How ancient cosmology shaped Jewish and Christian theology. Apart from the scholarly side, there is an obvious polemical dimension here.
If the writers of the Bible didn´t know anything about the real outline of the universe, why should we trust their "divine revelation"? Especially if their theologies were informed by faulty cosmology. Note that the ancient Israelites believed that the Earth was flat!
An esotericist might perhaps disagree here...
LOL. För en gångs skull verkar regimmedia faktiskt ha rätt. Kan ingen tala om för amatörantropologerna på Fria Tider att de första européerna var mörkhyade och att det förekommit folkvandringar från Mellersta Östern också? Indo-européerna kom hit först under kopparstenåldern...
Skulle inte alls förvåna mig om neandertalarna var vitare än Homo sapiens under istiden!
"Afrikaner och araber spelar de första svenskarna i SVT:s storsatsning"
An interesting YouTube clip on the “Gateway Process”, really the same thing as out-of-body astral travel á la Robert Monroe. Since Monroe´s techniques are publicly taught at the Monroe Institute in Virginia, it´s not clear why the CIA classified the report mentioned. Or maybe it is, since the CIA operative responsible wondered aloud whether the Gateway Process could be used to train secret agents for spy missions.
But then, why was the document eventually *de*classified?
Either we´re dealing with a conspiracy so vast that it staggers even the astral
imagination, or…Gateway doesn´t work. At the very least, it doesn´t work if your
prime objective is to snoop on the Russians, the Celestial Empire or whoever is
enemigo numero uno this semana.
As a complete sidenote, we also get some interesting
speculations on the nature of consciousness, quantum mechanics and God.
Apparently none of which is of any interest to the boys at Langley. Well!
 |
| "Nu bråkar de igen, jada, jada" Credit: JJ Harrison |
Veckans viktigaste nyhet, tydligen. Notera också "avhopparberättelsen".
Never heard of this UFO case before. But sure, it´s "weaponized" all right, as in ONE OF OURS.
_by_David_Adam_Kess_(pic.2).jpg/800px-(Pasta)_by_David_Adam_Kess_(pic.2).jpg) |
| Credit: David Adam Kess |
I linked to this a year ago, but here we go again. An entertaining take on "color theory".
Apparently, the colors blue, yellow and red aren´t the primary colors. It´s cyan, magenta and yellow! Except for the perhaps salient fact that magenta doesn´t really exist?! The real secondary colors are blue, red and green...
Ooookay...
You´ve been lied to, citizen. Time to riot in the streets or something.
I assumed crop circles were dead in the water as a dodo, and then some! However, it seems that the mostly-skeptical Why Files have decided to re-open the cold case...
If this guy disappears in the next two or three weeks, we know Operation Blackbird is still in force.
The Why Files talk about a UFO contactee case I never heard about, the strange tale of Valiant Thor, who supposedly met President Eisenhower and revealed the secret of Velcro to NASA. Or something to that effect. The story was told in 1967 in the book "Stranger at the Pentagon".
Note that Ike is depicted as an apostle of peace in
this version! Note also that Val (the alien) is a Venusian, suggesting an
affinity between the contactee, Christian preacher Frank Stranges, and Theosophy.
A bizarre detail: a certain Laura Eisenhower is one of
the main proponents of the story. She describes herself as a Intuitive Astrologist,
Global Alchemist, Cosmic Mythologist, Guardian of the Organic Ascension
Timeline, and a Opener of Natural Stargates. She is also the actual great-granddaughter
of Dwight D Eisenhower…
Actually quite interesting. And controversial, since the narrator is accused of being a CIA agent by several people from the commentariat!
 |
| "Ha ha ha, små människobarn, nu gick ni på en nit igen!" |
Det här är från Fria Tider, men även Aftonbladet har påpekat detta. Det hela är alltså en storm i ett vattenglas. Eller bluff.
“The CPC(ML): A Revisionist Organization of Agent Provocateurs”
is a pamphlet published in 1978 by IN STRUGGLE! (yes, you´re supposed to spell
it that way). It was later known as the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Canada
IN STRUGGLE! (still with the exclamation mark at the end). Despite the peculiar
name, the organization seems to have been a fairly main-line Marxist-Leninist group,
if there is such a thing. In Struggle were independent-minded enough not to
slavishly follow the “line” of any particular Communist regime. They supported Enver
Hoxha´s Albania against post-Mao China, but never accepted Hoxha´s retrospective
attacks on Mao Zedong. In Struggle even tried to unite various Marxist-Leninist
groups in Canada, to no avail.
In the pamphlet, In Struggle take on a very different
political animal: the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), a notorious
and notoriously kooky outfit led by one Hardial Bains. The CPC(ML) were originally
Maoists, then switched to supporting Albania. Despite their bad reputation on
the Canadian left, the CPC(ML) managed to get the Albanian franchise and became
officially recognized by the Party of Labor of Albania. The CPC(ML) still
exist, but these days, they support Cuba and North Korea instead. I originally
assumed that the CPC(ML) were mostly notorious for their tiresome rhetoric and
personality cult of Bains, but if In Struggle´s pamphlet is something to go
after, the real history is darker (but also very typical).
At least during the 1970´s, the CPC(ML) were an adventurist and extremely sectarian group of a kind that frequently pops up on the far left. They often physically attacked other leftists with baseball bats or bricks, attempted to take over leftist rallies and protest marches, invaded leftist or workers´ cafés to read bombastic declarations, and so on. Entryism was another tactic, for instance when Bains´ group pretended to form local branches of a competing Marxist-Leninist group. When the Bains group officially proclaimed itself a party, the CPC(ML) claimed that a highly respected Marxist-Leninist activist in Canada, Jack Scott, was their party chairman, when in reality Scott had denounced them as provocateurs!
