwing death squad regime in Greece.

It didn’t take long after the Nazis were defeated that the West rallied with their old Nazi pals. Many Nazis were spirited away from the prison cells that loomed before them to South America and even to the United States. The US helped many of these Nazis escape because the CIA realized that Nazis were some of the most savage anti-Communists of all, and the CIA wanted to use these Nazis in order to fight the USSR.

In the early days of Hitler’s regime around 1933, many in the West were quite smitten with Adolf. The Jewish-owned New York Times even ran long articles lauding the Fuhrer for his staunch anti-Communism. This shows that the rich Jews will always side with Capital no matter what form it takes, even when Capital is against the Jewish people. Big Money Jews will choose Mammon over Israel any day of the week and will sell out the tribe for the price of a piece of silver with barely the blink of an eye.

The US of course is fanatically pro-Nazi. Opinion polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans are supporting the Nazis in this conflict. Is there a reason for this except that US foreign policy has always supported rightwingers?

The UK is also extremely pro-Nazi now. What is the reason for this? Why would the UK be supporting the Nazis in this conflict? The truth here may be that the UK is an “Atlanticist” state. Atlanticism is a political philosophy popular in Western Europe for a while now. Atlanticist European states line up with the US on every foreign policy issue due to some unfracturable alliance. They don’t even think of the morals of the issue at stake – they simply do whatever Uncle Sam does. It’s follow the leader. It is considered to be an unbreakable alliance, and the Atlanticist states simply cannot refuse to do whatever the US does. A case of ideology trumping sense.

Spain is very pro-Nazi, but the Spanish ruling class never abandoned fascism, and further they are worried about secessionism in their own land. After the fall of Franco, the fascists never went away. Instead, they slowly folded into the ranks of the Conservative Party which has ruled Spain for more than a few years lately. Although that party is not actively fascist, at the very base of the party is deeply connected to movements with fascist roots. The party is not so much fascist as fascist-allied, and even that is mostly covered up in an ivy of subterfuge.

The Spanish state ran a fascist “anti-terrorism” group that assassinated figures in the Basque guerrilla movement for a number of years. This group operated outside of the military or the police purportedly as another illegal armed group, albeit a rightwing one, even though they were controlled by the security forces. This was for all intents and purposes similar to the CIA’s rightwing death squads of Latin America.

Germany is strongly pro-Nazi now. This makes sense in a lot of ways. Merkel is a Christian Democrat, and that is a party with deep fascist roots. At the end of WW2 although a de-Nazification was said to take place, it never really happened. A few Nazis were removed and even tried, but mostly the whole charade was over in a few years.

The reasons are painful. In order to do a true de-Nazification, you would have to had to imprison or sanction almost the entirety of German society. Nearly everyone was guilty at some level.

In East Germany, they did a much better job of this, and although the East German regime ended up being staunchly antifascist, this transformation never happened in the West.

Many former Nazis simply recycled their way into political parties, and the conservative Christian Democrats were the party of choice as the Social Democrats were anathema. The problem was even worse in industry and finance, where sanctions and prison sentences were few, and the German junkers, industrialists and banksters simply cycled their way back into power at the throne of German industry. The West German elite has been heavily former-Nazi for decades now. It’s a dirty little secret, one hardly anyone but Gunter Grass dares talk about.

The Netherlands is one of the most pro-Nazi states of all in Europe. I don’t get this, except that the Netherlands is one of the strongest Atlanticist states of them all. The tail on the American dog. They follow American orders.

France is taking a less pro-Nazi line than the rest. Most Frenchmen still hate the Vichy Regime, and all forms of Nazism and fascism are seen as repellent and against the moral values of the Republic.

Italy seems to be very much pro-Nazi. I am not sure if I get it, but an Italian friend told me that fascism is still popular among the Italian rich, especially in certain cities such as Rome. The young men of the Italian upper class are especially prone to this deviation. My friend said that fascism simply never went away in Italy. Indeed, some suggest that Berlusconi may have fascist ties.

The Strategy of Tension during the Days of Lead in the 1970’s was a terrorist campaign run by fascist gangs who were supported by the Italian state, the military and the rich. These gangs set off bombs all over Italy, focusing especially on places where large numbers of civilians gathered. The state and state-controlled press always blamed the armed Left (which was small but active) for the bombings, but they never carried out even one of them. Every one of these attacks was documented as a false flag attack. The purpose was simply to create chaos and terror so that the people would feel that they had nowhere to turn but to the state to protect them. Then the state put in increasingly authoritarian laws.

Norway is coming out very strongly for the Nazis, both the press and the vast majority of the people who are apparently brainwashed. I do not get this one either, but Norway surrendered immediately when attacked by Germany, and they promptly put in an ass-kisser named Quisling whose name has gone down in infamy. At the time though, nobody much minded him. What this less that spirited defense says about the Norwegian people, I am not sure.

