Hundreds if not over a Thousand Died in the Square

"The government’s systematic effort to obscure what took place, beginning with sealing off the square the next day, made it difficult to come up with an accurate death toll."

"A meticulous investigation, found that at least 817 and likely well over 1,000 people were killed in the Square."

"One protester recalled carrying the dead, piles of them. “We found limbs that were totally crushed. There were dead people with no arms, obviously a tank ran over them. Imagine you are carrying piles of bodies, it is something you can’t imagine. Even the bodies that you are carrying, you carry an arm of a person, alongside the leg of another person.”

"A student from the University recounted that the ground was a “sea of blood” and how she watched the bleeding protesters in horror, “knowing that I was not able to do anything besides watch them die.”

Are the above horrific descriptions about Tiananmen Square in Beijing (where no massacre actually occurred)? No, they describe what occurred one year ago today at Rab’a Square in Cairo, Egypt.

Do you think any mention of this anniversary will be made in the corporate media?

Do you think there will be a drumbeat of accusations hurled against the Egyptian government for its massacre of unarmed civilians?

Do you think that year after year for 25 years the massacre at Rab'a Square will be commemorated on August 14th with silent vigils and denunciations of the Cairo regime?

Do you think that the Western media and the Egyptian government might want to erase this massacre from our collective memory?

Do you think that we actually have a "free press" in the West that isn't totally controlled and manipulated by a Media-Industrial Complex fed by the governments they support?

Do you think that we in the West value some lives more than others and use the death of some and not others for solely political purposes without any real concern for the human toll taken?

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/14/us-still-funding-repression/

Progress Highlighted at Fourth Forum on the Development of Tibet

The problem with many people who have an open mind about Tibet, is that they tend to criticize both Western and Chinese treatment of their respective minority nationalities, and take the fall back Western line of a pox on both houses. Well, that's not the way it is. The Western anglophile countries still treat their natives populations like shit. And most US citizens don't really give a damn. Native Americans still live in extreme poverty, have the highest suicide rates, highest drug abuse and alcohol abuse rates, highest levels of depression of any other demographic in the US. Their kids are still being taken from their families and put in Anglo foster care homes. I could go on and on.

On the contrary, no matter what the Tibetan exile community (which obviously has an axe to grind) says the Chinese government, which is the government of all of China, treats Tibet in the exact opposite way that the US treats Native Americans. Billions are invested in Tibet to raise living standards, provide housing, promote health and education. It is not true, as some Tibetan exile mouthpieces state that the Tibetan language is not being taught and Tibetan culture is being downplayed and Tibetans are being forceably assimilated into Han culture. It is also a lie that China is trying to relocate Han to Tibet. There is freedom of movement in China. Tibetans can travel throughout the country and many migrate to Chinese cities for business or other employment opportunities. And other Chinese travel to Tibet for tourism or to conduct business. Most non-Tibetans settle in Lhasa which has become a cosmopolitan hub. I can tell you from personal experience that few if any Chinese want to or could even physically adjust to the rigors of living in Tibet outside of Lhasa.

Actually Tibetans have adapted genetically to high altitude living like other populations that live at high altitude in other regions of the world. And life in Tibet is much harder than elsewhere in China, even given the rapid economic development of the last two decades. So why would Han Chinese inundate Tibet. Again it is not government policy to resettle people in Tibet. That is not how China operates today.

Read the 2010 US State Department White Paper on Tibet (
http://www.scribd.com/doc/201632307/Tibet) and the report from the recently held Fourth Forum on the Development of Tibet just completed in Lhasa (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-08/14/c_126868303.htm). Oh, critics will say its all Chinese propaganda, but is it? What about the propaganda published in the NY Times, by a self-styled Tibetan dissident Tsering Woeser (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/15/opinion/learning-to-forget-tibet-in-china.html?_r=0). Read her article then read her bio in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woeser) and you can see that they don't really jive.

She states that, "In 1981, the year I graduated from junior high school in Kangding in the Tibetan region of Kham, high schools in China’s heartland were starting to recruit ethnic minorities like me. In official parlance, this was the beginning of what was to become a larger “Help Tibet” campaign. Minority students were plucked from their native villages to be “cultivated” in Chinese schools in order to serve their people and the nation."