Bains was of Indian (Punjabi) descent, and successfully
managed to infiltrate the East Indian community in Canada through various front
groups. Or maybe not so successfully, since the CPC(ML)´s attempts to take over
Sikh “temples” (really a kind of community organizations) sometimes ended in huge
physical fights outside the meeting halls. Naturally, the Bainsites condemned
all competing leftist groups (including In Struggle) as “police agents” and
what not. In this pamphlet, In Struggle repays the favor by accusing the
CPC(ML) of being literal fascists…
Like many other volatile groups of this kind, the CPC(ML) combined adventurism and bombastic sloganeering with positions far to the “right” of most leftists. A case in point is their Canadian nationalism. Bains claimed that Canada is a colony of the United States, and the Canadian revolution must therefore be “democratic” rather than socialist, uniting “all the people”, including anti-American capitalists. Indeed, one of Bains´ main objections to the Maoist “three worlds theory” was that it claimed that Canada was imperialist! He thus criticized the Communist Party of China *from the right*.
This Canadian nationalist line created problems for Bains in Quebec, where he instead tried to promote Quebecois nationalism. In Struggle, which supported the right of Quebec to self-determination while arguing against actual independence, charges Bains with the crassest opportunism, since his weird party didn´t really fight for French language rights in the here and now (thereby adapting to Anglo-chauvinism), while calling for a bloc with Quebecois nationalists in the abstract.
Not sure who might be interested in this material today, but there you go.
 |
| The first revisionists? |
I admit that I never heard about the Communist Workers
Group (Marxist-Leninist) before a frequent commentator on this blog pointed out
their erstwhile existence. The CWG was a small Marxist-Leninist group in the
United States, apparently led by a man named Tom Clark, which published a
magazine named “Forward”. The group existed between 1975 and 1978. A similar
group existed in Canada, the Organization of Communist Workers
(Marxist-Leninist). I assume they dissolved at approximately the same time. A
previously unpublished work by Clark, “The State and Counter-Revolution”
(written during the 1980´s), can be accessed on the Marxist Internet Archive
(MIA). Clark himself passed away in 2010.
While not Maoist in the strict sense, the CWG originally supported China and Albania, while regarding the post-Stalin Soviet Union as “revisionist”. Later, the CWG would condemn the Communist Parties of China and Albania as “revisionist”, too. At some point, the CWG realized that the roots of this revisionism goes all the way back to Stalin himself. After all, it was the Stalinists who launched the Popular Front strategy at the 1935 congress of the Communist International. Had the CWG stopped here, they would have developed in a direction similar to, say, the Marxist-Leninist Party (MLP), which tried to develop a kind of de-Stalinized version of Marxism-Leninism. Perhaps uniquely among anti-revisionist Communist groups, however, the CWG went further.
Clark and his co-thinkers eventually reached the
conclusion that Marx, Engels and Lenin had been “revisionists”! Except, of
course, that no “revision” was involved at all, since Marxism had been
petty-bourgeois and middle class from the start. Clark seems to have ended up
as a kind of anarchist or Council Communist, although he never uses those
terms. What makes the evolution of CWG intriguing is that they reached their
conclusion by consistently applying the same logic which made them break with
China and Albania. Discovering striking similarities between the ideas of
Marx/Engels/Lenin and later Communists, they naturally drew the conclusion that
the entire Marxist movement had been “revisionist” from its inception.
One clue to the mystery of the CWG could be that they strongly emphasized the class basis of revisionism, while also making a direct connection between the old revisionism (Bernstein and reformist Social Democracy) and the new (which was ostensibly Communist). The social basis for both seems to have been privileged middle class sectors. But Marx, Engels and Lenin also believed that “the socialist intelligentsia” could play a positive role in the revolutionary struggle, indeed Lenin gave them a central role by claiming that revolutionary socialist consciousness could only come to the working class *from without*, from middle class intellectuals. Since Lenin believed in a vanguard party, what does this tell us about the class basis of said party and its leadership? Indeed, what does it tell us about the class character of the Soviet state, including the early Soviet state?
In contrast to other Marxist-Leninists, the CWG also stressed that the revolutionary workers´ state must consist of directly elected soviets, an armed workers´ militia, and so on. This clearly wasn´t the case with the “revisionist” regimes, but nor was it the case with early Soviet Russia. If Marx, Engels and Lenin (or pre-1935 Stalin, for that matter) are analyzed bearing these principles in mind, they all fall short. Marx, Engels and Lenin often took positions that could be seen as “popular frontism”, “democratism”, peaceful road to socialism, united fronts with the petty bourgeoisie or with parties dominated by the middle class, and so on. Even pure or classical Marxism is a bottomless pit of revisionist deviations.
Clark believed that Marx, Engels and Lenin supported
the Paris Commune and the soviets for purely tactical reasons, and that their
real perspective was either taking over the existing state through parliament,
or a revolution for the benefit of the middle class. Lenin´s approach to the
soviets struck Clark as parliamentarian, as if the soviets were a kind of workers´
parliaments in which the Bolsheviks peacefully competed for majority influence.
Clark even questioned whether the Commune and the soviets were properly proletarian.
Certain sections of the middle class might actually prefer a Commune-style
state with radical democracy, cheap government, lower taxes, no standing army,
and so on. The Paris Commune in Clark´s opinion had a leadership dominated by
middle class elements, and so did the soviets in 1917 until shortly before the
October revolution. Thus, not even a call for soviets is working class revolutionary
in and of itself.
What non-Marxists would call “really existing socialism”
is a third system discovered by the petty bourgeoisie or middle class, neither capitalist
nor properly socialist. This third system places the middle class in command
and hence enables it to survive. Marxism is simply the ideology of this particular
middle class striving. Clark apparently predicted that the third system would
eventually devolve into capitalism, and regarded the events of 1989-91 as
confirmation of his view. Still, China seems to be a better confirmation of his
theory, since the Chinese combine “capitalism” with a strong middle
class-dominated state regulating it.
