By Red Nick
The dispute over who is the most intelligent in the political world is almost as old as politics itself. Many partisans will make baseless claims that their group is the most intelligent. The point of this brief essay is not to decide who is the smartest, but rather who is the dumbest. Please keep in mind that the terms liberal and conservative are often used as catch-all phrases in studies, and will also be used as such in this essay. So, for example, someone who is “very conservative” could be either a fascist or an American Republican. Also keep in mind that when this essay compares American Democrats to Republicans, it is not trying to say Democrats are better. It is just using the Democrats as someone to compare the Republicans to simply because there is very little data on members of non-mainstream American parties (although the claims in this essay are not restricted to Americans only).
Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data from a large sample of American test subjects. The data included information on religion and political views. Kanazawa’s work showed that people who identified themselves as “very conservative” had an average IQ of 95, and those who identified themselves as “very liberal” had an average IQ of 106. The data also showed that atheists had an average IQ of 103, but religious people had an average IQ of only 97. It goes without saying that a large portion, probably a majority, of conservatives are very religious.
"The adoption of some evolutionarily novel ideas makes some sense in terms of moving the species forward," said George Washington University leadership professor James Bailey, who was not involved in Kanazawa’s study (he only reviewed it). "It also makes perfect sense that more intelligent people -- people with, sort of, more intellectual firepower -- are likely to be the ones to do that" (Landau source).
A book by John T. Rourke called International Politics on the World Stage shows a chart containing the IQ of the past nine US Presidents as of the George W. Bush era. The IQ data showed that the Democrat (liberal) with the lowest IQ, Lyndon Johnson, had a higher IQ than the lowest Republican (conservative). The Republican with the lowest IQ, George W. Bush, had the lowest IQ of all the Presidents in the chart. Conservative hero Ronald Reagan had the third lowest IQ (Rourke, 84).
Sociologist Markus Kemmelmeier compared the SAT and ACT scores of those who are against gay marriage and abortion (the conservative position) to those who were in favor of such (the progressive position). The data showed that those who were against gay marriage and abortion scored lower on the SAT and ACT tests than those who were in favor of same-sex marriage and abortion (Hutson source).
Lazar Stankov, a visiting professor at Singapore’s National Institute of Education, published “Conservatism and Cognitive Ability” in the peer-reviewed journal Intelligence. Here is a quote from the article:
“Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated … At the individual level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with SAT, vocabulary, and analogy test scores. At the national level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with measures of education … and performance on mathematics and reading assessments” (Richwine source).
The General Social Survey has a ten item vocabulary test called WORDSUM. It has been claimed that this test shows the relationship between vocabulary and intelligence to a certain extent. The test showed that 20.8% of those who identified themselves as “extremely liberal” had high vocabulary scores, but only 13.8% of those who identified themselves as “conservative” had high vocabulary scores (Half Sigma source).
As we can see from the information presented earlier in this essay, right-wingers have the lowest IQ rankings. They also have the lowest test scores. We must keep in mind that, sadly, there are exceptions to this rule. However, the data does not lie. Because conservatives are so unintelligent, there should be no doubt in the mind of the reader that right-wingers are subhuman trash. The world would be a much better place if these animals were disallowed many of the political rights that they currently have because they lack the brain power to make good decisions.
Works Cited:
"Half Sigma." Half Sigma. 16 Jun 2006. Web. 26 Feb 2010. http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/06/liberals_smarte.html.
Hutson, Matthew. "Conservatives are Dumber—And Smarter—Than Liberals ." Psychology Today 26 Sep 2008: Web. 26 Feb 2010. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brainstorm/200809/conservatives-are- dumber-and-smarter-liberals.
Landau, Elizabeth. "Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ." CNN 26 Feb 2010: Web. 26 Feb 2010. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/26/liberals.atheists.sex.intelligence/.
Richwine, Jason. "Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?." American (2009): Web. 26 Feb 2010. http://www.american.com/archive/2009/october/are-liberals- smarter-than-conservatives.
Rourke, John. International Politics on the World Stage. 12. 84. Print.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
"No Evidence of Iranian Nukes" says Russia
Ali Larijani, an Iranian Parliament speaker, said on Thursday in Tokyo that Iran had been unfairly singled out by the US for its nuclear energy plans. He stated that the plans are for civilian purposes. He also claimed that Iran was acting within its rights when it enriched a portion of its uranium stockpile earlier this month.
The Russian President said that he believes the Iranian nuclear issue can best be solved through transparency.
"We believe that Iran's nuclear programs should conform to the demands of international organizations like the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Organization], and also that work in this area should be transparent for oversight," said Russian President Medvedev.
"According to RIA Novosti, there is no hard proof that Iran is working on nuclear weapons, but Tehran has to clarify several key issues on its nuclear program to avoid fresh international action," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"There is no evidence that Iran has made a decision to produce nuclear weapons," Lavrov continued.
Iran's recent decision to enrich its uranium to 20% sparked outrage from the US government, which is now calling for tougher sanctions on Iran.
Click here to see another article from The Partisan on Iran and Russia.
The Russian President said that he believes the Iranian nuclear issue can best be solved through transparency.
"We believe that Iran's nuclear programs should conform to the demands of international organizations like the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Organization], and also that work in this area should be transparent for oversight," said Russian President Medvedev.
"According to RIA Novosti, there is no hard proof that Iran is working on nuclear weapons, but Tehran has to clarify several key issues on its nuclear program to avoid fresh international action," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"There is no evidence that Iran has made a decision to produce nuclear weapons," Lavrov continued.
Iran's recent decision to enrich its uranium to 20% sparked outrage from the US government, which is now calling for tougher sanctions on Iran.
Click here to see another article from The Partisan on Iran and Russia.
France Used Its Own Troops as Test Subjects
The French newspaper Le Parisien has recently published a secret French document about French military nuclear tests in Sahara and French Polynesia. The document revealed that the French Army organized a nuclear weapons test in order to study the effects it would have on humans. Unsuspecting French and Foreign Legion soldiers were used as guinea pigs.
April 25, 1961, France began "Gerboise verte" or "green gerboa." The soldiers were ordered to act out a nuclear war scenario.The stated purpose of the nuclear test was to "study the atomic weapon's physiological and psychological effects on man, to obtain elements necessary to prepare them physically and morally for modern combat." 150,000 soldiers participated in the test.
Officials knew about the dangers of using their soldiers as test subjects, but they refused to warn the soldiers. The National Armaments Observatory has said that soldiers were intentionally exposed to radiation and then sent home without further medical check ups.
Mond and Le Parisien newspapers have reported that thousands of the French and Foreign Legion soldiers are now seriously ill, many having incurable diseases, due to the nuclear radiation.
According to the French government, only a mere one third of the test subjects will receive compensation for this obvious violation of human rights.
France conducted similar tests in French Polynesia, mostly at Mururoa Atoll, where 181 explosions were conducted in 1966-98.
Georgy Chikarlein, a former soldier who served at Mururoa Atoll, had this to say:
“The range in French Polynesia was maintained by the soldiers of the Foreign Legion, 'white fish,' as we called ourselves. First, we were ordered to force nearly 2,000 indigenous people out from the atoll. The tests, at least the first ones, were conducted without any safety measures. We were told to throw ourselves on the ground without looking at the flashes. We were wearing standard summer uniform, i.e., shorts. No one told us about any hazards."
