Um....

News report 14/08/2008:

"A British journalist was arrested and "forcibly restrained" by Chinese police yesterday while covering a pro-Tibet Olympic demo. ITN's John Ray was held for an hour - despite having official accreditation - and his camera crew stopped from filming as eight protesters were arrested at the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park, near the National Stadium in Beijing."

News report 27/08/2008:

"Police in Denver arrested an ABC News producer today as he and a camera crew were attempting to take pictures on a public sidewalk of Democratic senators and VIP donors leaving a private meeting at the Brown Palace Hotel."

Is China A Socialist Country?

There are three components to the political economy of contemporary China. The first is the political, economic and sociocultural formations inherited from thousands of years of Chinese history. This historic experience cannot be discounted. It is the context, the sea within which China swims. The second is the worldwide development of capitalism and the economic forces and relations of production associated with it. As the demise of the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc demonstrate, it is impossible to go it alone and try to recapitulate the historic development of modern capitalism under the conditions of isolation from the world market. The third component of contemporary Chinese political economy is the history of national democratic and socialist revolutionary movements both in China and worldwide during the 20th century. All three of these components interact with one another to create the socioeconomic, cultural and political reality of China today.

To answer the question in the heading: Due to the deformations of colonialism and imperialist subjugation, China experienced a new democratic revolution led by a class conscious Communist Party. Under the leadership of the CPC, China regained continuity with its past and entered into a period of socialist reconstruction subject to the conditions of underdevelopment and scarcity. The success of socialist reconstruction allowed China to enter the stage of all around capitalist development under the leadership of the patriotic national bourgeoisie. Only the Chinese people themselves, with their destiny in their own hands, will determine the manner in which their country and nation continues to develop.

China Bashing – From the Left and the Right

Enough is enough! Its time to stop the China bashing. Both the Left and the Right just love to pommel China.

The Left just can’t countenance the fact that China decided to modernize itself rather than live in a self-contained, hermetically sealed equalitarian dystopia. Of course they would never choose, on their own volition, to live the type of life for which they’re so nostalgic. Let all those yellow Chinese live in pristine poverty and advance by ever so slow increments through the 21st century, the better to preserve their own white privilege. They certainly shouldn't take the bull by the horns and wrestle with the West for economic superiority, oh no for heaven’s sake no. My goodness those nasty market reforms have led to a spike in inequality and a diminution of social security, while bringing 100s of millions out of abject poverty. Well, the Chinese leadership is addressing those questions of developmental imbalance and has the means to redress them.

The Right just loves to bash China for its supposed human rights abuses and support of repressive dictatorships, the better to cloak its own culpability in both cases which far exceeds anything the Chinese have ever done. No matter that for over a century China was carved up by the great powers and subject to unequal treaties, a colonial sponsored drug trade, and impoverishment brought on by the destruction of indigenous industries and commodity dumping.

Definitely China, according to western critics, cannot have its cake and eat it too. They could care less about the welfare of the Chinese people, and have nothing but scorn for their accomplishments. To them the Chinese are but ants scurrying around at the behest of their totalitarian overlords. They would love to see China dismembered a la the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the better to pick up its pieces and throttle the emerging Dragon. Well the Chinese leadership, schooled in traditional Chinese statecraft will never allow that to happen.

The Chinese people know in their guts that 1989 was a watershed year. They could have gone the way of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe and devolved into social, economic and political chaos. Luckily they had a steadfast leadership that saw the writing on the wall. Take the slings and arrows of reprobation slung by the West or succumb to their admonitions and give up the ghost of their ambitions. Well they persevered and rather than bemoan China's demise, along the lines of Putin’s lament about the destruction of the Soviet Union, they laid the groundwork for the economic and geopolitical resurgence of today's China.

As regards a political reversal a la what took place in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe, don’t hold your breadth. Over a million of the best and the brightest amongst the Chinese people have studied abroad, gotten advanced degrees and have either returned to China or commute back and forth on a regular basis. This elite has seen the West and its political process and are not all that impressed. Many feel that China would not be well served by the chaos driven politics of most democratic countries. They can however see the advantages that a system of checks and balances has for restraining corruption and resolving societal conflicts. I would bet my bottom dollar that Chinese jurisprudence and the means to implement conflict resolution, be it via trade unions, environmental NGOs or other advocacy groups will develop apace over the next decade.