But what was the CWG´s or Clark´s alternative to Marxism-Revisionism, to coin a phrase? They “should” have become anarchists or Council Communists, but never actually adopted an alternative ideology to Marxism. However, I think it´s safe to say that Clark´s perspective has a family likeness to certain forms of anarchism and ultraleftism. The working class should struggle in the workplace and on the streets for its own material interests, independent of any middle class intellectuals, who will simply try and capture the movement and derail it. This is true even of proletarianized middle class elements, whose real goal is to create a system that will enable them to regain their privileges. The labor union apparatus is a case in point, but so is any revolution led by declassed strata of this type.
However, it
seems Clark coupled this crypto-anarchist perspective with a strong pessimism.
The working class, due precisely to its material position in production, is a
*weak* class. It´s easy pray to middle class demagogues. The CWG was a very “theory-heavy”
group, and I get the impression that Clark never broke with this perspective. He
wasn´t a pure spontaneist, rather he seems to believe that no true revolution
is possible without the correct theory being adopted by the proletariat. But
very few workers are capable of doing the research necessary to develop such a
theory. Even the advanced workers therefore become dependent on theory already
developed by others. And who are these others? Why, the Marxist middle class
intellectuals, of course!
It´s almost as if the proletariat is doomed to be dominated by the “petty bourgeois” intelligentsia. But if so, Lenin was in a sense right: revolutionary consciousness can only come to the workers “from without”. And that means the working class is *materially incapable* of making a revolution in its own interest. The workers are doomed to forever be the fifth wheel under the middle class popular frontist bandwagon. They are not a revolutionary class. Clark never draws these conclusions, but they seem to be the logical next step. (Insert comment on George Orwell´s “1984” here.)
What political conclusions follow from this? Ironically, the most obvious possible conclusion is that advanced workers should *support* the middle class reformers (or in extreme cases the middle class revolutionaries) as the lesser evil to unbridled capitalism. The radical rejection of revisionism leads straight to embracing it through a different route. The other conclusion is the one drawn by French Marxist Jacque Camatte when he lost faith in working class revolution (and modern civilization itself): take to the hills (the Cevennes in Camatte´s case) and form a survivalist commune. I admit that I´m vacillating between these two alternative options myself!
Which helps to explain my interest in this rather obscure
topic. The CWG´s political odyssey has a kind of family likeness to my own
meandering perturbations…
“The Party of Labor of Albania Came to Canada Under a
Stolen Flag” is a publication of the Bolshevik Union, a long-forgotten small
group of Stalinists in Canada. Published in 1979, the pamphlet is strictly
speaking no 13 of the BU´s journal “Lines of Demarcation”. The BU formed an
international current together with the Bolshevik League of the United States
(a fusion of Leninist Core and Demarcation) and some West African groups based
in France. I assume all these organizations disappeared at some point during
the 1980´s.
Originally, the BU and its co-thinkers had supported
Enver Hoxha´s Communist regime in Albania, but by 1979 they had decided that
Hoxha was just another revisionist, not much different from the Chinese and
post-Stalin Soviet versions. Interestingly, the Albanian Communists (known as “Party
of Labor of Albania” or PLA) had tried to recruit the BU to their international
network. When the PLA subsequently recognized the bizarre and cultish Communist
Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) as their fraternal organization, the
Bolshevik Union first attempted to convince the Albanians of their mistake and
then broke off all contacts. Presumably, this triggered their political
reevaluation of Hoxha and the PLA.
What attracted many Marxist-Leninists to Hoxha was his attacks on the Maoist “three worlds theory” used by China to justify both a strategic alliance with bourgeois or semi-feudal regimes in the Third World, and its tilt towards the United States in the Cold War. However, the BU believes that the Albanian leader really has a similar perspective (minus the outrightly pro-American geopolitical positioning). Hoxha´s positive view of “non-aligned” nations is said to be similar to the Chinese, Soviet or Yugoslav takes. Hoxha´s regime had relatively good relations with Greece, Turkey and Romania (all broadly “pro-Western” at the time) and hoped to trade with Western Europe and Canada. Hoxha also expressed strong support for Egyptian leader Sadat´s break with the Soviet Union, since this removed a potential military threat to Albania at its southern flank.
The BU believes that the PLA stopped referring to Canada as imperialist shortly after recognizing the CPC (M-L), a group which denied Canada´s imperialist character. While being cozy with Western nations, Albania had also established friendly relations with Vietnam, a pro-Soviet country, no doubt because of shared hostility towards China. Albanian support for Khomeini is also up for criticism. The deeper point is that the PLA calls for unity with the “national” bourgeoisie in the Third World and the imperialist nations of the “second world” (here Western Europe and Canada) just as the Maoist “three worlds theory”. The break between Albania and China has nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism but is simply a conflict between competing national interests.
Even the seemingly radical sloganeering against “both
superpowers” (the US and the Soviet Union), rather than the Chinese line of de
facto uniting with one against the other one, is really a form of “three worlds
theory” and revisionism, since opposition to “superpowers” can come from lesser
imperialist powers or nationalist bourgeois regimes.