France plans to compensate several hundreds of Polynesians in order to avoid conflict with local independence organizations.
Tests were also carried out in Algeria, where officials say radiation near the test site is now 22 times higher than normal.
April 25, 1961, France began "Gerboise verte" or "green gerboa." The soldiers were ordered to act out a nuclear war scenario.The stated purpose of the nuclear test was to "study the atomic weapon's physiological and psychological effects on man, to obtain elements necessary to prepare them physically and morally for modern combat." 150,000 soldiers participated in the test.
Officials knew about the dangers of using their soldiers as test subjects, but they refused to warn the soldiers. The National Armaments Observatory has said that soldiers were intentionally exposed to radiation and then sent home without further medical check ups.
Mond and Le Parisien newspapers have reported that thousands of the French and Foreign Legion soldiers are now seriously ill, many having incurable diseases, due to the nuclear radiation.
According to the French government, only a mere one third of the test subjects will receive compensation for this obvious violation of human rights.
France conducted similar tests in French Polynesia, mostly at Mururoa Atoll, where 181 explosions were conducted in 1966-98.
Georgy Chikarlein, a former soldier who served at Mururoa Atoll, had this to say:
“The range in French Polynesia was maintained by the soldiers of the Foreign Legion, 'white fish,' as we called ourselves. First, we were ordered to force nearly 2,000 indigenous people out from the atoll. The tests, at least the first ones, were conducted without any safety measures. We were told to throw ourselves on the ground without looking at the flashes. We were wearing standard summer uniform, i.e., shorts. No one told us about any hazards."
France plans to compensate several hundreds of Polynesians in order to avoid conflict with local independence organizations.
Tests were also carried out in Algeria, where officials say radiation near the test site is now 22 times higher than normal.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
NATO Apologizes to Afghans
General Stanley McChrystal went on Afghan television on Tuesday to apologize to the Afghan people for a deadly air strike that happened on Sunday. The deadly strike happened in central Uruzgan province where Afghan officials say at least 27 people were killed.
"I pledge to strengthen our efforts to regain your trust to build a brighter future for all Afghans," McChrystal said. "I have instituted a thorough investigation to prevent this from happening again."
The deadly strike began when NATO jets fired on a convoy of civilian vehicles. The jets fire struck three minibuses of civilians, killing at least 21 people. Afghan officials put the death toll at 27 civilians. McChrystal apologized to Afghan President Karzai directly for this attack.
This is the second time in nine days that NATO and the US have apologized to the Afghans for killing civilians. On February 14, two American rockets destroyed a home outside of Marjah killing 12 people, including six children.
Sunday's attack was the deadliest since last September when NATO jets bombed two hijacked fuel tankers (click here to read that article).
If NATO and America care about the Afghan people so much, and not about imperialist aims in Afghanistan, then why have they committed two massacres in less than nine days? Why are they only now beginning to put serious safety precautions in place? Just like the Taliban, they don't care about the civilians.
"I pledge to strengthen our efforts to regain your trust to build a brighter future for all Afghans," McChrystal said. "I have instituted a thorough investigation to prevent this from happening again."
The deadly strike began when NATO jets fired on a convoy of civilian vehicles. The jets fire struck three minibuses of civilians, killing at least 21 people. Afghan officials put the death toll at 27 civilians. McChrystal apologized to Afghan President Karzai directly for this attack.
This is the second time in nine days that NATO and the US have apologized to the Afghans for killing civilians. On February 14, two American rockets destroyed a home outside of Marjah killing 12 people, including six children.
Sunday's attack was the deadliest since last September when NATO jets bombed two hijacked fuel tankers (click here to read that article).
If NATO and America care about the Afghan people so much, and not about imperialist aims in Afghanistan, then why have they committed two massacres in less than nine days? Why are they only now beginning to put serious safety precautions in place? Just like the Taliban, they don't care about the civilians.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Hunger Strike for Love
Let's take a break from politics for a second and talk about another interesting story.
It's cold outside, the wind is blowing and making things even colder, but a young man refuses to budge. Instead, he stays put outside near the Virginia Commonwealth University library holding up his sign that reads "On Hunger Strike."
He requested to only go by his first name. His name is Nicholas, he is an 18 year old student, and he is starving for love. When asked why he was on strike, he said this:
"Figures from the Census show that an increasing number of American households consist of only one person. Studies show more and more Americans have nobody to love them. And I'm one of these unloved people. So I am on hunger strike in order to raise awareness of the plight of singles and hopefully help myself and others find love. That is the goal of the strike."
Other students and professors pass by, some ignoring him, others asking what the strike is all about. A couple of other singles even offered to join the strike.
"I've gotten a lot of support, and even an offer for a radio interview," Nicholas said.
The last time I checked, he was standing out there for three days straight. Imagine that, not eating for three days. What he is doing is crazy, romantic, and inspirational all at the same time. It just shows how messy things have gotten in this world. Well, Nicholas, we wish you luck with your strike.
It's cold outside, the wind is blowing and making things even colder, but a young man refuses to budge. Instead, he stays put outside near the Virginia Commonwealth University library holding up his sign that reads "On Hunger Strike."
He requested to only go by his first name. His name is Nicholas, he is an 18 year old student, and he is starving for love. When asked why he was on strike, he said this:
"Figures from the Census show that an increasing number of American households consist of only one person. Studies show more and more Americans have nobody to love them. And I'm one of these unloved people. So I am on hunger strike in order to raise awareness of the plight of singles and hopefully help myself and others find love. That is the goal of the strike."
Other students and professors pass by, some ignoring him, others asking what the strike is all about. A couple of other singles even offered to join the strike.
"I've gotten a lot of support, and even an offer for a radio interview," Nicholas said.
The last time I checked, he was standing out there for three days straight. Imagine that, not eating for three days. What he is doing is crazy, romantic, and inspirational all at the same time. It just shows how messy things have gotten in this world. Well, Nicholas, we wish you luck with your strike.
US Sole Opponent of UN Anti-Nazi Resolution
By Carla Stea of the Rock Creek Free Press
On December 18, 2009, The United Nations General Assembly, by an overwhelming majority, adopted Resolution 64/147, A/C.3/64/L.53 put forth by the Third Committee, entitled: “Inadmissability of Certain Practices that Contribute to Fuelling Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.” Excerpts from this resolution stated:
1. Reaffirms the provisions of the Durban Declaration and of the outcome document of the Durban Review Conference in which states condemned the persistence and resurgence of neo-Nazism, neo-Fascism and violent nationalist ideologies based on racial and national prejudice and stated that these phenomena could never be justified in any instance or in any circumstances…..Expresses deep concern about the glorification of the Nazi movement and former members of the Waffen SS organization, including by erecting monuments and memorials and holding public demonstrations in the name of the glorification of the Nazi past, the Nazi movement and neo-Nazism, as well as by declaring or attempting to declare such members, and those who fought against the anti-Hitler coalition and collaborated with the Nazi movements, as participants in national liberation movements……Expresses concern at recurring attempts to desecrate or demolish monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought against Nazism during the Second World War, as well as to unlawfully exhume or remove the remains of such persons, and urges states in this regard to fully comply with their relevant obligations, inter alia, under article 34 of Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949….(Notes with concern the increase in the number of racist incidents in several countries and the rise of skinhead groups which have been responsible for many of these incidents, as well as the resurgence of racist and xenophobic violence targeting members of ethnic, religious or cultural communities and national minorities)….stresses that the practices described above do injustice to the memory of the countless victims of crimes against humanity committed in the Second World War, in particular those committed by the SS organization and those who fought against the anti-Hitler movement, and poison the minds of young people, and that those practices are incompatible with the obligations of the States members of the United Nations under its Charter, and are incompatible with the goals and principles of the Organization.”