So I would advise the critics of the Left and the Right that China is still in the throes of a vast socio-politico-economic experiment. It will find new ways to address its developmental conflicts and imbalances. It will learn from the West as well as from its own experience and the experience of many others. It will make mistakes and there will be reverses. But I can assure you that the China of 2028 will look nothing like the China of 2008.

The 29th Olympiad - Final Thoughts

China by winning the gold medal count with a total of 51 versus 36 for the USA has become a true sports powerhouse. The Chinese count has gone up each successive Olympics since their entry in 1984, but the latest advance is a quantum leap forward with China becoming only the third nation, after the US and the USSR, to lead in gold medals since Germany did so in 1936. The US media has trumpeted the total medal count which placed the US ahead of China 110 to 100, but when points are assigned to each category (gold=3, silver=2, bronze=1) China edged out the US 223 to 220. This was due to the fact that more than 1/2 of the Chinese medals were gold, whereas only 1/3 of the American were. It can also truly be said that in Chinese sports "women hold up half the sky." More than half their gold medals (27) and total medals (57) were won by women.

In all other respects these Olympics were triumphant. Scandals and tragedies which have marred previous Olympics were held to a minimum. The much vaunted pollution problems never materialized, the weather held up and the venues were spectacular. The Chinese people proved to be gracious hosts. Now China can turn back to addressing its many developmental problems. If they're as successful in their other endeavors as they have been in this one, China can look forward to a bright future.

2 Elderly Chinese Women Sent To Labor Camp For Protest Plans (Not)

Headlines such as the above are meant to inflame public opinion against China. It conjures up images of two poor elderly Chinese women, torn away from family and friends, subjected to the most brutal, unconscionable form of punishment, condemned to a sure death in a Chinese Gulag.

The reality, however, is quite different. The headline is a pure fabrication. As reported by the Guardian newspaper in the UK

On August 17 the two women received an order dated July 30 from Beijing's Re-education Through Labour Commission, sentencing them to one year for "disturbing the public order".

It places restrictions on their movements and warns that if they breach any of the requirements they will be sent to a labour camp.

The system does not require formal hearings or allow appeals.

Li told the Associated Press the women were now at home under the observation of a neighbourhood committee. No cause had been given for the order. When Wu and Wang returned to the PSB on August 18 officers said they could not apply to protest because of their sentence.

The key words here are "sentenced" and "restrictions placed on their movements". Contrary to the headline, which has been reproduced in media outlets worldwide, the women were not sent anywhere but home. They have basically been told to shut up and were put on probation.

Actually the story, as is usually the case, is more complicated than reported in the Western press. The two women have been protesting the expropriation of their homes, probably for some construction project (although that's speculation on my part) since 2001. They applied for a permit to protest at an Olympic staging area set aside for that purpose. A report in the Chinese language edition of Voice of America says that in the past they exploded firecrackers outside the government compound at Zhongnanhai, opposite the Forbidden City, to draw attention to their complaints. So in actual fact the Chinese authorities have been dealing with these two "trouble makers" for quite a while and have been rather indulgent of their activities, probably in deference to their age. The sentencing of the women to re-education was a formality which prevented them from receiving a protest permit as anyone who is under such a sentence cannot apply.

The whole fandango was, therefore, a bureaucratic attempt to get a couple of ornery old ladies to cool it. They've been making a fuss for over seven years and I guess the authorities just have had enough. So they got a slap on the wrist and were told to go home and behave or else.

Now this turns out to be the type of minor spat that is common anywhere in the world and can be read about in the local 'round about town column. It has been blown all out of proportion to the reality of the situation and become fodder for the hysterical Western press that wants to portray China as an evil ogre out to oppress its people. However you may want to criticize the Chinese authorities for their handling of the situation it doesn't constitute the type of action indicated by the headline. These women have not been shuttled off to some forlorn labor camp. The headline is misleading and false. It casts malicious aspersions on China as being some sort of barbaric miscreant country. So while I may have some questions about how the whole imbroglio started and how its been resolved I do not think it appropriate to distort and misrepresent the actual facts about how these two unfortunate women have been treated.

AHG!

Michael Neumann’s recent contribution at Counterpunch discusses the charge that Russia responded to the Georgian assault against South Ossetia in a “disproportionate” manner. Imagine that. The U.S. government, which responded to Iraq’s fictitious possession of WMD’s with a bombing campaign of “Shock and Awe”, accuses Russia of behaving in a disproportionate fashion! Wasn’t Saakashvelli’s initial bombardment of the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali a “disproportionate response” to begin with? The double standard and sheer hypocrisy of the Republocrats is truly astounding.