The decision of the Albanian Communists to give the
CPC (M-L) their Canadian franchise looms large in the pamphlet. To most people,
CPC (M-L) is the small and crazy cult led by one Hardial Bains. Originally
Maoist, they eventually sided with Albania instead. The Bolshevik Union
couldn´t stand them. In the pamphlet, the CPC (M-L) are accused of being middle
class, lumpen and agent provocateurs. Above all, they are revisionists and
outright reformists. The CPC (M-L) denies that Canada is imperialist and
instead tries to recast it as a nation oppressed by the United States. From
this follows that the Canadian working class must unite with all the people,
including “the middle bourgeoisie”, in a fight against the “rich”. The BU is
opposed to this broad popular front, pointing out that what the CPC (M-L) calls
“the middle bourgeoisie” really encompasses a sizable fraction of the
capitalist class! The BU also complains about Albania not really giving a damn
about who gets their franchise, since the PLA didn´t see it as necessary to
have a single Marxist-Leninist party in each country in the first place. The
important thing is that various Marxist-Leninist groups collaborate to aid
Albania…
By most standards, the BU and the Bolshevik League would count as Stalinists. Yet, they seem to repudiate the popular front, a strategy associated with the very same Stalin. It´s not clear to me after reading some other material from this current whether the BU/BL rejects popular frontism en toto, or see it as a purely temporary tactic best avoided in 1979. Nor is it clear whether these groups are Third Period. In some curious way, these groups sound extremely sectarian and dogmatic, yet not really Third Period.
The BU/BL current believed that a third world war was imminent, a war between the US and Soviet blocs, both being equally imperialist. In this war, all other nations would become proxies for one side or the other, indeed many already were so. This explains why no national bourgeoisie is progressive, the global situation being similar to the European theatre during World War I. Given this background, Albania´s diplomatic maneuvers could be seen as Enver Hoxha probing both sides in the future war to see which one he should join!
BU and their co-thinkers thus had a very bleak view of the general world situation: the Soviet Union became “capitalist” after the death of Stalin, China had always been “capitalist”, and no national liberation struggles are possible except under Communist leadership, but of course, no such leaderships exist anywhere in the world. Apparently, this current disappeared during the mid-1980´s, no doubt because their entire political perspective turned out to be dead wrong.
Bizarrely,
the CPC (M-L) still exists, now led by the widow of Hardial Bains, but that´s
another story!
A clip from the “Why Files” about a recent cause célèbre
on the web. In 2022, a certain Andrew Dawson posted a typical UFO-Men in Black-conspiracy
story on TikTok, with himself in the role as the persecuted eyewitness. With
outmost probability, the whole thing was a hoax for entertainment purposes
only.
There the story would probably have ended, had it not
been for the fact that Dawson suddenly died. Or did he? True believers
claim that he was murdered or made to disappear by the Cabal or whoever is out
there. Another speculation is that Dawson is still alive and faked his own
death to get away from all the controversy his TikTok videos have created.
Personally, I frankly wonder what the fuzz is all about, since the man´s
original UFO story was pretty unconvincing to begin with. Maybe people just
wanted to be entertained…
As a side point, note that the comic foil of the Why Files moderator, HeckleFish, is a conspiracy theorist and apparently speaks with a New York accent! Somehow, I don´t associate the Big Apple with conspiracy theorists, but sure, in a city with 8 million people, who knows what kind of strange fish (or apple worms) might be lurking in the dark…
 |
| Liu Shaoqi |
During the Cultural Revolution in China, two factions
in the Chinese Communist Party were in conflict. On the one hand, the Marxist-Leninists
based on the working class. On the other hand, the capitalist roaders, fascists
and revisionists. And the leader of the latter faction was…Mao Zedong?!
Such is the “line” of the 1967 pamphlet “On the
situation in the People´s Republic of China”, published by a small ex-Maoist
group, the Marxist-Leninist Organisation of Britain (MLOB). Probably completely
forgotten today, MLOB´s publication was apparently somewhat notorious at the time.
Maoism was at the height of its popularity around the world. In the Western
world, left-wing radical students struck up an interest in Mao Zedong Thought, often
under the influence of the so-called Cultural Revolution. MLOB had previously
thought of themselves as Maoists, indeed some of their members might have been among
the first Maoists in the UK. But after observing the chaos during Mao´s “bombardment
of the headquarters”, they reassessed their position and came out in support of
Liu Shaoqi, who had been branded the number one “capitalist roader” within the
Chinese party by the Red Guards. Presumably, you couldn´t win a popularity contest
among the radical campus leftists in 1967 by launching a struggle session
*against* Chairman Mao and his allies!
What makes MLOB´s pamphlet interesting is that they don´t
attack Mao Zedong for “ultraleftist deviations”, which is probably the “logical”
take for a strict Marxist-Leninist group which opposes the Cultural Revolution.
Rather, they take the position that Mao was a “revisionist” from the start and
hence was a “rightist” deviator of the same type as Bukharin. Mao´s writings from
the 1950´s are used to prove (or “prove”) that Mao supported Khrushchev´s
criticism of Stalin, wanted reconciliation with Tito, called for a prolonged
period of peaceful co-existence between the workers and the national bourgeoisie
in China, opposed “uninterrupted revolution”, and attempted to purge
Marxist-Leninists from the party and the military. MLOB supports Marshal Peng
Dehuai, a Chinese military leader who was often accused of being pro-Soviet and
hence a “revisionist”. MLOB argues that Khrushchev´s support for Peng Dehuai was
a conspiracy. The Soviet leader pretended to support Peng so Mao would get an
excuse to purge him?! Not sure if I buy that one, tbh. As already mentioned,
MLOB also expresses strong support for Liu Shaoqi, China´s president and a prominent
rival of Mao in the Communist Party leadership. Both Peng and Liu were purged
during the Cultural Revolution, both eventually dying in prison.
MLOB actually charges Mao with plotting the
restoration of capitalism and bourgeois state power in China. The Red Guards
are really fascist storm-troopers. To MLOB, the evidence for this position is
pretty obvious: the Red Guards and their allies attacked Communist Party officials,
dissolved Communist local organizations, and likewise attempted to dissolve the
Communist youth organization and the trade unions. The “revolutionary
committees” ordered wage freezes and called on workers to tighten their belts.
Serious training in Marxism-Leninism was rejected in favor of mindless parroting
of “Mao Zedong Thought” in the form of short soundbites from the Little Red
Book. The most interesting part of the pamphlet (which unfortunately doesn´t
cite any sources) details the civil war-like situation in various Chinese
provinces, as supporters and opponents of the Cultural Revolution violently
battled each other. MLOB believes that thousands of workers resisted the Red
Guards, often arms in hand! The army seems to have been split, which is
interesting (if true) since the PLA was supposedly allied with Mao.