On December 18th, 127 members of the United Nations, including India, Kazakhstan, China, Russia, Iran, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Libya, voted in favor of the resolution. Fifty-four members abstained, including France, Germany, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine, and only one nation opposed the resolution: the United States.
Since 2003, similar resolutions opposing the resurgence of Nazism have been sponsored by the Russian Federation, along with other similarly concerned member States of the United Nations. Each year, the resolution has been adopted by the overwhelming majority of the members of the United Nations, in each case, with Iran, Syria and Israel voting together in favor of the resolution, and in each previous year the resolution was opposed by only 2 out of the 192 States belonging to the United Nations: previously, only the United States and the Marshall Islands opposed that resolution. This year, despite the change promised by the Obama Administration, the United States, alone and in isolation, opposed the resolution.
On February 28, 2007 I asked the US State Department spokesman: “Tom, why did the United States vote against resolution 62/142, which prohibits the glorification of Nazism, especially since former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Stuart Eizenstat spent years trying to get compensation for victims of Nazi atrocities?” On February 25, 2009, I asked the US State Department spokesman: “Robert, recently a commission was established on preventing genocide, co-chaired by William S. Cohen, Madeleine Albright with Stuart Eizenstat and Tom Pickering. And since there is a great interest in that, and it is extremely important; why did the United States vote against a resolution which was adopted recently at the General Assembly of the UN, on the inadmissibility of the glorification of Nazism, prohibiting the description of Nazi collaborators during World War II as national liberation movements? That’s Orwellian.”
The State Department reply of February 26, 2009 stated: “This resolution fails to distinguish between actions and statements that, while offensive, should be protected by freedom of expression, and actions that incite violence, which should be prohibited. The United States remains convinced that governments should not punish speech, even that which is deemed offensive or hateful. In a free society hateful ideas fail on account of their own intrinsic lack of merit.”
The State Department explanation of their vote against a resolution so historically important that together, Iran, Israel and Syria recognized its indispensability and together voted in favor of it, raises disturbing questions, particularly since Resolution 63/162 explicitly cites actions prohibited by Article 34 of Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Convention of 1949: “recurring attempts to desecrate or demolish monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought against Nazism during the Second World War, as well as unlawfully exhuming or removing the remains of such persons.” Stealing bodies from graves, against the will of their families, is indisputably an action. The dead do not voluntarily exit their graves. Article 34 of the Geneva Convention, International Humanitarian Law, protects war graves, and recently in Talinin, Estonia, the remains of soldiers who were killed liberating Estonia from Nazism have been desecrated; symbolic and sacrilegious actions astride a deadly slippery slope – it is not an enormous distance from robbing dead bodies from graves to kidnapping live humans from their homes. The attempt to justify the former facilitates justification of the latter.
From December 16th to 18th, 2009, in Berlin, a conference was held on “Lessons of World War II and the Holocaust.” Conference participants denounced Georgia’s plan to demolish a monument originally erected in Kutuisi in honor of Georgian Soviet soldiers who died fighting Nazism in World War II, and called upon Georgia to reconsider. Georgia said it plans to relocate its parliament from Tbilisi to Kutuisi on precisely the site of that monument, a plan protested by many Georgian citizens, themselves. Nevertheless, on December 19th, 2009, the day following the United Nations General Assembly’s adoption of Resolution 64/147, the Georgian government blew up the monument honoring Georgian soldiers who gave their lives in the fight against Nazism. It is impossible to explain how the United States could fail to recognize that the bombing of historic monuments and the desecration of graves are actions, and indeed dangerous precedents, practically and symbolically. One can only imagine the reaction in Washington if a Southern racist blew up the Lincoln memorial, or dragged the corpses of American soldiers from Arlington Cemetery. Those abhorrent actions could hardly be justified as “free speech.”
Highly placed diplomatic sources accredited to the United Nations, in a personal interview with this reporter, confirmed that during informal consultations on the resolution they pointed out to the United States delegation that to condone opposing the resolution, the United States was condoning violation of Article 34 of the Geneva Convention. The United States stated that the matter of violation of Article 34 of the Geneva Convention was “irrelevant.” While the Bush Administration Justice Department discarded the Geneva Conventions as “quaint,” many hoped that the Obama Administration would show greater respect for international law. The United States reference to international law as “irrelevant” begets fearsome possibilities, and evokes fearful memories. Those highly placed diplomatic sources regarded the United States’ vote flaunting international law as motivated by political interests. The governments of the Baltics and Ukraine are tacitly sanctioning resurgent Nazi ideology, and the inclusion of the Baltics in NATO, and support of pro-Nazi regimes in Ukraine and Georgia, are central to a hostile encirclement of Russia, an Orwellian rewriting of history, undermining Russia’s morale and prestige as the decisive victor defeating Nazism in World War II. Of course, this perversion of history also desecrates the honor and memory of the many American soldiers who also died fighting Nazism. The rewriting and desecration of historic truth are an essential component of political and psychological warfare.
According to historian Christopher Simpson, in The Splendid Blonde Beast, Money, Law and Genocide in the Twentieth Century, (page 134): “Franklin Delano Roosevelt had come to distrust the European Division of the State Department, which disagreed with FDR’s politics and often pursued its own agenda regardless of directives from the White House. State’s Eastern European specialists, including William Bullitt, Loy Henderson and George Kennan, leaned toward a strategy of rapprochement with Hitler and an anti-Bolshevik ‘cordon sanitaire’ with Germany against the Soviets. Roosevelt favored normalized relations with the Soviets – in late 1933, he sent the first US Ambassador to Moscow since the 1917 revolution, and as the decade wore on he increasingly viewed the German-Japanese Axis as the world’s most dangerous imperial force.”
Considering the recently established Genocide Prevention Task Force, one would have expected the United States to vote in favor of a resolution to prevent the resurgence of Nazism, one of the most genocidal ideologies in human history.
Not content with exterminating 6 million Jews, in World War II, the genocidal Nazi behemoth turned eastward, where, according to Martin Bormann, “The Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we don’t need them, they may die…. Education is dangerous. Every educated person is a future enemy.” Finally, in the words of Dr. Otto Brautigam, Deputy Leader of the Nazi Political Department of the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories,
“It is no longer a secret from friend or foe that hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners of war have died of hunger or cold in our camps. We now experience the grotesque picture of having to recruit millions of laborers from the occupied Eastern territories after prisoners of war have died of hunger like flies. In the prevailing limitless abuse of the Slavic humanity, ‘recruiting’ methods were used which probably have their origin in the blackest periods of the slave traffic. A regular man hunt was inaugurated. Without consideration of health or age the people were shipped to Germany…. Our policy has forced both Bolshevists and Russian Nationalists into a common front against us. The Russian fights today with exceptional bravery and self-sacrifice for nothing more or less than recognition of his human dignity.”