Will China Prove Me Wrong?

The economic downturn we're experiencing domestically is having worldwide ramifications and the lessening of consumer demand here in the States is leading to factory closures and job lose in China. Other factors are also contributing to this phenomenon as reported by MSNBC

You would think that the Chinese leadership should be well-prepared for this eventuality. Hell, if they are Marxists they should know that there would eventually be a severe economic crisis affecting the capitalist world in which they have been participating. The signs have been there for all to see.

This should be a time when the superiority of the socialist system shines through. Over the last two decades China has amassed vast monetary reserves and has leveraged foreign investment to become the manufacturing capital of the world. Over the last decade it has spent vast sums on improving and expanding its infrastructure. While still a developing country and with daunting problems it has accumulated enough physical and human capital to be in a position to make the necessary adjustments to avoid the economic crisis that the Western capitalist countries are encountering.

The Chinese economy should immediately begin to shift its focus away from exports to vigorously expanding its domestic market. This should be facilitated by the fact that so much needs to be done. Living standards for hundreds of millions of people need to be raised from a low to a middle level of consumption. Health care facilities and personnel need to be expanded. Environmental recovery needs to be accelerated. The burgeoning middle classes have large reserves of pent up demand. The credit system which fueled US consumption for decades is just beginning to establish itself. If properly implemented and regulated this can serve as an economic engine to fuel China's economic expansion for decades to come.

I'm no economist but I think I know something about China. The world can see for itself the discipline, resourcefulness and pride of the Chinese nation during this Olympiad. Coupled with what should be the superiority of the socialist system which I feel underlies to this day the Chinese economy, China should be able to confound the naysayers and doomsayers who see an impending collapse.

My Olympic Observations

Ahem! Don’t hear much talk lately about pollution at the Olympic games. Prior to their start, that’s about all you heard about. Some ignoramuses went so far as to argue that the games should be boycotted because they would otherwise endorse global warming, or some such nonsense. Well, the PM10 index that measures particulate matter with diameters smaller than 10 micrometers has been well under 100 (the nominal range considered safe) for the last several days with measurements of 20, 69, 30, 42 and 97. Combined with cool temperatures, intermittent rain and otherwise blue skies, the weather has been nearly perfect. Um, the gods of the Olympic pantheon must be looking favorably on their Chinese hosts.

Interesting how the medal count seems to be an indicator of the geopolitical influence of countries at different times during the past century. Who would have ever imagined when the games first began that China, then the “sick man of Asia” would eventually lead the games in total gold medals won, far exceeding the invincible USA.

These games have set the mark in terms of beauty of the venues and over all efficiency. I doubt that they will ever be surpassed. Congratulations to the Chinese people. My prediction is that come the next Olympiad in London in 2012 the Chinese will excel in track and field events in which they have lagged behind as millions upon millions of Chinese youth who have viewed the Olympics in their homeland will be inspired to lead their nation to ever greater athletic heights and accomplishments.

For those of us nostalgic for the old Soviet Union (I'm a devotee of kitsch) as of noon 8/22 the combined results of the teams from the former USSR are

Gold 35
Silver 40
Bronze 73
Total 148

This places them first in overall medal count ahead of the US and second in the gold metal count behind China and ahead of the US. Far from the glory days of the 1980 Moscow Olympics when the Soviets garnered 80 gold 69 silver and 46 bronze.

In a similar vein the Queen's medals (members of the Commonwealth Realm: The UK, Australia, Canada, Jamaica, The Bahamas and New Zealand) are 42 Gold 41 Silver and 41 bronze.

With all the hoopla surrounding the purported young age of some of the Chinese gymnasts, it must be remembered that Bela Karoly, one of the most vocal critics, was Nadia Comaneci's coach when she competed in the 1976 Montreal Olympics at the ripe old age of 14.

Free Hawaii Now! Stop the Chicago Olympics!

Now let me get this straight. Tibetans protesting for independence from China, who attacked Chinese police and non-Tibetan Chinese, torched businesses and otherwise rioted are heroes who should be praised and commended for their resistance to Chinese occupation of their homeland.

But Hawaiians, who peacefully tried to occupy the old Iolani Palace in protest of the overthrow and imprisonment of Queen Liliuokalani and eventual annexation of the archipelago by the US in 1898, are to be condemned and treated “very seriously.” Hawaii Governor Lingle said, "People in this case have to be shown it is not going to be acceptable," and the 23 people arrested Friday face charges of criminal trespassing and burglary, although according to executive director Kippen de Alba Chu of the Iolani Palace Museum the Hawaiian sovereignty group did not damage any of the palace artifacts.