Australian media is incredibly pro-Nazi. The Australians are part of the Anglosphere which consists of the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. All are now run by fairly rightwing governments. This is considered to be a de facto alliance based on common language and culture originating in the UK. Another case of Ideology Uber Alles.

In Poland, the elite is very much pro-Nazi (Poland and Lithuania are the most pro-Nazi states in Europe) because they have aligned themselves very tightly with US neocons, much to their own detriment. Somehow they think that aligning themselves with the US and with the neocons in particular is the way to the gravy train, but I think they are wrong.

A case of overreaction to their Soviet experience. They hated Communism so much that in reaction, they idiotically moved 180 degrees in the opposite rightwing direction to show how anti-Communist they were. Their hatred for Communism was so great that they lined up with the wildest anti-Communist governments of them all.

However, many of the Polish people are supporting the Novorussian antifas for some reason. This is probably because hatred for Nazism and fascism in general is still probably quite strong among ordinary Poles due to past experience.

Many East European regimes also adopted horrible neoliberal policies once again in an overreaction to Communism. In this case, they chose the most polar opposite economics of all to Communism, which would be neoliberalism/Libertarianism/cowboy capitalism.

Most East European countries who reacted in this stupid way have been seriously damaged. Latvia and Estonia have been nearly destroyed. 1/3 of the labor force of these countries has immigrated due to a financial collapse related to an utterly unregulated financial sector.

After the crash, the neoliberal regimes imposed frightening “austerity” nonsense which did nothing but kick the working people and spit on them while they lay in the gutter. Estonia actually passed laws cutting wages by 1/3. Surely the Estonian rich thought that was a great idea. Social services were eviscerated. It was like 1933 America in Tallinn the past few years. Logically, working people reacted to this extreme abuse by the rich, the capitalists and the political elite of their nations by voting with their feet.

Lithuania and Latvia issued pro-Nazi statements, but they had fascist governments when they were independent between world wars, and after independence, both Lithuanian and Latvian nationalism have had deep pro-Nazi roots. The Nazi-installed regimes in the 1940’s are regarded as the pinnacle of Baltic nationalism, and pro-Nazi fighters fought in the forests for years after the War against the USSR which had usurped their lands. Lithuania and Poland are the most pro-Nazi countries in all of Europe. They are absolutely determined to bring the Nazis into NATO. If they succeed, maybe we will have to change the name of it to Nazi Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Upon independence, all statues from the Soviet era were destroyed, Soviet street names were obliterated, and many new monuments were constructed to heroes of the Lithuanian and Latvian nationalist movements of the 1940’s and 1950’s who were deeply pro-Nazi.

Bigoted laws were imposed on the Russian minority in these countries, demanding that they learn to speak Latvian if they wanted to vote or claim benefits. Now a large percentage of the Latvian electorate, the Russian speakers, are disenfranchised and cannot vote in elections. Nevertheless, Latvia is very worried about the Russian minority in their country writhing under the Latvians’ own boot heels. There are rumblings of a secessionist movement among these Russians, but no one knows how serious it is.

Austria, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Denmark, Slovakia, Ireland, Czech Republic, Romania and New Zealand – Their positions are unknown. Slovakia and Romania might want a bite out of a disintegrating Ukraine themselves. Romanian Bessarabia was annexed to the USSR in the 1940’s by Stalin.

Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Serbia may well be lining up against the Nazis and with the Russian antifas due to a common culture they share with Orthodox Russia. A large contingent of Serbian antifa fighters have gone to Novorussia to fight the Nazis.

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by | May 14, 2011 · 1:55 AM

The Baltic Free Market Charnel House

I wrote in my previous post that most of the former republics of the USSR were still more or less socialist states.

The exception were the Baltics. Due to their hatred for the USSR and their knee-jerk rejection of socialism, the Baltics were one of the few places on Earth where politicians actually ran on radical free market platforms, and the people gleefully voted them in.

But the Baltics are now lying in ruins. Neoliberalism set Lithuania, Estonia and especially Latvia on fire. The Latvian state slashed public wages by 30% (this is classic free market ideology – the destruction of wages) and has announced that it intends to drive down private wages by 30% too. The Latvian economy crashed by 24%, nearly as large as our Great Depression. Social spending has been razed. Anyone with any money and education is fleeing the country as a massive brain drain sets in.

The truth of Latvia is stark. The rich destroy every state and ruin every economy that they run, nearly without exception. And they are doing it here in the US as we speak. For the rich and corporations which run the US would love nothing more than to implement the Latvian model here in this country. And that’s exactly what they are doing.

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Filed under Economics, Europe, Lithuania, Neoliberalism, Regional

by | April 19, 2011 · 1:28 AM

Do the Rich Deliberately Destroy the State?

Yes they do.

They always have, they do now, and they always will. It’s one of those rules of political science.

People ask me if the rightwingers and the rich actually believed that trickle down economics would stimulate the economy. Who knows? Stimulus spending does a great job of stimulating the economy, but the trickle down people hate it. The rich and the rightwing are not interested in stimulating the economy. They deliberately blew up the economy few years ago, and they don’t even care.