Twenty-five million citizens of the Soviet Union died fighting Nazism. Six million Jews were exterminated as a canon of Nazi policy. Many thousands of Americans died fighting Nazism in Europe and North Africa. Countless partisans fighting collaborationist regimes in France, Italy, Yugoslavia, and throughout Europe were tortured to death by the Nazis. The essence of Christopher Simpson’s masterpiece is that there was a fifth column of Nazi sympathizers in the United States because Nazism was “better for business,” General Motors, Standard Oil and du Pont were “deeply involved in German weapons production.” According to Max Wallace, in The American Axis, Henry Ford was not only the inspiration for Adolf Hitler (as declared by Hitler, himself), but throughout World War II subsidiaries of Ford in Germany were manufacturing the very machinery the Nazis used to slaughter American soldiers.
Perhaps, today, it is not the First Amendment, but precisely such a fifth column responsible for the United States opposition to United Nations Resolution 64/147. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of the fact that together, Syria, Iran and Israel (generally thought to be the bitterest of enemies) voted in unison in favor of that Resolution, not only once, but year after year after year. Perhaps they share a subliminal recognition of a common interest and a common threat of another world war. There is a vast, untapped oil reserve in Siberia. Perhaps, while attention is focused upon the Middle East, covert action is focused upon seizing those oil reserves. To accomplish that, those covert actors will have to finish the work begun by Hitler: the dismemberment and subjugation of Russia (not incidentally a nuclear power). Like the Nazis, the Taliban hold that “education is dangerous; every educated person is a future enemy.” Who created the Taliban?
On December 18, 2009, The United Nations General Assembly, by an overwhelming majority, adopted Resolution 64/147, A/C.3/64/L.53 put forth by the Third Committee, entitled: “Inadmissability of Certain Practices that Contribute to Fuelling Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.” Excerpts from this resolution stated:
1. Reaffirms the provisions of the Durban Declaration and of the outcome document of the Durban Review Conference in which states condemned the persistence and resurgence of neo-Nazism, neo-Fascism and violent nationalist ideologies based on racial and national prejudice and stated that these phenomena could never be justified in any instance or in any circumstances…..Expresses deep concern about the glorification of the Nazi movement and former members of the Waffen SS organization, including by erecting monuments and memorials and holding public demonstrations in the name of the glorification of the Nazi past, the Nazi movement and neo-Nazism, as well as by declaring or attempting to declare such members, and those who fought against the anti-Hitler coalition and collaborated with the Nazi movements, as participants in national liberation movements……Expresses concern at recurring attempts to desecrate or demolish monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought against Nazism during the Second World War, as well as to unlawfully exhume or remove the remains of such persons, and urges states in this regard to fully comply with their relevant obligations, inter alia, under article 34 of Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949….(Notes with concern the increase in the number of racist incidents in several countries and the rise of skinhead groups which have been responsible for many of these incidents, as well as the resurgence of racist and xenophobic violence targeting members of ethnic, religious or cultural communities and national minorities)….stresses that the practices described above do injustice to the memory of the countless victims of crimes against humanity committed in the Second World War, in particular those committed by the SS organization and those who fought against the anti-Hitler movement, and poison the minds of young people, and that those practices are incompatible with the obligations of the States members of the United Nations under its Charter, and are incompatible with the goals and principles of the Organization.”
On December 18th, 127 members of the United Nations, including India, Kazakhstan, China, Russia, Iran, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Libya, voted in favor of the resolution. Fifty-four members abstained, including France, Germany, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine, and only one nation opposed the resolution: the United States.
Since 2003, similar resolutions opposing the resurgence of Nazism have been sponsored by the Russian Federation, along with other similarly concerned member States of the United Nations. Each year, the resolution has been adopted by the overwhelming majority of the members of the United Nations, in each case, with Iran, Syria and Israel voting together in favor of the resolution, and in each previous year the resolution was opposed by only 2 out of the 192 States belonging to the United Nations: previously, only the United States and the Marshall Islands opposed that resolution. This year, despite the change promised by the Obama Administration, the United States, alone and in isolation, opposed the resolution.
On February 28, 2007 I asked the US State Department spokesman: “Tom, why did the United States vote against resolution 62/142, which prohibits the glorification of Nazism, especially since former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Stuart Eizenstat spent years trying to get compensation for victims of Nazi atrocities?” On February 25, 2009, I asked the US State Department spokesman: “Robert, recently a commission was established on preventing genocide, co-chaired by William S. Cohen, Madeleine Albright with Stuart Eizenstat and Tom Pickering. And since there is a great interest in that, and it is extremely important; why did the United States vote against a resolution which was adopted recently at the General Assembly of the UN, on the inadmissibility of the glorification of Nazism, prohibiting the description of Nazi collaborators during World War II as national liberation movements? That’s Orwellian.”
The State Department reply of February 26, 2009 stated: “This resolution fails to distinguish between actions and statements that, while offensive, should be protected by freedom of expression, and actions that incite violence, which should be prohibited. The United States remains convinced that governments should not punish speech, even that which is deemed offensive or hateful. In a free society hateful ideas fail on account of their own intrinsic lack of merit.”
The State Department explanation of their vote against a resolution so historically important that together, Iran, Israel and Syria recognized its indispensability and together voted in favor of it, raises disturbing questions, particularly since Resolution 63/162 explicitly cites actions prohibited by Article 34 of Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Convention of 1949: “recurring attempts to desecrate or demolish monuments erected in remembrance of those who fought against Nazism during the Second World War, as well as unlawfully exhuming or removing the remains of such persons.” Stealing bodies from graves, against the will of their families, is indisputably an action. The dead do not voluntarily exit their graves. Article 34 of the Geneva Convention, International Humanitarian Law, protects war graves, and recently in Talinin, Estonia, the remains of soldiers who were killed liberating Estonia from Nazism have been desecrated; symbolic and sacrilegious actions astride a deadly slippery slope – it is not an enormous distance from robbing dead bodies from graves to kidnapping live humans from their homes. The attempt to justify the former facilitates justification of the latter.
From December 16th to 18th, 2009, in Berlin, a conference was held on “Lessons of World War II and the Holocaust.” Conference participants denounced Georgia’s plan to demolish a monument originally erected in Kutuisi in honor of Georgian Soviet soldiers who died fighting Nazism in World War II, and called upon Georgia to reconsider. Georgia said it plans to relocate its parliament from Tbilisi to Kutuisi on precisely the site of that monument, a plan protested by many Georgian citizens, themselves. Nevertheless, on December 19th, 2009, the day following the United Nations General Assembly’s adoption of Resolution 64/147, the Georgian government blew up the monument honoring Georgian soldiers who gave their lives in the fight against Nazism. It is impossible to explain how the United States could fail to recognize that the bombing of historic monuments and the desecration of graves are actions, and indeed dangerous precedents, practically and symbolically. One can only imagine the reaction in Washington if a Southern racist blew up the Lincoln memorial, or dragged the corpses of American soldiers from Arlington Cemetery. Those abhorrent actions could hardly be justified as “free speech.”