There are obvious weaknesses in the report. Liu´s
support for Mao´s erstwhile “revisionism” is simply brushed aside by declaring
that he simply followed party discipline. MLOB also have problems explaining
away China´s foreign policy, which was pretty radical at the time.
As already mentioned, “On the situation in the
People´s Republic of China” was MLOB´s main claim to fame. The group must have
been quite small (although they did have international co-thinkers) and underwent
a split in 1974. One of the leaders, MB, was accused of Third Period-style
politics and expelled. He subsequently became a Council Communist. The other
leader, BB, changed the name of the MLOB to the Communist League and expressed support
for Enver Hoxha´s Stalinist regime in Albania. There is a “family likeness”
between Hoxha´s criticisms of Mao and the Cultural Revolution, and that offered
by MLOB ten years earlier. However, the Communist League also had unspecified differences
with Hoxha. The group might still exist, and on the web I found a bizarre condemnation
of BB by a German ultra-Stalinist group which accuses him of the original political
deviations “Anti-Stalinism-Hoxhaism”, “Beria-ism” and “Neo-Menshevism”. Apparently,
the ultras believe that Beria murdered “our beloved comrade Stalin” so BB´s “Beria-ism”
rubbed them the wrong way…
But that´s just another Tuesday in ML-Land. No, the
really interesting contribution these comrades did probably was the publication
under review here.
During the Cultural Revolution in China, two factions
in the Chinese Communist Party were in conflict. On the one hand, the Marxist-Leninists
based on the working class. On the other hand, the capitalist roaders, fascists
and revisionists. And the leader of the latter faction was…Mao Zedong?!
Such is the “line” of the 1967 pamphlet “On the
situation in the People´s Republic of China”, published by a small ex-Maoist
group, the Marxist-Leninist Organisation of Britain (MLOB). Probably completely
forgotten today, MLOB´s publication was apparently somewhat notorious at the time.
Maoism was at the height of its popularity around the world. In the Western
world, left-wing radical students struck up an interest in Mao Zedong Thought, often
under the influence of the so-called Cultural Revolution. MLOB had previously
thought of themselves as Maoists, indeed some of their members might have been among
the first Maoists in the UK. But after observing the chaos during Mao´s “bombardment
of the headquarters”, they reassessed their position and came out in support of
Liu Shaoqi, who had been branded the number one “capitalist roader” within the
Chinese party by the Red Guards. Presumably, you couldn´t win a popularity contest
among the radical campus leftists in 1967 by launching a struggle session
*against* Chairman Mao and his allies!
What makes MLOB´s pamphlet interesting is that they don´t
attack Mao Zedong for “ultraleftist deviations”, which is probably the “logical”
take for a strict Marxist-Leninist group which opposes the Cultural Revolution.
Rather, they take the position that Mao was a “revisionist” from the start and
hence was a “rightist” deviator of the same type as Bukharin. Mao´s writings from
the 1950´s are used to prove (or “prove”) that Mao supported Khrushchev´s
criticism of Stalin, wanted reconciliation with Tito, called for a prolonged
period of peaceful co-existence between the workers and the national bourgeoisie
in China, opposed “uninterrupted revolution”, and attempted to purge
Marxist-Leninists from the party and the military. MLOB supports Marshal Peng
Dehuai, a Chinese military leader who was often accused of being pro-Soviet and
hence a “revisionist”. MLOB argues that Khrushchev´s support for Peng Dehuai was
a conspiracy. The Soviet leader pretended to support Peng so Mao would get an
excuse to purge him?! Not sure if I buy that one, tbh. As already mentioned,
MLOB also expresses strong support for Liu Shaoqi, China´s president and a prominent
rival of Mao in the Communist Party leadership. Both Peng and Liu were purged
during the Cultural Revolution, both eventually dying in prison.
MLOB actually charges Mao with plotting the
restoration of capitalism and bourgeois state power in China. The Red Guards
are really fascist storm-troopers. To MLOB, the evidence for this position is
pretty obvious: the Red Guards and their allies attacked Communist Party officials,
dissolved Communist local organizations, and likewise attempted to dissolve the
Communist youth organization and the trade unions. The “revolutionary
committees” ordered wage freezes and called on workers to tighten their belts.
Serious training in Marxism-Leninism was rejected in favor of mindless parroting
of “Mao Zedong Thought” in the form of short soundbites from the Little Red
Book. The most interesting part of the pamphlet (which unfortunately doesn´t
cite any sources) details the civil war-like situation in various Chinese
provinces, as supporters and opponents of the Cultural Revolution violently
battled each other. MLOB believes that thousands of workers resisted the Red
Guards, often arms in hand! The army seems to have been split, which is
interesting (if true) since the PLA was supposedly allied with Mao.
There are obvious weaknesses in the report. Liu´s
support for Mao´s erstwhile “revisionism” is simply brushed aside by declaring
that he simply followed party discipline. MLOB also have problems explaining
away China´s foreign policy, which was pretty radical at the time.
As already mentioned, “On the situation in the
People´s Republic of China” was MLOB´s main claim to fame. The group must have
been quite small (although they did have international co-thinkers) and underwent
a split in 1974. One of the leaders, MB, was accused of Third Period-style
politics and expelled. He subsequently became a Council Communist. The other
leader, BB, changed the name of the MLOB to the Communist League and expressed support
for Enver Hoxha´s Stalinist regime in Albania. There is a “family likeness”
between Hoxha´s criticisms of Mao and the Cultural Revolution, and that offered
by MLOB ten years earlier. However, the Communist League also had unspecified differences
with Hoxha. The group might still exist, and on the web I found a bizarre condemnation
of BB by a German ultra-Stalinist group which accuses him of the original political
deviations “Anti-Stalinism-Hoxhaism”, “Beria-ism” and “Neo-Menshevism”. Apparently,
the ultras believe that Beria murdered “our beloved comrade Stalin” so BB´s “Beria-ism”
rubbed them the wrong way…
But that´s just another Tuesday in ML-Land. No, the
really interesting contribution these comrades did probably was the anti-Maoist struggle session under review here.