So Tibetan protesters are heroic freedom fighters while Hawaiian protesters are criminals.

I expect Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to protest this denial of autonomy to the Hawaiian people who had their lands confiscated and sovereignty abrogated by mainlanders who pushed the Hawaiian people aside, irreversibly changing the demographics of the Island Kingdom so that its rightful inhabitants became marginalized in their own land.

I expect all honest people to oppose the potential holding of the Olympics in Chicago in 2016 in protest of the government of the United States of America’s illegal occupation of Hawaii, it's naked aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan and its support of the genocide of one million Iraqi civilians by ethnic cleansing.

I expect all honest people to oppose the holding of the 31st Olympiad in Chicago in protest of the American Gulag that imprisons over 2 million Americans for chemical dependencies that require medical intervention, rather than brutal incarceration. I expect all honest people to oppose the candidacy of Chicago to hold the 2016 Olympics because of the racial and religious profiling that is rampant throughout the US, because of the pervasive use of watch lists, tapping of phones, suspension of Habeas Corpus, and torture of prisoners in its custody. If Chicago is awarded the 2016 games I expect protesters to excoriate the bearers of the Olympic torch during its worldwide relay.

For all those who protested the Beijing Olympics, if this is not your response you are hypocrites plain and simple.

Don’t Hold Your Breadth, Change is Not Around the Corner

With the looming defeat of the US in the war on terror, US Imperialism is itching for a new fight, this time with a resurrected Soviet Union. Huh? Some may say. What is he talking about? How can he say that we’re about to lose the war on terror when it looks, according to McCain, like we’re on the verge of success? Well, success in Iraq i.e. a relatively stable, nationalistic regime that requests the eventual withdrawal of US forces, is failure in the “war on terror” because the so-called war on terror is all about establishing a permanent beachhead in the Middle East by occupying Iraq in perpetuity. No matter, let's fold that hand and deal out a new one.

Then you might ask, US imperialism, isn’t that an old, anachronistic term that hearkens back to the discredited rhetoric of the Cold War? Aren’t our problems a result of the neocon led Bush coup d'état that overthrew our reasonable diplomacy, the peace and prosperity of the Clinton years? Horsefeathers. The neocon theory and practice is taken lock, stock and barrel from the tried and true bag of tricks, with a proven track record, used by US imperialism going back to the days of the Monroe Doctrine.

A resurrected Soviet Union, you say? Isn’t today’s Russia a flawed but functioning democracy? Yes, indeed. But, our exalted leaders of the Republocrat party need to reinvent the Cold War to replace the tarnished War on Terror if they are to continue their push for global hegemony, which until recently seemed as assured as a slam dunk.

Let’s not fool ourselves. The US monopolists could care less about human rights, freedom or democracy. They are useful ploys to pull over the eyes of the forever-gullible American electorate. All the feigned indignation over the Russian invasion of Georgia and the autocratic rule of Putin in Russia and all the hoopla over “Freedom for Tibet”, “Darfur Genocide”, “Internet Censorship” and the plight of “Chinese Dissidents” are comical if not laughable in light of the Bush regimes actions over the last decade. US imperialist front groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are having a field day running interference for their corporate sponsors. By highlighting so-called human rights abuses in our supposed adversaries they allow our propagandists to whitewash their own far more deadly sins. If we are to understand the world we live in we most remove the scales from our eyes.

Ossetia, Oh Ossetia. Where forth art thou?

A besieged ethnic minority living in a province that borders a country where its members are a majority, threatened by the army of the country within which it resides. Sound familiar? Well, it’s nearly identical to the scenario that played itself out in Kosovo. In support of the Kosovo Albanians we unleashed a devastating months long bombing campaign against Serbia, leading to hundreds of civilian deaths and massive destruction, which was condemned by Russia and endorsed by NATO. Now the shoe is on the other foot and Russia has intervened in South Ossetia to rescue ethnic Russians from an onslaught by the Georgian army. The outcry by Bush and company has to be the most hypocritical claptrap ever mouthed by a bloodthirsty tyrant.

The Soviet Union allowed itself to be wiped off the face of the earth (to use a phrase made popular by a certain middle eastern president) with barely a whimper, and the Russian Federation sat idly by as its chief rival, the US, situated half a world away, set up a coterie of lackey satellites surrounding it. Imagine our reaction to a similar state of affairs (perhaps Cuba comes to mind). But now that we’ve hamstrung ourselves in Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s not much we can do but bluff our way through the “crisis” with rhetorical bluster. More fodder for the MSM and its campaign of perpetual disinformation.