Highly placed diplomatic sources accredited to the United Nations, in a personal interview with this reporter, confirmed that during informal consultations on the resolution they pointed out to the United States delegation that to condone opposing the resolution, the United States was condoning violation of Article 34 of the Geneva Convention. The United States stated that the matter of violation of Article 34 of the Geneva Convention was “irrelevant.” While the Bush Administration Justice Department discarded the Geneva Conventions as “quaint,” many hoped that the Obama Administration would show greater respect for international law. The United States reference to international law as “irrelevant” begets fearsome possibilities, and evokes fearful memories. Those highly placed diplomatic sources regarded the United States’ vote flaunting international law as motivated by political interests. The governments of the Baltics and Ukraine are tacitly sanctioning resurgent Nazi ideology, and the inclusion of the Baltics in NATO, and support of pro-Nazi regimes in Ukraine and Georgia, are central to a hostile encirclement of Russia, an Orwellian rewriting of history, undermining Russia’s morale and prestige as the decisive victor defeating Nazism in World War II. Of course, this perversion of history also desecrates the honor and memory of the many American soldiers who also died fighting Nazism. The rewriting and desecration of historic truth are an essential component of political and psychological warfare.
According to historian Christopher Simpson, in The Splendid Blonde Beast, Money, Law and Genocide in the Twentieth Century, (page 134): “Franklin Delano Roosevelt had come to distrust the European Division of the State Department, which disagreed with FDR’s politics and often pursued its own agenda regardless of directives from the White House. State’s Eastern European specialists, including William Bullitt, Loy Henderson and George Kennan, leaned toward a strategy of rapprochement with Hitler and an anti-Bolshevik ‘cordon sanitaire’ with Germany against the Soviets. Roosevelt favored normalized relations with the Soviets – in late 1933, he sent the first US Ambassador to Moscow since the 1917 revolution, and as the decade wore on he increasingly viewed the German-Japanese Axis as the world’s most dangerous imperial force.”
Considering the recently established Genocide Prevention Task Force, one would have expected the United States to vote in favor of a resolution to prevent the resurgence of Nazism, one of the most genocidal ideologies in human history.
Not content with exterminating 6 million Jews, in World War II, the genocidal Nazi behemoth turned eastward, where, according to Martin Bormann, “The Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we don’t need them, they may die…. Education is dangerous. Every educated person is a future enemy.” Finally, in the words of Dr. Otto Brautigam, Deputy Leader of the Nazi Political Department of the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories,
“It is no longer a secret from friend or foe that hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners of war have died of hunger or cold in our camps. We now experience the grotesque picture of having to recruit millions of laborers from the occupied Eastern territories after prisoners of war have died of hunger like flies. In the prevailing limitless abuse of the Slavic humanity, ‘recruiting’ methods were used which probably have their origin in the blackest periods of the slave traffic. A regular man hunt was inaugurated. Without consideration of health or age the people were shipped to Germany…. Our policy has forced both Bolshevists and Russian Nationalists into a common front against us. The Russian fights today with exceptional bravery and self-sacrifice for nothing more or less than recognition of his human dignity.”
Twenty-five million citizens of the Soviet Union died fighting Nazism. Six million Jews were exterminated as a canon of Nazi policy. Many thousands of Americans died fighting Nazism in Europe and North Africa. Countless partisans fighting collaborationist regimes in France, Italy, Yugoslavia, and throughout Europe were tortured to death by the Nazis. The essence of Christopher Simpson’s masterpiece is that there was a fifth column of Nazi sympathizers in the United States because Nazism was “better for business,” General Motors, Standard Oil and du Pont were “deeply involved in German weapons production.” According to Max Wallace, in The American Axis, Henry Ford was not only the inspiration for Adolf Hitler (as declared by Hitler, himself), but throughout World War II subsidiaries of Ford in Germany were manufacturing the very machinery the Nazis used to slaughter American soldiers.
Perhaps, today, it is not the First Amendment, but precisely such a fifth column responsible for the United States opposition to United Nations Resolution 64/147. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of the fact that together, Syria, Iran and Israel (generally thought to be the bitterest of enemies) voted in unison in favor of that Resolution, not only once, but year after year after year. Perhaps they share a subliminal recognition of a common interest and a common threat of another world war. There is a vast, untapped oil reserve in Siberia. Perhaps, while attention is focused upon the Middle East, covert action is focused upon seizing those oil reserves. To accomplish that, those covert actors will have to finish the work begun by Hitler: the dismemberment and subjugation of Russia (not incidentally a nuclear power). Like the Nazis, the Taliban hold that “education is dangerous; every educated person is a future enemy.” Who created the Taliban?
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Lobbying money out of control in the US
Banks have increased their lobbying budgets, despite rhetoric from both the banks and Obama that lobbying should "cool off." JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley have increased their lobbying budgets significantly in order to work against taxpayers' interests and needs, and they are using taxpayer money to do it. See the news video below for more information.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
An Examination of Left Communism
By Red Nick
Many Marxists, for whatever reason, have accused the Left Communists of being the most sectarian and closed minded kind of Marxist. Others have accused Left Communism of being revisionism, an abandonment of Marxism. The intent of this essay is to find out whether or not these accusations are true.
First we need to define Left Communism. Left Communism in this essay, “is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held by the Communist International after its first two congresses” (Wikipedia). Although Rosa Luxembourg lived before Left Communism became distinct, her works are very influential in the modern Left Communist movement. So I think it is fair, for the sake of this essay, to count her among the ranks of the Left Communists.
The Spartacist League, originally formed as the “Revolutionary Tendency” of the SWP, has been known to get into brawls with far right-wing groups (such as the KKK). There is nothing wrong with that tactic when employed properly, but right-wingers aren’t all the SL have fought with. They have gotten violent at meetings with other leftists, including with the ISO (International Socialist Organization) and DSA (Democratic Socialists of America). This is certainly not a good tactic. Instead of engaging in constructive debates with other leftists, they have decided to act like sectarian thugs and attack anyone who disagrees with them even slightly. For clarification, the SL considers itself to be Trotskyist, but it has a wild streak of Left Communism (“American Red Groups” source).
Let’s take a more classic example. In the 1920’s the Communist Party of Italy was under the leadership of Left Communist Amadeo Bordiga. It was to remain this way until 1926. Under Bordiga’s guidance, the Communist Party of Italy became isolated from other anti-fascist militants. This isolation got worse as Party militants were instructed to leave defense groups that weren’t completely controlled by the Party. These sectarian tactics also lead to fighting within the Party itself (“Left Communism” source).
The International Communist Current, a Left Communist group with members worldwide, has seen a number of sectarianism-induced splits within its ranks over the years (“International Communist Current” source).
I do not intend to investigate and analyze the entire history of Left Communism and its various groups. It would take volumes of books to do that. It would also be unfair to lump all Left Communist groups together into one stereotype. So, in the interest of fairness, I will conclude that Left Communism has a frightening history of sectarianism. Does this mean Left Communism is only for people with sectarian views? No, it would be wrong to lump that many people into one category, and to even attempt to do so could take years of work. The point here is that Left Communism has a history of sectarianism, and it is right to accuse many, many of its followers of being childishly sectarian, but we should avoid stereotyping all of these people.
Others have accused Left Communists of revising Marxism. Let’s take a look at its history and theory to see whether or not this is true.
One thing the Left Communists like to put forward is the idea of being uncompromising. "...All compromise with other parties ... any policy of maneuvering and compromise must be emphatically rejected," the German Lefts write in the Frankfurt pamphlet. However, F. Engels felt compromises were necessary in order to eventually achieve (in full) the final goal. This is what Engels wrote, almost sarcastically, in 1874 condemning the manifesto of the thirty-three Blanquist Communards:
So we have found one occasion in which common Left Communist theory abandons Marxism. Are there anymore?