How in heaven´s name (pun intended) is this different from a millenarian cult of some sort? Is Mao the resurrected Tao or what?
>>>>
If you are a revolutionary, a Marxist-Leninist, you will inevitably support the great leader Chairman Mao...; if you are a; counter- revolutionary, an anti-Marxist-Leninist, you will inevitably oppose Chairman Mao...
Chairman Mao is the very red sun that shines most brightly in our hearts. He is the great, teacher, great leader, great supreme commander and great helmsman selected by the proletariat and the revolutionary’ people of China and the world in the course of their protracted revolutionary struggles.
He is the authority of the world proletarian struggle in the present era. ... He has the most profound Marxist-Leninist wisdom and the richest experience in struggle. ...Chairman Mao is the greatest Marxist-Leninist, the most outstanding proletarian leader and the greatest genius of our era. ...
Comrade Lin Piao says that a genius like Chairman Mao appears in the world only once in hundreds of years, or in China only once in thousands of years. Chairman Mao is the world’s greatest genius. ... Chairman Mao will always be our supreme leader, our supreme commander and the red sun shining most brightly in our hearts. Without him, there would not be the great Party we now have, nor our great army and great country; the Chinese people would have nothing, and the people of the world would find it impossible to achieve their liberation.
...We will always follow him closely and thoroughly establish the absolute authority of our great supreme commander Chairman Mao. We pledge our lives to defend Chairman Mao’s position as the supreme leader. Anyone who opposes Chairman Mao stands condemned by all of us, the whole Party; he will be denounced by all of us, the entire nation. ...
None of the earlier Marxist-Leninists personally, at the very forefront, directed so many important political and military campaigns as Chairman Mao. And none of them experienced such protracted sharp and diverse struggles as Chairman Mao has. (Yang Cheng-wu: “Thoroughly Establish the Absolute Authority of the Great Supreme Commander Chairman Mao. . .etc.”, in: “Peking Review”, No.46, 1967; p.17-18,19,20).
>>>>
I´m not a Communist, but sure, it´s a good song or something. Note the Third Period angle. The title is wrong, though. It should be "Der heimliche Aufmarsch"!
Richard Doty is a notorious disinfo agent inserted
into the UFO-logy community by some Amerikan intelligence service. Unless he is
auto-planted, LOL. Doty was involved in the so-called Bennewitz case (see my review
of “Project Beta” by Greg Bishop). I didn´t know he was also behind the Project
Serpo legend. Well, the quasi-cultish UFO and Roswell enthusiasts had it coming
if you ask me, so I can´t say I fault Mr Doty for his ops. Hats off to the guy!
The details of the Serpo saga varies a bit depending
on the source of your (real?) info, but the bottom line is that Doty fed it to
the UFO-logy community in order to create conflict and pandemonium. The story
is an expansion of the Roswell mythos. It essentially claims that a dozen human
astronauts were allowed to visit “Serpo”, the supposed home planet of the aliens
that crashed at Roswell. The material then describes life and technology on Serpo
in some detail, and even contains a photo of the planet´s two suns. The whole
thing reads like a boring scy fy novel. Apart from the almost obligatory double
star system, there are accounts of human cloning, mysterious electronic
devices, pills containing all the nutrition you need, and so on. The aliens are
surprisingly “human” in their lifestyle, despite looking like stereotypical Greys.
They have nuclear families, pray to some kind of god, their females are less aggressive
and more nice towards the astronauts than their males, and their planet was
previously threatened by overpopulation. And just like the contactee stories of
the 1950´s and 1960´s, the aliens have certain “hippie” traits, such as being
vegetarian.
Apparently, Doty or whoever is behind this actually
got the idea from a science fiction writer, Alice Bradley Sheldon (a.k.a. James
Tiptree jr.), who also worked for the CIA! That would indeed explain a thing or
two. The video above is from the Why Files, an entertaining YouTube channel
devoted to exploring various paranormal and alternative claims. Apart from
telling the story of Project Serpo and kind of debunk it, the channel also makes
some *really* weird claims about why the Serpo lore was created in the first
place (won´t spoil your fun by disclosing it here). If the claims are true, then
Doty simply recycled the story decades later to fool the UFO-logy community.
We can´t say we haven´t been warned!
Overheard on Wikipedia: "Ferae (/ˈfɪəriː/ FEER-ee, Latin: [ˈfɛrae̯], "wild beasts") is a mirorder of placental mammals that groups together clades Pan-Carnivora and Pholidotamorpha. The Ferae is a sister group to the clade Pan-Euungulata and together they make grandorder Ferungulata."
Apparently, the mirorder (or was it grandorder) in question also include the extinct Hyaenodonta (sensu stricto) and the Altacreodus/Tinerhodon clade, which is just as non-extant.
Let´s be honest. Cladistics (or should we spell it kladistix) have never been more fun! Not to mention the "immunodiffusion techniques" proving once and for all that pangolins are on the same branch of the evolutionary tree (well, almost) as the carnivorans...
Below is an excerpt from a letter by Frederick Engels to Jenny Longuet, dated February 24, 1881. In the letter, Engels polemicizes against a certain Regnard, a French historian who apparently admired Oliver Cromwell and considered Ireland to be “the Vendée of the English revolution”. (Vendée was a region in France which became famous or notorious for opposing the French revolution in the name of Catholic reaction.) Engels clearly begs to differ! Note also Engels´ attack on the Protestant Reformation.