Sounds as if she was simply a regular ordinary ethnic Tibetan kid recruited to a Chinese school to be indoctrinated in Han and communist Chinese ways. Well, if you read the Wikipedia entry she was nothing of the sort. "Her grandfather, Han ethnic, was an officer in the Nationalist Army of the Kuomintang and her father was a high rank Army officer in the People's Liberation Army. When she was a small child, her family relocated to the Kham area of western Sichuan province. In 1988, she graduated from Southwest University for Nationalities in Chengdu with a degree in Chinese literature."

So her narrative is a bald-faced lie. She comes from a privileged, Sinified Tibetan family, not some ethnic Tibetan redoubt. So why should anything she says be believed. I don't know why she has decided to take the dissident route, there are usually some deep-seated animosities that lead to people pursuing the route she has taken.

So it comes down to who are you to believe? Obviously both sides in the dispute surrounding Tibet have their own axes to grind. You can't blindly accept what the exile community outside of China says, nor can you blindly accept what the dissident community says. You can't blindly accept what the Chinese government says or its foreign supporters like myself say. You have to investigate on your own and come to your own conclusions. Hopefully what I say here is of some help.http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-08/14/c_126868303.htm

The US/ISaudi Ploy in Iraq Succeeds (At Least for Now)

Don't underestimate the wiliness of US Imperialism. The latest string of events in Iraq seems almost incomprehensible, US/Israeli/Saudi supported ISIS savages, defeated in Syria retreat into Iraq and run roughshod over the US trained military, loot billions of dollars of US military equipment, initiate a reign of terror against Iraqi minorities and threaten Baghdad. How could this series of events be orchestrated behind the scenes by the US and its minions?. It seems too Machiavellian even for Imperium Americana.

But look what has been accomplished by the cynical and diabolical use by the US/Israeli/Saudi Axis of ISIS storm-troopers in Iraq.

1. The Shiite hold on Iraq, an unintended consequence of the Iraqi War and occupation has been broken.

2. The Biden de facto partition plan for Iraq has been fully implemented. Kurdistan, a staunch ally of Israel, is being armed to combat ISIS militants. The Sunni triangle has been separated from central authority and Shiite Iraq is for all intents and purposes a rump state.

3. The al-Maliki government has been overthrown and a government more to the liking of the US/Israeli/Saudi axis can now be installed.

4. The IS initiated "humanitarian crisis" has allowed the US to portray itself as the "exceptional" protector of human rights in Iraq and "indispensable" savior of Iraq's minorities, who would have perished without US "humanitarian intervention." The US can now resume its role as suzerain over its Iraqi protectorate.

5. As a consequence of the above the Shiite Belt across central Mesopotamia from Iran to Syria and Lebanon has been broken, prohibiting an Iranian pipeline to Syria on the Mediterranean.

6. The establishment of the IS, its reign of terror over central Iraq, the barbaric mass murders reminiscent of Nazi extermination campaigns, the beheading of woman and children a la Japanese militarism during WW2, the actual crucifixion of Christians by ISIS, were all necessary collateral damage, needed to set the stage for what unfolded. Without IS atrocities none of what transpired would have occurred.

And what of the Iraqi Yazidi's? One day they are on the verge of genocide by IS. The next day Obama is lauding the US intervention as saving the day. A few bombing runs and the IS forces disappear into the woodwork and the Yazidi's are saved. Not to minimize the suffering of the Yazidi's and hundreds of thousands of other Iraqis at the hands of IS. But they were and are merely pawns in the game that the US is playing to be sacrificed when need be to further US/Israeli/Saudi hegemony over the Middle East.

Now that IS has fulfilled its mission expect to see it retreat towards Syria to be used as a reserve army of chaos whenever they are needed to enforce US/Israeli/Saudi hegemony over the region.

China as a Model for the Revival of the Soviet Union under Russian Guise

The main reason for the Sino-Soviet split was the 1956 CPSU 20th Party Congress in which Khrushchev denounced Stalin and proposed the revisionist policies of "Peaceful Co-existence" and "Party and State of the Whole People" The CPC, under the leadership of Chairman Mao, took exception to these policies and formulations and saw them as a betrayal of the vanguard role of the working class and a power grab by a new bourgeoisie within the Party.

At the time China and the Soviet Union were at very different stages of socialist develop and both were pursuing different policies, based to a large extent on the exigencies of the times and the challenge of US Imperialism which through the mechanism of the Cold War was trying by every means possible to contain and rollback the victorious march of socialism and the anti-colonial national liberation struggles after WW2.