We’ve already addressed compromise, now let’s address parliamentary struggle. Engels said in The Tactics of Social-Democracy that work within parliament was not obsolete, and that in some cases it would help the revolutionaries avoid falling into the traps of bourgeois agitators who only want to spill as much proletarian blood as they can while the bourgeoisie is still strong (second Engels source). When the Bolsheviks were working to seize power in Russia, they found it very beneficial to work within parliament. It gave them exposure they didn’t get before (Lenin source).
From this short examination, we can see that Left Communism does make major breaks with Marxism in some areas. Again, this doesn’t mean all Left Communist groups make these very same mistakes.
From this we will conclude that Left Communism is very sectarian and very revisionist, but we should study a Left party, regardless of its ideology, before labeling it as such in order to avoid dangerous stereotyping. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if most Left Communist groups fit the stereotype of being sectarian and revisionist.
Works Cited:
"American Red Groups." 11 July 2002. Web. 13 Feb 2010. http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html.
"International Communist Current." Wikimedia, Web. http://www.fact-index.com/i/in/international_communist_current.html.
"Left Communism." Wikimedia, Web. http://www.fact-index.com/l/le/left_communism.html.
“Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder” by V.I. Lenin
"Programme of the Blanquist Communards" by Frederick Engels
“Tactics of Social Democracy” by Frederick Engels
"The International Conferences of the Communist Left (1976-80)." International Review (2005): n. pag. Web. 13 Feb 2010. http://en.internationalism.org/ir/122_conferences.
Many Marxists, for whatever reason, have accused the Left Communists of being the most sectarian and closed minded kind of Marxist. Others have accused Left Communism of being revisionism, an abandonment of Marxism. The intent of this essay is to find out whether or not these accusations are true.
First we need to define Left Communism. Left Communism in this essay, “is the range of communist viewpoints held by the communist left, which criticizes the political ideas of the Bolsheviks from a position that is asserted to be more authentically Marxist and proletarian than the views of Leninism held by the Communist International after its first two congresses” (Wikipedia). Although Rosa Luxembourg lived before Left Communism became distinct, her works are very influential in the modern Left Communist movement. So I think it is fair, for the sake of this essay, to count her among the ranks of the Left Communists.
“The sect sees its raison d'être and its point of honour not in what it has in common with the class movement but in the particular shibboleth which distinguishes it from the movement." (Marx to Schweitzer, 13th October 1868.)
The Spartacist League, originally formed as the “Revolutionary Tendency” of the SWP, has been known to get into brawls with far right-wing groups (such as the KKK). There is nothing wrong with that tactic when employed properly, but right-wingers aren’t all the SL have fought with. They have gotten violent at meetings with other leftists, including with the ISO (International Socialist Organization) and DSA (Democratic Socialists of America). This is certainly not a good tactic. Instead of engaging in constructive debates with other leftists, they have decided to act like sectarian thugs and attack anyone who disagrees with them even slightly. For clarification, the SL considers itself to be Trotskyist, but it has a wild streak of Left Communism (“American Red Groups” source).
Let’s take a more classic example. In the 1920’s the Communist Party of Italy was under the leadership of Left Communist Amadeo Bordiga. It was to remain this way until 1926. Under Bordiga’s guidance, the Communist Party of Italy became isolated from other anti-fascist militants. This isolation got worse as Party militants were instructed to leave defense groups that weren’t completely controlled by the Party. These sectarian tactics also lead to fighting within the Party itself (“Left Communism” source).
The International Communist Current, a Left Communist group with members worldwide, has seen a number of sectarianism-induced splits within its ranks over the years (“International Communist Current” source).
I do not intend to investigate and analyze the entire history of Left Communism and its various groups. It would take volumes of books to do that. It would also be unfair to lump all Left Communist groups together into one stereotype. So, in the interest of fairness, I will conclude that Left Communism has a frightening history of sectarianism. Does this mean Left Communism is only for people with sectarian views? No, it would be wrong to lump that many people into one category, and to even attempt to do so could take years of work. The point here is that Left Communism has a history of sectarianism, and it is right to accuse many, many of its followers of being childishly sectarian, but we should avoid stereotyping all of these people.
Others have accused Left Communists of revising Marxism. Let’s take a look at its history and theory to see whether or not this is true.
One thing the Left Communists like to put forward is the idea of being uncompromising. "...All compromise with other parties ... any policy of maneuvering and compromise must be emphatically rejected," the German Lefts write in the Frankfurt pamphlet. However, F. Engels felt compromises were necessary in order to eventually achieve (in full) the final goal. This is what Engels wrote, almost sarcastically, in 1874 condemning the manifesto of the thirty-three Blanquist Communards:
"’We are Communists’ [the Blanquist Communards wrote in their manifesto], ’because we want to attain our goal without stopping at intermediate stations, without any compromises, which only postpone the day of victory and prolong the period of slavery.’”
“The thirty-three Blanquists are Communists just because they imagine that, merely because they want to skip the intermediate stations and compromises, the matter is settled, and if ‘it begins’ in the next few days—which they take for granted—and they take over power, ‘communism will be introduced’ the day after tomorrow. If that is not immediately possible, they are not Communists.”
"What childish innocence it is to present one’s own impatience as a theoretically convincing argument (Engels source)!"
So we have found one occasion in which common Left Communist theory abandons Marxism. Are there anymore?
“…all compromise with other parties, all reversion to parliamentary forms of struggle which have become historically and politically obsolete, and any policy of maneuvering and compromise must be emphatically rejected." - from “The Split in the Communist Party of Germany (The Spartacus League)”
We’ve already addressed compromise, now let’s address parliamentary struggle. Engels said in The Tactics of Social-Democracy that work within parliament was not obsolete, and that in some cases it would help the revolutionaries avoid falling into the traps of bourgeois agitators who only want to spill as much proletarian blood as they can while the bourgeoisie is still strong (second Engels source). When the Bolsheviks were working to seize power in Russia, they found it very beneficial to work within parliament. It gave them exposure they didn’t get before (Lenin source).
From this short examination, we can see that Left Communism does make major breaks with Marxism in some areas. Again, this doesn’t mean all Left Communist groups make these very same mistakes.
From this we will conclude that Left Communism is very sectarian and very revisionist, but we should study a Left party, regardless of its ideology, before labeling it as such in order to avoid dangerous stereotyping. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if most Left Communist groups fit the stereotype of being sectarian and revisionist.
Works Cited:
"American Red Groups." 11 July 2002. Web. 13 Feb 2010. http://reds.linefeed.org/groups.html.
"International Communist Current." Wikimedia, Web. http://www.fact-index.com/i/in/international_communist_current.html.
"Left Communism." Wikimedia, Web. http://www.fact-index.com/l/le/left_communism.html.
“Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder” by V.I. Lenin
"Programme of the Blanquist Communards" by Frederick Engels
“Tactics of Social Democracy” by Frederick Engels
"The International Conferences of the Communist Left (1976-80)." International Review (2005): n. pag. Web. 13 Feb 2010. http://en.internationalism.org/ir/122_conferences.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Text to "Soviet Preparations and Victory"
The following is the text to the YouTube video called "Soviet Preparations and Victory."
I’m going to go into detail about how and why the Soviets defeated the Nazis during WWII. I hope to crush some capitalist and Nazi myths along the way.