McCain and his handlers, in the pay of the Georgian President Saakashvilli, would love to resurrect the Cold War and the halcyon days of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, the better to bamboozle the American public to support a policy of continued military spending and American hegemony, now that the “war on terror” has begun to fizzle. Obama and his reliance for foreign policy advice on the founder of Al Qaeda, Zbigniew Brzezinski, can only think to bomb Afghanistan back to the stone age from which it never emerged. It seems that our foreign policy options are no better under either of these two regimes. When will we ever learn, oh when will we ever learn?

In this regard, the 29th Olympiad has been perverted to serve the purposes of the ruling class. In a two-pronged strategy, presenting a smiley face to the Chinese people and fear of the “yellow peril” to its homeys, the corporate elites hope to have their cake and eat it too, selling themselves to Chinese consumers while scaring the bejesus out of gullible Americans. Shaken to its core by China’s emergence as the economic dynamo of the 21st century (aided and abetted by the same monopoly capitalists who decry its success) the US corporate media has ignited a firestorm of invective directed against the world’s most populace and dynamic country. Orchestrated by stooges of American imperialism such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the cacophonous chorus of derision directed against China is truly deafening. Without any knowledge of its culture or history China is portrayed as the epitome of the evil totalitarian state.

And I fault voices on the left as well for perpetuating this pernicious lie. In its zeal to be seen as equal opportunity critics, human rights advocates have jumped on the bandwagon of the theocratic Dalai Lama, who has been in the pay of the CIA for upwards of 50 years. Part of the grand strategy of the neoliberal neocons is to dismember China as they did the Soviet Union, the better to digest it. Well, the Chinese have over 3000 years of geopolitical experience to draw upon and will not be fooled as their more malleable Soviet counterparts were into giving up the ghost of their ambitions. If it takes a little surveillance and a heavy hand to maintain their position in power the CPC will show no hesitancy in doing so. If only the Soviets had had the wherewithal to persist, as has the Chinese leadership, the world would not have witnessed the wretched excesses of the Bush/bin Laden conglomerate.

A Pittance for Your Tears

A Federal Court has just ruled on a class action lawsuit brought by a half million Native People asking for 47 billion dollars in recompense for treaty sanctioned land and resource royalties owed them by the government of the United States. The court allocated 455 million dollars in settlement. By doing so the court admitted to the validity of the claim. But rather than the $100,000 per person that the lawsuit requested a mere $1000 per person was deemed adequate. To our Federal government the theft of untold riches compounded by more than 200 years of a genocidal policy of cultural annihilation and internal exile is worth less than the daily cost of the war in Iraq, a mere pittance from our imperial coffers.

Gulag Americana: Addendum

The American Gulag, the direct, physical manifestation of the "war on drugs" is an assault on fundamental human rights and a blatant and largely successful attempt to fragment and destroy the African American family and community. The unbelievable hypocrisy of Obama and other Democratic enablers of this policy in blaming the victims for the crimes committed against them is totally beyond the pale. It is incontrovertible to my mind that the coincidence of the 1970s drug surge in our inner cities and the initiation of the "war on drugs" occurring simultaneously was the result of direct collusion of the drug cartels and the US government to decapitate the Black Liberation movement and emasculate the African American community.

Gulag Americana

Alexander Solzhenitsyn made famous the phrase "Gulag Archipelago" to describe the system of penal servitude and internal exile instituted by the old Soviet Union. Millions of Soviet citizens, quite frequently innocent of any crime, or honest revolutionaries who crossed an invisible ideological Rubicon, were capriciously ensnared in this vast and degrading enterprise.