China was emerging from a century of Western and Japanese domination which had destroyed the foundations of the nation and reduced it to the “sick man of Asia.” It desperately needed to rebuild its infrastructure and secure the people's livelihood. This could only be done by an intense period of war communism in which all the material and human resources of the country were mobilized in a military fashion to rebuild China through socialist construction. This was the heroic period of China's socialist revolution and required charismatic leadership and a national esprit de corps, similar to what prevailed in the US during WW2 and the Soviet Union in the 1930s and the Great Patriotic War under Stalin's leadership. The denunciation of Stalin was seen by the Chinese as a tacit denunciation of Mao, and the political line of the CPC.

The Soviet Union on the other hand saw itself as a developed socialist society in which the draconian measures employed under Stalin were no longer necessary. They also saw the need to redress the glaring examples of unlawful practices that had occurred under Stalin's rule, including illegal persecutions and prosecutions of innocent Communists and non-party individuals, as well as instances of unlawful collective punishment. The CPSU however did this in such a way as to demoralize Communists throughout the world and throw the Communist movement into disarray.

China in a similar situation after the death of Mao in 1976 refused to throw Mao under the bus. Many of his policies during the various mass campaigns up to and including the Cultural Revolution were severely criticized but Mao was recognized as the great and indispensable leader of the Chinese Revolution and the Chinese nation. His legacy was evaluated as 70/30. 70% correct, 30% incorrect and he is still today a revered figure throughout China. The CPC never reversed the verdict on Mao, even though the vast majority of persecuted Communists were rehabilitated after the overthrow of the Gang of Four. Even the victims of Stalin's purges, the great Bolsheviks such as Bukharin, Kamarov, Zinoviev and yes Trotsky are well evaluated in Baiku, the Chinese version of Wikipedia.

The Chinese have clearly stated in recent analyzes of the fall of the Soviet Union that the de-Stalinization campaigns initiated by Khrushchev and reinforced and expanded by Gorbachev 30 years later were crucial components of the ideological collapse that directly led to the Soviet Union's downfall. China has not done that and recognizes the fundamental need to maintain the mythos and ethos of Communist ideology under the leadership of the CPC. All the talk about China turning its bacl on Marxism-Leninism and Maoism is Western disinformation and propaganda meant to delegitimize the CPC and its leading role in China's socialist development.

What about “Peaceful Co-existence?” Isn't that a policy that the Chinese are currently pursuing? Hasn't the CPC embraced this concept under the post-Mao leadership? The answer is no. But some may say hasn't China pursued the policy of the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence ever since the Bandung Conference of non-aligned nations in 1955? Yes and quite appropriately, but the essence of the Chinese concept of peaceful-coexistence is totally different than that of the Soviet Union. For the Soviet Union the idea of peaceful-coexistence meant that the two blocs, the socialist bloc and the capitalist bloc should co-exist and divide the world between them. They could battle it out in proxy wars and even send troops across borders to maintain or extend their spheres of influence, they could stage manage coups and support opposition forces in various countries that were in the throes of de-colonization, but it was all done in the context of the Cold War division of the Post-war world.

China's concept of peaceful co-existence was the polar opposite. It was based on non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations and developing relations based on the principles of mutual aid and mutual benefit. This was and is a very different formulation than the Soviet idea of peaceful-co-existence which the Chinese saw as giving the US and Soviet blocs carte blanche to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign nations and impose their model of development on recalcitrant client states. China would have no part in that as it was seen to infringe on their own national sovereignty.

What about the formulation of the Party and State of the Whole People? Article 1, Chapter 1 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution states that “The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a socialist state of the whole people, expressing the will and interests of the workers, peasants, and intelligentsia, the working people of all the nations and nationalities of the country.” No mention of the leading role of the working class, just the assertion that their will and interests would be expressed. In contrast the 1982 Chinese Constitution, as amended in 2004 states in Article 1, Chapter 1 that, “The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state under the people’s democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants.” While some may say this is merely rhetorical and that China is not even a socialist state, they are profoundly wrong. Read both Constitutions and see how they differ and how the Chinese Constitution clearly reflects the primary stage of socialism the Chinese acknowledge themselves to be operating under.