<<<<<
L’Irlande la Vendée de l’Angleterre. Ireland was Catholic, Protestant England Republican, therefore Ireland-English Vendée. There is however this little difference that the French Revolution intended to give the land to the people, the English Commonwealth intended, in Ireland, to take the land from the people.
The whole Protestant reformation, as is well known to most students of history save Regnard, apart from its dogmatical squabbles and quibbles, was a vast plan for a confiscation of land. First the land was taken from the Church. Then the Catholics, in countries where Protestantism was in power, were declared rebels and their land confiscated.
Now in Ireland the case was peculiar. “For the English,” says Prendergast, “seem to have thought that god made a mistake in giving such a fine country as Ireland to the Irish; and for near 700 years they have been trying to remedy it.”
The whole agrarian history of Ireland is a series of confiscations of Irish land to be handed over to English settlers. These settlers, in a very few generations, under the charm of Celtic society, turned more Irish than the aborigines. Then a new confiscation and new colonisation took place, and so in infinitum.
In the 17th century, the whole of Ireland except the newly Scotchified North, was ripe for a fresh confiscation. So much so, that when the British (Puritan) Parliament accorded to Charles I an army for the reduction of Ireland, it resolved that the money for this armament should be raised upon the security of 2,500,000 acres to be confiscated in Ireland.
And the “adventurers” who advanced the money should also appoint the officers of that army. The land was to be divided amongst those adventurers: so that 1,000 acres should be given them, if in Ulster for £200 — advanced, in Connaught for £300, in Munster for £450, in Leinster for £600. And if the people rose against this beneficent plan they are Vendéens! If Regnard should ever sit in a National Convention, he may take a leaf out of the proceedings of the Long Parliament, and combat a possible Vendée with these means.
<<<<<<
At an unknown date, Frederick Engels wrote the short piece below and sent it to Jenny Longuet (Karl Marx´s eldest daughter). It was intended to be the preface to a German translation of Irish songs, but when the collection appeared in 1870, Engels´ preface wasn´t included. It wasn´t published until 1955 in an Italian Marxist journal. The English translation, "Notes for the Preface to a Collection of Irish Songs", is taken from “Marx and Engels on Ireland and the Irish Question”, published in Moscow by Progress Publishers in 1971. Note that Engels sounds like an Irish nationalist and attacks Cromwell (“the Lenin of the English revolution” according to Trotsky).
<<<<<<<<
Some Irish folk-music is very ancient, some has arisen in the last three to four hundred years, and some only in the last century. Especially much was written at the time by one of the last Irish bards, Carolan. In the past these bards or harpists — poets, composers and singers in one person — were quite numerous. Every Irish chieftain had his own bard in his castle. Many travelled the country as wandering singers, persecuted by the English, who correctly saw in them the main bearers of the national, anti-English tradition. Ancient songs about the victories of Finn Mac Cumhal (whom Macpherson stole from the Irish and turned into a Scot under the name Fingal in his Ossian, which is entirely based on Irish songs), about the magnificence of the ancient royal palace of Tara, the heroic deeds of King Brian Borumha, and later songs about the battles of Irish chieftains against the Sassenach (Englishmen) were all preserved in the living memory of the nation by the bards. And they also celebrated the exploits of contemporary Irish chieftains in their fight for independence. When in the 17th century, however, the Irish people were completely crushed by Elizabeth, James I, Oliver Cromwell and William of Orange, their landholdings robbed and given to English invaders, the Irish people outlawed in their own land and transformed into a nation of outcasts, the wandering singers were hounded in the same way as the Catholic priests, and had gradually died out by the beginning of this century. Their names are lost, of their poetry only fragments have survived, the most beautiful legacy they have left their enslaved, but unconquered people is their music.
Irish poems are all written in four-line verses. For this reason a four-line rhythm always lies at the basis of most, especially the ancient, Irish melodies, though sometimes it may be a little hidden, and frequently a refrain or conclusion on the harp follows it. Some of these ancient songs are even now, when in the largest part of Ireland Irish is understood only by the old people or even not at all, known only by their Irish names or first words. But the greater, more recent part has English names or texts.
The melancholy dominating most of these songs is still the expression of the national. disposition today. How could it be otherwise amongst a people whose conquerors are always inventing new, up-to-date methods of oppression? The latest method, which was introduced forty years ago and pushed to the extreme in the last twenty years, consists in the mass eviction of Irishmen from their homes and farms — which, in Ireland, is the same as eviction from the country. Since 1841 the population has dropped by two and a half million, and over three million Irishmen have emigrated. All this has been done for the profit of the big landowners of English descent, and on their instigation. If it goes on like this for another thirty years, there will be Irishmen only in America.
<<<<<<<<<
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| Oliver Cromwell´s head on a pike |
Are we to believe the Marxist articles linked to below, Oliver Cromwell was “the Lenin of the English Revolution”. Per Socialist Appeal. Or perhaps it was Lenin who was “the Cromwell of the Russian revolution”. Per the Socialist Workers Party. (Both these groups are Trotskyists based in Britain.)
WTF?!
So I spent the early morning hours reading what Marx
and Engels *actually* said about Cromwell. Since Karl & Frederick had a
huge problem with Slavic “peoples without history” (alias “reactionary peoples”)
siding with feudal monarchs against the Germano-Magyar forces of 1848 progress
and bourgeois revolution, you would think they would praise the great bourgeois
revolutionary Cromwell to the skies for his attempts to exterminate the
reactionary Irish.