The rich are always rich no matter what the economy is like. They could care less about the economy. They could care less about the unemployment rate. Have you noticed recently that with this ruined economy, the corporations have been posting record profits nonetheless? Have you noticed the stock market is going gangbusters while the nation sighs and heaves in its death throes? This is all that important to the rich – profits and stock prices. As long as those are booming along, the country can go to Hell for all they care.

The rich are the enemy of the nation.

They always have been. Patriot and rich man are oxymorons. If there’s money to be made dealing the enemies of the homeland, the rich will sell out the homeland for a song. During colonial times, the rich always sided with the colonists who raped and ruined the land and the people for the colonial loot. The rich made deals with the colonial rapers so they got a cut of the ruination of the nation.

During anticolonial battles, the rich sided with the colonists. The rich Jews in the Arab World in particular sided with the colonists and opposed decolonization. The Algerian Jews supported the French. The Lebanese Christians supported the French.

In Indochina, the rich supported the French in the war and then sided with the neocolonial Americans during the Vietnam War. In Palestine, the rich Palestinians have always been willing to sell out the homeland in a heartbeat. The rich Palestinians think that the Palestinian nationalist and anticolonialist (anti-Zionist) movement is bad for business. They’ve been trying to cut a crappy deal with the Zionists forever to sell out the homeland.

The rich are always traitors.

The Korean rich collaborated with the Japanese colonists in Korea. After 1945, most of the rich traitors fled to South Korea. The leading elite of South Korea has always been made up of the worst traitors and collaborators with the Japanese. In contrast, those who fought against the Japanese fled to the north, so North Korea at least has had the reputation of heroism in the anti-colonial war, which they have played up.

Trickle down economics doesn’t even work. It’s just a wealth redistribution project, and in many cases, it doesn’t even grow the economy very well, as all it does is hollow it out.

It’s just good for rich people and big businesses. All the money flows to the top. Friedmanomics (trickle down) has been tried all over the world for decades. All it does is cause a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 80% to the top 20% of society, which is why the rich are all for it. At the same time, it severely guts the state through privatization and revenue loss. At some point, it totally blows up the economy and ruins everything, as we just saw here in the US. It’s inherently unstable, and you get wild runs and booms and then horrible crashes.

The nations that have tried Friedmanomics in the most extreme form have been the most ruined by it. Chile was wrecked by the Chicago Boys in the most radical economic experiment of the modern era.

Poland, Lithuania and Latvia elected hardline Friedmanite neoliberals, and all three nations have been badly hammered in the latest downturn. Latvia has been wrecked. Wages plunged by 30% – actually, the Friedmanites cheered this on and said it was one of their major goals. Poland has 19% unemployment and a battered public sector. The public sector has been burned out in Latvia and Lithuania. In Latvia, the economy plunged 24%. Most educated Latvians are leaving the country – there is a huge brain drain going on.

Ireland introduced radical neoliberal reforms, including a nearly zero income tax for corporations. They deregulated the banking sector. The result was that the entire Irish banking system collapsed, and now the Irish will have to pay off the bankers for decades of debt slavery to the bankers, the masters of the world. Furthermore, the Irish state has been gutted and wages have crashed.

People ask me if the rich establishment wrecked the state on purpose. They can’t believe that the rich would do something like that.

Of course they will. They rich will always or nearly always try to destroy the state.

They want to privatize as much of society as possible and pay as few taxes as possible. The rich have always been this way. I have seen a document from Italy in the 1300’s that describes the mindset of the businessman: he wants the state to get out of way and do as little as possible in society. All the state does is interfere with his money making project. For the businessman, it’s always the least state that’s the best state.

The rich actually want to wreck the state.

They want to defund it. Look at the 3rd World. Everywhere in the 3rd World, you have a wrecked, defunded, anemic state. That is because the rich run most 3rd World countries and this is their project – a minimal state. The 3rd World rich also pay almost no taxes, so there is no money to run the state.

The result of the defunded state is your typical 3rd World shithole, but the rich don’t care that they live in a shithole for some reason. They just buy a 4 by 4, a mansion with razor wire and armed guards, bottled water, a generator, and they’re ready to go. They have their fancy private schools for the kids and fancy doctors for when they get sick. Everyone else can drop dead and go to Hell.

The rich don’t need the state for anything.

All they want is cops and army. Everything else is useless and might as well be privatized.

They even hate public education, and they are trying to destroy that too, but they will not succeed. What we will end up with here in the US is ruined pubic education which is underfunded and terrible like we have in the Turd World. Anyone with any sense would put their kids in private school. All the rich send their kids to private schools, so they hate public education. They get taxed for it, but they don’t use it. They won’t succeed in getting rid of public education in the US, but they will radically defund it.

The rich don’t like anything the government does. Nothing, nada, zip, zilch. There’ s nothing in it for them, and they have to pay tons of taxes. They really resent it.

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