So how does this all relate to the question at hand? First it must be noted that Gorbachev clearly stated that he was a “child” of the 20^th Party Congress and that he wanted to follow its reforms through to the end. That is he thought Khrushchev's reforms were half measures and that the malaise of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s was that the measures Khrushchev initiated were not thorough going enough, hence Glasnost and Perestroika. But what this meant was the complete deconstruction of the Soviet Union and it's conversion into a bourgeois social democratic republic. Whatever Gorbachev's motives may have been, as is often said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Glasnost and Perestroika were a total surrender to the West and took de-Stalinization to its logical conclusion the complete and utter collapse of the Soviet Union and the states under its immediate hegemony. De-Stalinization became a coded phrase for de-Sovietization and the deconstruction of socialism.

China on the other hand never abandoned its roots, but built on them. The leadership re-evaluated domestic economic relations and the state of the world and opted for a greatly expanded NEP based on the objective conditions of China's domestic needs and the world balance of forces. It maintained its socialist legacy, and its sovereignty and pursued an independent developmental trajectory of its own choosing based on a combination of its rich cultural and historical legacy, an appreciation of the need to integrate into the global marketplace and the necessity of allowing certain capitalistic relations of production to take root in order to quickly develop the means of production so that China could accelerate its socialist construction, which in the era of US Financial Capitalism and US Imperialism was and is absolutely essential.

My thesis is that Soviet Union could have done the same, but its always easy to criticize from hindsight. The dynamic in the Soviet Union was very different than in China for a multitude of historic and cultural reasons. Nonetheless Russia can now get on the same track as Chinas. There used to be talk of convergence between the East (Soviet Communism) and the West (US Capitalism). Now maybe there needs to be talk of convergence between Russia and China, or perhaps more to the point Russia beginning to emulate more of the Chinese model of economic development. Actually, the Soviet Union continues on in the PRC, many of the PRCs practices can be easily adopted and adapted to Russian reality. China for instance has shied away from Maoist totalitarianism and pays homage to its rich cultural legacy, reinterpreted to met its contemporary ideological needs. Much the same can occur in Russia. For instance China talks about the need to develop “socialist spiritual civilization” and “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

The West's abandonment of Russia, it's refusal to see Russia half way, the turning of its back on Russia's attempts to integrate with the West and the West's attempts to denigrate and stigmatize Russia and its civilization may be an unintended gift. It may free Russia to regain its identity and pick up where it left off in 1991. So its not a question of Red (socialism) or White (traditionalism) its a question of merging the two into a new dynamic whole.

US Imperialism, Enemy of the World's People

What has the US accomplished anywhere in the world where they have set their stinking, dirty feet? Nothing but death and destruction. What is left in its wake are destroyed nations and broken people. The countries that the US has destabilized, invaded or otherwise intervened in are listed at the bottom of all international surveys. It usually takes 20 or more years, an entire generation, if they are left alone, for these countries to recover.

Let's take a look region by region.

South America. While the US largely controlled the politics and economies of the South American republic throughout most of the twentieth century democratic, nationalist upsurges were common. When in the late 1960s and 70s left-wing populism began gaining strength US sponsored military dictatorships were imposed on Chile, Brazil, Argentina and most other South American countries with devastating consequences, including the disappearance and likely torture and murder of tens if not hundreds of thousands of political opponents. It was only after the ascent of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and US distractions in the Middle East that the tide began to turn.

Central America and the Caribbean. A similar tale of woe can be recounted going back to the 1950s and extending to the present. The military coup and genocide in Guatemala, the Contra wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador, to the more recent coups in Haiti, Honduras and elsewhere have resulted in failed states dominated by corrupt governments in league with drug cartels and criminal gangs, resulting in the mass exodus of the region's youth. Those countries that resisted such as Nicaragua and El Salvador were eventually successful in regaining their sovereignty, but at what cost, unnecessarily imposed by Yanqui Imperialism?

 Southeast Asia. The human toll resulting from the wars in Indochina from the 1950s through to the 1970s was millions of dead and countries laid waste by carpet bombing, the direct results being anarchy in Cambodia and the vast exodus of displaced people from Vietnam in the late 1970s and 1980s. In Indonesia millions were massacred as a result of a CIA supported coup in 1965 and the war against East Timor in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Only now are the scars of US intervention being healed. And to what effect was our intervention other than the destruction of one country after another and the traumatization of an entire generation?