Anybody who has watched the recurring MSNBC series "Lockdown" knows that over the last 30 years we have initiated our own internal Gulag, what may be aptly called "Gulag Americana." This nation of prisons is spread throughout our country, from sea to shining sea. Of course, many who deserve incarceration, dysfunctional criminals who have victimized law-abiding citizens, populate it. There is, however, a base line that can be established for western industrialized nations regarding the proportion of their citizens jailed at any given time, which is approximately 1 in 1000. That was the historic rate in the U.S. until the 1980s, and the current rate in most European countries. Based on that statistic we should have approximately 300,000 people in our prisons. In point of fact, we have a nationwide inmate population of about 2.1 million, a rate 7 times greater than should be the norm. This is a result of our "war on drugs" which has had a disproportionate effect on minority, in particular, African-American, males. As a result nearly one third of all young African American males 20-35 year of age will have spent time in jail during their lifetime, with all the stigma and trauma associated with that experience. This criminalization of a whole demographic is unprecedented in the annals of modern civilization. The Prison-Industrial Complex, which has been spawned by the “war on drugs” profits enormously from the vast outpouring of public funds needed to maintain and expand our homegrown gulag. The article referenced by the above link was written in 1998 and a decade later things have only gotten worse with an increase in the prison population of 300,000 (16%) from 1.8 to 2.1 million. During the same decade our total population has grown at an 11% clip from 270 to 300 million. In other words, the problem is becoming ever more acute as our prison population continues to grow at an ever increasing rate relative to total population growth.

As reported at ScienceDaily, "The mammoth increase in the United States' prison population since the 1970s is having profound demographic consequences that disproportionately affect black males.” Obviously the ramifications of our insane system of criminal injustice are having profound societal effects. It means that at present there is an excess of 1.8 million inmates incarcerated in our jails. People who under any regime of human and civil rights should be getting treatment for their addiction and given gainful employment. If the number of non-violent inmates housed in our jails is factored into our unemployment statistics it would raise our unemployment rate from the current 5.7% to nearly 7%. Of course, when the true unemployment rate is calculated using the parameters employed in the 1960s it’s more on the order of 12% or 13% if convicts are factored in as well. It can be readily seen that the burgeoning prison population particularly amongst young adult African American males is a convenient release valve for chronic unemployment in our county’s inner cities. Better to have the proletariat languish in jail than be on the streets “looking for trouble.”

So what are the implications of the “Gulag Americana?” They are that our gulag is a systemic part of our socio-political order. It is as much an assault on human rights as the Soviet system ever was and the devastating impact it is having on untold millions of our citizens is for all intents an untold story that our candidates for office will not even discuss. Moreover, we are further diverted from addressing our own abysmal human rights record when our civil libertarians and human rights advocates deem it more important to lobby for Chinese dissidents than our own American citizens who are systematically being deprived of basic human rights by languishing in jail in solitary confinement for decades on end. China is reported to have 1.51 million prisoners, for a rate of 117 per 100,000 consistent with the rate in Western industrialized nations. So when I read day after day about human rights abuses in China or anywhere else and nary a mention of our system of judicial injustice I can only see it as collusion with our State Department to whitewash our racist deprivation of human rights to whole generations of American youth. I would be more than happy to pressure the Chinese authorities or whomever else, to clean up their act, but only after we have gotten ours together.

In Defense of the Soviet Union (1st Draft)

With the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn it seems appropriate to re-evaluate the history of 20th century Russia and the Soviet Union. Its now nearly 20 years since the demise of the USSR, the collapse of which Vladimir Putin has called “ the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century” and a tragedy for the Russian people. Putin was speaking from a Russian nationalist perspective. I would concur with his assessment, but from an internationalist perspective, for I evaluate the experience of the USSR as a net positive for the people of the former Soviet Union and the world’s people as a whole. Unlike Solzhenitsyn who was an unrepentant czarist and orthodox Christian, I’m an unrepentant Marxist and secular humanist. While he saw the Soviet Union as an abomination, I see it still as the future of humanity in embryonic form. How can I say such a thing, the chorus of naysayers and doomsayers of the left and right wail? Everyone of “good conscience” has declared the Soviet Union an abysmal failure, an evil empire and has wished it good riddance. But let’s look at its record from a less jaundiced perspective.

The USSR lasted a mere 70 years. Let’s look back on our own history decades after the Declaration of Independence. As Lincoln stated in the Gettysburg Address in 1863, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation.” Well the USSR lasted three score and ten. In the 87 years between the founding of the US and the Civil War our nascent nation countenanced the enslavement of millions of people, the extermination of millions more and the annexation of vast territories by predatory war. All in the name of American exceptionalism and manifest destiny. Only last week has our Congress deemed it appropriate to apologize for the centuries of slavery and Jim Crow segregation that led to the debasement and suffering of millions upon millions of people. As yet we have not issued one iota of recompense to our native people for the genocide we inflicted upon them, for their forced removal from traditional homelands and confinement to concentration camps in the most arid wastelands we had available for their imprisonment and cultural annihilation. It took generations of struggle by indentured servants, workers, women and minorities to gain basic democratic rights and the struggle continues to this day. We’ve raped the environment and nearly brought the entire globe to ruin, we’ve incinerated countless people in every corner of the world in vain attempts to impose our way of thinking on others and on and on. But we have “high ideals” and have always been motivated by truth, justice and the American way.