The standard myth popularized by U.S. and British imperialist apologists attributes the Soviet victory to the availability of limitless human hordes used as cannon-fodder, and vast stocks of U.S. donated arms. This exhausted the enemy. Russian winters also get a big play in these fairy tales-as if the weather had been warmer for the communists than for Nazis.
Hitler had at his disposal one hundred eighty million Germans and active German allies and one hundred thirty million conquered people whose labor power, unwillingly, aided the fascist war effort. With his vast labor reserves, Hitler could mobilize an army numbering between fifteen and eighteen million troops. The Soviets could mobilize about ten million troops. A million of these were needed in the Soviet Far East and on the Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish borders, more than offsetting the Nazis’ need for troops to occupy western Europe. Nazi manpower superiority at the time of the invasion can therefore be reckoned as three to two. The quality of Soviet materiel was second to none. As far back as 1935 Nazi General Guderian noted the superiority of Soviet tanks and tractors. Nazi Colonel von Bulow praised the high technical level of Soviet war planes and cited the USSR’s capacity to continue military production indefinitely for a protracted war. Nonetheless, Germany invaded the Soviet Union enjoying a 5:2 Quantities superiority in the hardware of warfare, thanks to Hitler’s previous victories. The Nazis had inherited the rest of Europe’s arsenal practically intact and controlled Europe’s entire war industry. Within the first month of the invasion, however, the Nazi blitzkrieg was stalled. The Red Army suffer-e massive losses but couldn’t be knocked out in the first round. On the contrary: it gave better than it got. At its fastest, the blitzkrieg never exceeded fifty percent of the Nazis’ rate of advance in conquering western Europe. By the end of the war’s third month, the Hitlerites had lost one-third of their original invading force and equipment. By the fourth month the Red Army stopped the Wehrmacht at Smolensk for an entire month. By the fifth month the Nazis had been slowed to one-sixth of their initial rate. The war’s essential course had been determined before the end of 1941. Although the turning point was to come months later during the heroic battle of Stalingrad, and although the Soviet working class needed a Herculean collective effort to win, the beginning of the end had already appeared for the Nazis.
The Wehrmacht bit the dust largely because the Soviet Union’s forces enjoyed overwhelming ideological superiority. Hitler’s troops fought to conquer “living space” for the “master race.” The Soviet troops, though enveloped in a nationalist cloud, fought for the glimpse of communism that a generation of socialist life had given them: Men, offtcers, and generals alike, understand that any conqueror will rob them of their collectively owned factories, farms, schools, theaters, museums, will halt further improvement and progress and strip them of their freedom and of other values that make their life worth living. This is thoroughly understood from the top-ranking marshall down to the company cook. This consciousness is part of the Red Army morale, which is part and parcel of the morale of the whole nation.
Divided into three distinct but complementary groups: the Red Army, fighting in the front zone; the guerrilla army, spreading havoc throughout the Nazi rear; and the armed population, denying the fascists access to the Soviet rear. The concept of the Soviet people in arms is not well known in the West and merits mention, The magnitude of the Soviet war effort cannot be comprehended otherwise. Stalin had figured since the 1919 War of Intervention that the imperialists would not give up their dreams of reconquering Russia and smashing socialism. The only issue in doubt was whether the second invasion would involve as much inter-capitalist unity as the first, and Soviet diplomacy was devoted to splitting the Soviet camp. In any event, the Soviet Union had to prepare. Contrary to the rehashed lies of vulgar western anti-communists who pretend that the Soviet people mysteriously rose up all of a sudden in 1941 despite their leaders, history shows that these leaders had meticulously planned for war since the 1930s. They tried to avoid war, but they also prepared to fight to win if war was imposed on them. Production for war formed a key element of the plan. Defense appropriations rose From 395 million rubles in 1924 to 34 billion in 1938. The Red Army’s motor component (the number of mechanical horsepower per soldier) rose from 2.6 in 1929 to 13.8 by the end of 1938. Soviet tractor plants were constructed to be easily convertible into tank plants. Starting from scratch, by 1935-6, the U.S.S.R. already boasted seventy-four aircraft factories, of which the most important group was situated well beyond the reach of enemy bombers. Therefore, Soviet tank and aircraft production had been guaranteed six years before the invasion. The most impressive aspect of socialist preparations for war, however, remained the human side. Right after the invasion, Soviet ability to wage guerrilla operations in the Nazi rear proved decisive. How was such activity possible? “How is it,” asked military historian Sergei Kourashoff, “that plain peasants, working men, clerks, teachers, and such can pit their strength against the mighty Wehrmacht? Where did they learn the use of modern arms?” (op. cit., p. 204). The answer is simple. For years beforehand the Soviet government had armed, trained, and organized the entire population for total war in the future. The Soviet government was not afraid to arm its people. It was not afraid to teach its people military science. It welcomed these developments and considered them necessary. It had full confidence in the majority of the population, and this attitude was reciprocated. Such a relationship between government and people is absolutely inconsistent with the absurd premise that Stalin ruled like a “despot” and that his power emanated from the intimidation of the masses.
The “Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Air Force and Chemical Defense” did a lot of work. It carried out military training among all sections of the Soviet population, particularly among youth. Instruction was provided by army reserve officers and included marksmanship, horse cavalry skills, aviation, parachuting, skiing, and other military sports. In 1938, six million adults and millions more youth had won riflery badges. Every farm had its civil defense group which had learned sharp shooting and had weapons. Here was a guerrilla band already formed.
The Red Army that smashed the Nazis had the highest political and cultural level of any army in the world. In 1930, it boasted eight thousand alcoves for study and recreation, eight hundred clubs with even better facilities, and ninety-seven Red Army houses lavishly provided with theaters, movie rooms, lecture halls, auditoriums, libraries, exhibit halls, and game rooms. This was only a beginning. By 1939, the alcoves (known as “Lenin Corners”) had grown to 27,435, the clubs to 1,900, and the “palatial” Red Army Houses to 276.
Source:
http://www.plp.org/the-communist/selections/stalinssuccesses.pdf
I’m going to go into detail about how and why the Soviets defeated the Nazis during WWII. I hope to crush some capitalist and Nazi myths along the way.
The standard myth popularized by U.S. and British imperialist apologists attributes the Soviet victory to the availability of limitless human hordes used as cannon-fodder, and vast stocks of U.S. donated arms. This exhausted the enemy. Russian winters also get a big play in these fairy tales-as if the weather had been warmer for the communists than for Nazis.
Hitler had at his disposal one hundred eighty million Germans and active German allies and one hundred thirty million conquered people whose labor power, unwillingly, aided the fascist war effort. With his vast labor reserves, Hitler could mobilize an army numbering between fifteen and eighteen million troops. The Soviets could mobilize about ten million troops. A million of these were needed in the Soviet Far East and on the Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish borders, more than offsetting the Nazis’ need for troops to occupy western Europe. Nazi manpower superiority at the time of the invasion can therefore be reckoned as three to two. The quality of Soviet materiel was second to none. As far back as 1935 Nazi General Guderian noted the superiority of Soviet tanks and tractors. Nazi Colonel von Bulow praised the high technical level of Soviet war planes and cited the USSR’s capacity to continue military production indefinitely for a protracted war. Nonetheless, Germany invaded the Soviet Union enjoying a 5:2 Quantities superiority in the hardware of warfare, thanks to Hitler’s previous victories. The Nazis had inherited the rest of Europe’s arsenal practically intact and controlled Europe’s entire war industry. Within the first month of the invasion, however, the Nazi blitzkrieg was stalled. The Red Army suffer-e massive losses but couldn’t be knocked out in the first round. On the contrary: it gave better than it got. At its fastest, the blitzkrieg never exceeded fifty percent of the Nazis’ rate of advance in conquering western Europe. By the end of the war’s third month, the Hitlerites had lost one-third of their original invading force and equipment. By the fourth month the Red Army stopped the Wehrmacht at Smolensk for an entire month. By the fifth month the Nazis had been slowed to one-sixth of their initial rate. The war’s essential course had been determined before the end of 1941. Although the turning point was to come months later during the heroic battle of Stalingrad, and although the Soviet working class needed a Herculean collective effort to win, the beginning of the end had already appeared for the Nazis.