I mean, you can´t make a revolution without cracking
some eggs, right? Or some Irish potatoes…
Actually, Marx and Engels were so pro-Irish that they
*condemn* Cromwell for his depredations in Ireland, believing that this sealed
the fate of the English revolution, since a nation that oppresses another can´t
be itself be free. Indeed, these comments are a constant in Marx´ and Engels´
writings on Ireland. Cromwell is just another British colonialist, out to
expropriate the land of the Irish (the land question is central to Marx and Engels
here) and perhaps even to genocide them en toto. In this way, Cromwell sealed
an alliance between the bourgeoisie and the landowners in Britain (or at least
England), undermining the Commonwealth in the process.
Very little of the hallelujahs and hosannas of
Socialist Appeal and the SWP, wouldn´t you say? It´s almost as if Trotskyites
really are agents of British imperialism or something, LOL. The Trot obsession
with Cromwell presumably comes from Trotsky himself (see third link below), and
since no true Trotskyist can disagree with the martyred Messiah, well, there
you go…
I can see dead people, er, bots. Why Files is a YouTube channel with a "paranormal" orientation, but they are not entirely wrong here. "The dead internet theory" may be a quirky conspiracy theory, but bot-generated content and deep fakes *are* becoming more and more troublesome.
I´m old enough to remember naïve leftists who assumed that computers would inaugurate a new epoch of workers self-managment of a global planned economy.
Instead we got...what you´re on now. Scary!
An old classic, apparently still going strong. The article is from 2012, but there is more recent content pro or con on YouTube. The Why Files has covered it, too.
I don´t remember where I first heard about the "Siberian hell sounds", but it was absolutely during the 1990´s. Strange Magazine?
The Why Files is a paranormal-oriented YouTube channel with almost 3 million followers.
Here, the moderator and his comic foil HeckleFish talk about the Black Knight conspiracy theory, which I have blogged about before. Well, actually, I just linked to the Wiki entry debunking it! As we all know, Wiki is all-knowing, wise...
Interesting contribution, although on balance, I suspect the Black Knight satellite (if real at all) is "one of ours"...as per usual!
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| Credit: Wendy Cutler |
This is Wiki explaining the Dark Forest Hypothesis, a "solution" to Fermi´s paradox rather obviously based on a certain view of very human politics here on Earth...
A propos my previous postings on "The Three-Body Problem", a scy fy trilogy based on said hypothesis.
An entertaining clip about an urban legend I never heard about, the story of "the man from Taured", supposedly an inter-dimensional traveler of some sort. Below, a link to the Wiki entry on this particular tall tale (which may be very freely based on a true story). I think the Andorra business gives the game away completely, but maybe that´s just me...
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| Credit: Waugsberg |
“Nationalnyckeln” is a Swedish multi-volume encyclopedia
the original purpose of which was to describe all (as in every single one) species
of multi-cellular organism in Sweden. That would take at least 100 volumes, and
since the Swedish government (both governments) stopped paying, the project
will probably never be completed. But not for want of trying, since the
editorial board is still publishing new volumes at a semi-regular basis.
The latest one, hot off the printers as we speak, has
the mysterious designation DN 168-202 and the long title “Blötdjur. Snyltsnäckor
– skivsnäckor. Mollusca: Pyramidellidae – Planorbidae”. It covers 193 species
of “pulmonated” snails and slugs (you heard me). They are classified into three
superorders known respectively as Pylopulmonata, Eupulmonata and Hygrophila.
As usual when it comes to invertebrates, both the
species diversity and the yuck factor are considerable. The “pyramid shells” or
“pyrams” are impossibly small marine snails that suck body fluids out of
somewhat larger invertebrates. The book calls them “the mosquitoes of the sea”!
In sharp contrast to this, we have the escargot, introduced to Sweden already
during the Middle Ages by Catholic monks who ate them as Friday “fasting” food,
today an established “naturalized” species in the wild, although still found
around manors, palaces and old ruins to a great extent. And, of course, in
gardens. Not sure if we eat them anymore, though. Indeed, quite a few of the
species covered have been inadvertently introduced by man. Snails being slow as
a snail, they often stay around the green houses, gardens or parks to which
they were first “introduced” by the gardening trade. Some specific species even
live in the grassy sections of roundabouts!
As for the yuck factor…well, these snails and slugs
are hermaphrodites, making their mating habits kind of weird, since they “mate”
by exchanging sperm capsules with each other?! Don´t tell the local
trans-activists about this stuff, please.
The volume contains both species presentations, illustrations,
color photos, and keys to species identification. The shells are depicted from
different angles. Although the book is huge, it´s clear that the editors want
it to be used as an actual field guide – or at least identification guide,
since I assume you have to collect the specimens you want to identify. The
volume only covers Sweden, but is remarkably complete, even describing species
only found once or twice on our territory. There are also more general chapters
on the morphology and ecology of these mollusks, and how to collect them (if
that´s your thing in life). No escargot recipes, though.
All in Swedish, and probably not recommended unless
you are a pulmonated aficionado. We still don´t know what the next volume of this
never-ending encyclopedia will bring us, but knowing these guys, probably
another invertebrate extravaganza!
Another video clip discussing the ideas found in Cixin Liu´s trilogy “Remembrance of Earth´s Past”, probably better known as “The Three-Body Problem Series” (after the first novel).
This clip is shorter than the one I linked to before. Note the terrifying implications of the “shooter hypothesis” and above all “the farmer hypothesis”.
Does the Moon eats people
after all…?
The ideas expounded upon in this video are interesting, but I never read the science fiction trilogy they are extracted from, known as “Remembrance of Earth´s Past” or "The Three-Body Problem Series". Judging from Wikipedia, it´s a standard science fiction story with an extremely complex plot, but it doesn´t sound particularly “Lovecraftian”.
But sure, maybe Wiki´s entry writer didn´t get it?
Some kind of ecological concerns have also been woven into the story, which is interestingly enough authored by a Chinese writer, Liu Cixin (for some reason called Cixin Liu in the English-speaking world).
But, as I said, the speculations in this little
YouTube clip (made by a devoted fan of the novels) are worth pondering in their
own right…