What about the Soviet Union during its brief tenure? Throughout the 1920s there was a vibrant cultural renaissance in the Soviet Union, with innovations in music, film and drama. There was implementation of the NEP and experiments in different forms of social ownership. There were also concerted attempts by the western powers to sabotage the revolution and restore capitalism. No one can argue that. These attempts necessitated a response and repression resulted. Mistakes were made, people died, whole populations suffered. All very sad and regrettable But, does it discredit the Soviet experience? Does slavery and genocide negate the American experience? The Gulag as described by Solzhenitsyn was an abomination. The penal system that we have in our country today is an abomination. In the Soviet Union dissidents were placed in asylums. In the United States mental patients are placed in prison. In the Soviet Union, some nationalities were forcibly removed and relocated. In the United States whole nations were forcibly removed and relocated and are still separated from their traditional homelands. In the Soviet Union, people were falsely accused and millions were forced to engage in slave labor. In the United States people were imported from abroad and forced to engage in slave labor. Throughout our history dissidents have been surveilled and repressed. The abuse and suffering inflicted on innocents by the US and the USSR are as far as I’m concerned qualitatively and quantitatively of equal measure. Towards the end of the Soviet Union these abuses were being admitted to and were beginning to be redressed. There was vast potential for democratic reform and a renaissance of socialism if only …they had not been exhausted by unrelenting pressure from the US which led to ever increasing economic deformation of the socialist character of the State, resulting in an overbearing defense budget and massive commitments to sustain revolutionary movements and governments abroad.

And what of the positive accomplishments of the Soviet Union? What about the heroic feats of its workers in building the industrial base of their nation in the 1920s and 30s? What about the heroic feats of the Soviet people in defeating the Nazis during the 1940s and turning the tide towards allied victory in WWII? What about the achievements of Soviet science and technology in the 1950s and 60s? Cynics can ridicule these accomplishments, but given the material conditions and challenges that they faced the Soviet people worked miracles, primarily because of the superiority of the socialist system. I know, 99.9% of readers will scoff at that notion, but it is true.

The downside of the Soviet experience was due to the intractable opposition and sabotage of the West, in particular the US. The USSR never had a respite from the need to defend itself against every manner of subterfuge. Old ways of doing things based on the authoritarian tradition and totalitarian roots of Russian culture surfaced and flourished. 20th century methods of repression rationalized by slavish and dogmatic appeals to ideological purity reinforced those reactionary tendencies. In retrospect the socialist system would have been better served by less reliance on repressive measures and a greater willingness to engage in unfettered democratic reforms. Unfortunately repressive measures initiated to defend the gains of the revolution bred a corrupt and reactionary superstructure that could not respond to the needs of the socialist base and the whole edifice came tumbling down not with a roar but a whimper. It says something about the character of the Soviet Union that it willingly committed suicide without a cataclysmic implosion or nuclear confrontation with its adversaries. Most will point to this fact as evidence that the USSR was bankrupt and incapable of reform or redemption. I see it as a tragic failure of vision and the result of decades of unremitting pressure from the capitalist world that encircled, and eventually suffocated the first attempt to create a society that had the potential to become truly humane.

Please, Get with the Message or Just Shut Up!

I'm sorry, but I cannot support Amnesty International or any of the other civil libertarian and/or human rights groups who don't focus all their attention on the abysmal record of the US regarding our system of judicial injustice. Time after time, buried in the blogosphere, I come across articles like this at Counterpunch, detailing the ridiculous abuses to which we subject our prison population. Of course anyone who decries our treatment of prisoners is immediately accused of coddling. The O'Reiley's of our world have set our level of discourse in this regard at the lowest possible level. Rather than engage in the necessary campaigns to expose systemic abuses and educate our citizenry to the colossal waste, corruption and racism of our prison system, we're content to complain about Chinese restrictions on the internet. Get real people. Amnesty International, whether consciously or not, serves as a front for the State Department in whitewashing our pervasive human rights abuses right here at home.