The Wehrmacht bit the dust largely because the Soviet Union’s forces enjoyed overwhelming ideological superiority. Hitler’s troops fought to conquer “living space” for the “master race.” The Soviet troops, though enveloped in a nationalist cloud, fought for the glimpse of communism that a generation of socialist life had given them: Men, offtcers, and generals alike, understand that any conqueror will rob them of their collectively owned factories, farms, schools, theaters, museums, will halt further improvement and progress and strip them of their freedom and of other values that make their life worth living. This is thoroughly understood from the top-ranking marshall down to the company cook. This consciousness is part of the Red Army morale, which is part and parcel of the morale of the whole nation.
Divided into three distinct but complementary groups: the Red Army, fighting in the front zone; the guerrilla army, spreading havoc throughout the Nazi rear; and the armed population, denying the fascists access to the Soviet rear. The concept of the Soviet people in arms is not well known in the West and merits mention, The magnitude of the Soviet war effort cannot be comprehended otherwise. Stalin had figured since the 1919 War of Intervention that the imperialists would not give up their dreams of reconquering Russia and smashing socialism. The only issue in doubt was whether the second invasion would involve as much inter-capitalist unity as the first, and Soviet diplomacy was devoted to splitting the Soviet camp. In any event, the Soviet Union had to prepare. Contrary to the rehashed lies of vulgar western anti-communists who pretend that the Soviet people mysteriously rose up all of a sudden in 1941 despite their leaders, history shows that these leaders had meticulously planned for war since the 1930s. They tried to avoid war, but they also prepared to fight to win if war was imposed on them. Production for war formed a key element of the plan. Defense appropriations rose From 395 million rubles in 1924 to 34 billion in 1938. The Red Army’s motor component (the number of mechanical horsepower per soldier) rose from 2.6 in 1929 to 13.8 by the end of 1938. Soviet tractor plants were constructed to be easily convertible into tank plants. Starting from scratch, by 1935-6, the U.S.S.R. already boasted seventy-four aircraft factories, of which the most important group was situated well beyond the reach of enemy bombers. Therefore, Soviet tank and aircraft production had been guaranteed six years before the invasion. The most impressive aspect of socialist preparations for war, however, remained the human side. Right after the invasion, Soviet ability to wage guerrilla operations in the Nazi rear proved decisive. How was such activity possible? “How is it,” asked military historian Sergei Kourashoff, “that plain peasants, working men, clerks, teachers, and such can pit their strength against the mighty Wehrmacht? Where did they learn the use of modern arms?” (op. cit., p. 204). The answer is simple. For years beforehand the Soviet government had armed, trained, and organized the entire population for total war in the future. The Soviet government was not afraid to arm its people. It was not afraid to teach its people military science. It welcomed these developments and considered them necessary. It had full confidence in the majority of the population, and this attitude was reciprocated. Such a relationship between government and people is absolutely inconsistent with the absurd premise that Stalin ruled like a “despot” and that his power emanated from the intimidation of the masses.
The “Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Air Force and Chemical Defense” did a lot of work. It carried out military training among all sections of the Soviet population, particularly among youth. Instruction was provided by army reserve officers and included marksmanship, horse cavalry skills, aviation, parachuting, skiing, and other military sports. In 1938, six million adults and millions more youth had won riflery badges. Every farm had its civil defense group which had learned sharp shooting and had weapons. Here was a guerrilla band already formed.
The Red Army that smashed the Nazis had the highest political and cultural level of any army in the world. In 1930, it boasted eight thousand alcoves for study and recreation, eight hundred clubs with even better facilities, and ninety-seven Red Army houses lavishly provided with theaters, movie rooms, lecture halls, auditoriums, libraries, exhibit halls, and game rooms. This was only a beginning. By 1939, the alcoves (known as “Lenin Corners”) had grown to 27,435, the clubs to 1,900, and the “palatial” Red Army Houses to 276.
Source:
http://www.plp.org/the-communist/selections/stalinssuccesses.pdf
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Israel Denies NGOs Work Permits
Over the past few weeks the Israeli Interior Ministry has stopped issuing work visas to members of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The Ministry has been giving them tourist visas instead. This has been making it almost impossible for NGO's to do their jobs.
This new policy is affecting over 120 international NGOs, especially those who are providing vital humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
The tourist visas prohibit NGO members from working in Israeli-occupied parts of Palestine, including East Jerusalem. NGO members have reported being harassed at checkpoints and refused entry to the border.
Many NGOs have called this new Israeli policy illegal, claiming it violates Geneva and humanitarian law. Many activists and aid workers have said this is a plan to consolidate Israel's hold on the occupied territories and push out the Arab residents.
This new policy is affecting over 120 international NGOs, especially those who are providing vital humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
The tourist visas prohibit NGO members from working in Israeli-occupied parts of Palestine, including East Jerusalem. NGO members have reported being harassed at checkpoints and refused entry to the border.
Many NGOs have called this new Israeli policy illegal, claiming it violates Geneva and humanitarian law. Many activists and aid workers have said this is a plan to consolidate Israel's hold on the occupied territories and push out the Arab residents.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Congress censors Arab news media
A bill was passed in December by the United States Congress that will attempt to censor Arab news media worldwide (not just what is broadcast in the USA). Very few people and news stations have noticed this bill until now. The noticing of this bill comes just a few weeks after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech supporting internet freedom. This raises the question of double standards to many people.
The bill plans to use sanctions against Arab media outlets that supposedly promote "anti-American" and "terrorist" views. The problem here, as some have pointed out, is that there are a lot of gray areas in the Arab media. The other problem is that the language of the bill is very vague in what it deems to be "anti-American" and "terrorist" rhetoric. The fear is that the bill could be used to easily attempt to censor any Arab news that criticizes US foreign policy or does normal, non-biased interviews with public figures that the US deems to be "terrorists".
Whatever happened to the old bourgeois liberal and conservative belief that foreigners have the right to express their views freely in their own countries? I guess basic human rights come second when compared to the hegemony of NATO propaganda.
The bill plans to use sanctions against Arab media outlets that supposedly promote "anti-American" and "terrorist" views. The problem here, as some have pointed out, is that there are a lot of gray areas in the Arab media. The other problem is that the language of the bill is very vague in what it deems to be "anti-American" and "terrorist" rhetoric. The fear is that the bill could be used to easily attempt to censor any Arab news that criticizes US foreign policy or does normal, non-biased interviews with public figures that the US deems to be "terrorists".
Whatever happened to the old bourgeois liberal and conservative belief that foreigners have the right to express their views freely in their own countries? I guess basic human rights come second when compared to the hegemony of NATO propaganda.
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