 South Asia. Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Need I say more. Our destabilization efforts have led to the blow-back that has enmeshed the US in futile wars and military interventions for decades on end leading to 9/11, the "war on terrorism" and the the waste of trillions of US taxpayer dollars that have not only devastated the countries we target but our own country starved of the resources to rebuild our infrastructure and develop our economy.

The Middle East and North Africa. Give me a break, 'nuff said.

 Oh, I could go on about the destruction of economies in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia. Or the turmoil in Africa, all brought to you and sponsored by US Imperialism, but I think the reader gets the gist of what is being said.

 US Imperialism, the enemy of the world's people.

Reactivating...10, 9, 8....

I've decided to reactivate this blog and place my FB posts and comments here for easy reference. I may backlog it as well so I can access previous posts at FB and elsewhere. Stay tuned.

Egypt's Only Out: A Progressive Military Strongman

The Egyptian Revolution continues unabated. It is nowhere near it's climax. It must inevitably move from sparing over which brand of neoliberal capitalism will lord it over the masses of Egyptians, to who will be Egypt's saviour. For Egypt's revolution to be successful, under the present circumstances, a new Nasser must emerge.  Otherwise Egypt will burn as its politicians fiddle over who will preside over the continued failure of neoliberal neo-colonialism to succor Egypt's teeming masses. Privatization of the remaining public sector, more austerity in the form of reductions in subsidies for food and fuel and the further elimination of vital social services will not cure Egypt's ills but only exacerbate them. No one on the political stage be they Mubarak hold-overs, the Muslim Brotherhood or the plethora of liberal bourgeois/social democratic politicians can solve Egypt's problems as they all recycle the same policies dictated by the US, the EU, the IMF and the World Bank. The only question in the minds of the modern day neo-imperialists is who can best implement those policies.

In order for the US neoliberal corporatists to continue their rule the Egyptian people have been fed pablum about "democracy" being the panacea for all the social and economic injustices they suffer. "Free and Fair Elections" and "The Rule of Law" are all well and good but tell me are elections, "Free and Fair" when they are rigged from start to finish by the corporatists who control the process? When has the "Rule of Law" been anything more than a rationale for class warfare by the 1% against the 99%? We have an election fetish in this country and we try to foist it on one and all, no matter how inappropriate it may be.

The Egyptian people need social and economic justice, for most of them it is a life and death struggle just to put food on the table. Electoral politics will not give them what they need, it will just shift the deck chairs on a sinking Titanic. The last ruler who did anything for the Egyptian people was Nasser. His successors betrayed his legacy and imposed neo-colonial, neolibralism to replace Nasser's Pan-Arab Socialism. Why are the Egyptian people so praiseful of the military's role in ousting Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood? Because they know that only the military can save Egypt. But not Mubarak's military, rather the military of the people that lays dormant within its ranks.

What Egypt needs is not "democratic elections" which will replace one brand of neolibralism with another, they need someone in the Armed Forces to emerge, like Nasser to take the bull by the horns, Chavez style, to wrest control away from the neoliberals, be they of the autocratic Mubarak type, the Islamist Morsi type or the Liberal Democratic ElBaradei type. Yes, you heard me right, a progressive military strongman who can rally the troops, retire the generals and implement an Egyptian New Deal a la FDR. Bourgeois Democracy is just that, democracy for the bourgeoisie, aka the big capitalists and their political henchmen, in other words the classic Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. Yes it does exist, in the USA, in the EU and in semi-colonial countries throughout the world. It is entrenched and will not exist stage left unless escorted off stage by the armed forces of the people.

I am confident that there are forces in the military who are planning what I suggest. How could they not be there, given that every Egyptian knows the history of their nation and the role Nasser played? The Army can forestall the inevitable by only one means, obtaining the financial means to ameliorate the socioeconomic crisis that Egyptians are facing with the collapse of tourism, and foreign and domestic investment. In this regard the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as a last deperate measure, have pledged 8 billion dollars  in immediate aid to the beleaguered Egyptian government (which they denied to Morsi) to tide it over the immediate crisis. Will this be enough to placate the people and send them home from Tahrir Square and elsewhere? Such stopgap measures however can only forestall the inevitable. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have no intention of being perpetual donors to save Egypt from itself. Egypt will eventually have to sink or swim and it is doubtful that adherence to Western neoliberal policies will allow it to stay afloat.