China on the Eve of the Beijing Olympics

China is not going to go away anytime soon. It’s economic expansion into the foreseeable future will continue, as a the result of expanding domestic demand not access to foreign markets. China used its comparative advantage in labor costs and command of macroeconomic levers to boot-strap its rate of economic development, and create a thriving domestic market. With a savings rate of 20%, and a high degree of consumer confidence China is in a similar position to the U.S. during the 1950s. The Chinese have long known that eventually the US would go belly up as a market – our long term economic indicators are all spiraling downwards. While they are using capitalist techniques to pole-vault their economy over the hurdles of primitive capital accumulation (after a period of boot-strap reconstruction under Mao - a common phenomenon after the inception of a new dynastic reign) they are Marxist economists at heart and they know what they’re doing. They’ve unleashed a tiger and are trying to hold it by its tail. They may go off in one direction or another but if they hold fast they will be able to hang on no matter what happens elsewhere.

Most western observers know nothing whatsoever about China, its history or its culture. China has gone through multiple periods of decline and revival, stagnation and then dynamic expansion. It’s in ascendancy now and past experience suggests it should be able to maintain its position for generations to come. China’s modernization drive was outlined more than a century ago during the last throes of the Qing dynasty and the Chinese Communist Party was founded by disillusioned reformers whose descendents are finally implementing those policies.

The ideal Chinese form of governance is a benign authoritarianism where everyone knows their place in the social hierarchy and gives the central authorities deference. It’s called Confucianism and its ideology is firmly in command in today’s China. If the country is at peace and the economy grows, if foreigners come to China to pay homage to its central position in the world order, then all is well under heaven and the government has its mandate to rule. Why should the Chinese accept without question our economic and political model? China historically had a mixed economy with a very strong role played by the central authorities, which had numerous monopolies for the production of goods, services and procurement of resources. That is what we’re seeing in operation today. It’s foolhardy to call it capitalism, socialism, or communism. It is Chinese. It is a manifestation of the time honored Chinese way of doing things being implemented in the 21^st century.

I would advise civil libertarians and human rights advocates to accept the reality that China, both its leaders and its people, operates under a different paradigm than we do. They will no more listen to outside interlopers than we do. The Chinese will develop at their own pace without outside interference. Their people, just as ours, will rise up of their own accord when they see fit, as they have throughout their history. At present there is much more pride and satisfaction amongst all Chinese I’m in contact with than at anytime in the past. Not to say there aren’t gripes, just as there are about our circumstances here at DailyKos and elsewhere (and the Chinese have a vibrant blogosphere).

So let’s direct our ire at targets that we can hit and reserve the anti-China bluster. It’s much better to try to understand a country that had more people when our country was born than we have now, than to lash out blindly. The Chinese people, and the nation of China are not our enemies or adversaries. Let’s not make them into 21^st century bogeymen.

The Chinese Internet Imbroglio

Well it looks like China has relented and is now providing the Western media more or less unfettered access to the Internet during the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. As if it matters. I never had any problem accessing whatever I wanted to when I recently visited China, accept for CNN. The Chinese were pissed with CNN for the inane remarks of Jack Cafferty calling out China's leaders as thugs and hooligans, as if the renegades in Washington D.C. were any better. In fact our misbegotten "leaders" are light years ahead of the relatively benign leaders of the PRC in thugishness. Never mind the pernicious censorship that our authorities try to implement whenever they have the opportunity at military bases and other federal institutions. In point of fact, I don't think the Western media would be impeded by the Chinese limiting access to sites put up by Falun Gong or Tibetan dissidents. Chinese restrictions on Internet access are basically fits of pique and nothing more. As was mentioned on, of all places, CNN last night any technologically savvy Chinese denizen of the Web can easily make an end-run around whatever firewalls the authorities impose. The whole issue is just a smokescreen by the media to allow them to cast aspersions on what China has accomplished over the last 60 years, which will be on display for all to see beginning next week.

Terrorists in the Whitehouse

Harvey Wasserman over at Counterpunch has an entry eviscerating the heinous legacy of Westmoreland, LBJ and Nixon as the true terrorists of the 1960s. He should have also mentioned that McCain is the direct descendant of this loathsome threesome. McCain takes great pride in his glory boy role of bombing Vietnam back to the stoneage. As his demonic refrain of "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" demonstrates he can't wait to continue where his mentors left off.



Why McCain is portrayed as an heroic figure is beyond me. His treatment as a POW compares favorably with how we treat enemy combatants at Gitmo. He deserved far worse. Imagine if we captured a maurauding terrorist who bombed and straffed Peoria or Topeka, inflicting massive civilian casualtes and destroying our societal infratructure. To have this war criminal lauded as a hero makes me want to puke.