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Category: Propaganda

  • Neoliberal Micro Psychology vs Communist Macro Psychology

    Orientation
    This article is about the differences between the micro psychology of liberals and the macro psychology of communists. Differences include: how society and the individual is configured; the impact of capitalism on personal life; how the mind-body relationship is conceived; how the objective and subjective worlds are integrated; how politics impacts personal life and how research should be conducted. These differences are not self-evident or easy for liberals to understand. In order to attempt a breakthrough, I describe the story of Flatland, Edwin Abbot’s great 1884 science fiction book of why two dimensional beings on Flatland fail to understand the Spaceland dimension of some of its creatures. I’ve included a link to a video of the story. This will conclude Part I.

    In Part II we will discover that even when liberals find out about the Russian activity theory led by Lev Vygotsky, they interpret him in a bourgeois fashion. By this I mean they focus on educational reform and play, rather than work, while ignoring social class, exploitation, alienations as well as what an anti-capitalist individual might look like. To explore both parts of this article will referring to a great book by Carl Ratner: Macro Cultural Psychology: A Political Philosophy of Mind. In my opinion more than any other individual in the United States Carl has remained the most uncompromising in presenting the communist psychology of Vygotsky to the Yankee public.

    Hard Facts About Political Economy in Mordor
    The US has the highest percentage of children living in poverty in the industrial world – 23% and climbing. We have the second highest infant mortality rate among wealthy countries. Mordor has the highest incarceration rate in the world (spending is three times the amount that is spent on education). We are something like 125th in the world of 200 countries in literacy. American Association for the Advancement of Science discovered that one third of American’s population believes that human beings have existed in their current form since the beginning of time. In absolute numbers we easily have the highest obesity rate in the world. We have a political party, a party that imagines itself as liberal, complicit in the production of genocide in Palestine while propping up dictators the world over. The highest paid individual in John McCain’s presidential campaign during the first half of October 2008 was Sarah Palin’s traveling makeup artist. Her salary was higher than McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser. The so-called program “War on drugs” program does nothing to stem the use of drugs in the US. The 400 wealthiest people in the world own as much wealth as the poorest 400 million.

    Sixteen years after the near collapse of the global financial system, the US Congress still has adopted no new rules to re-regulate financial institutions. The financiers and politicians who created the financial implosion of the early 21st century have foisted greater harm on the US than all the country’s enemies. Why aren’t these problems fixed? We have no mass political party that might address these problems in a systematic way. We have political debates that are sponsored by a private organization, Commission on Presidential Debates. No other political parties are allowed to participate unless the two major parties agree.

    In a Degenerating Society the Need for Propaganda is Essential
    The ruling powers try to rationalize and legitimize their power by inventing ideologies that paint them as more capable and harder working than they really are. One part of their ideology is that there is no ruling class as a social formation. Class is simply the position that separate individuals occupy as a result of their individual competencies and effort. The “free market” is infinitely flexible, open to all comers. In this capitalist ideology there is no relationship between social classes. Capitalists appear to acquire their wealth as a completely separate process from what workers do or don’t do. What is really going on is that upper class wealth is dependent on their exploitation of the working class in the form of surplus value.

    The ruling class does not invent its ideology by itself. The upper middle class perpetuates the ideology not only in economics, but in philosophical, artistic and scientific fields. Presidents of community colleges work for capitalists to dampen the expectations for working class students. Their commission institutes are specifically charged with developing ideological tools for legitimizing capitalist practices such as the RAND Foundation. Also on the ground floor is the Hoover Institution and American Enterprise Institute. All three hire intellectuals to do their bidding by giving talks and writing papers and books. These institutions play hard ball. For example, the RAND corporation installed its academic agendas through the leadership of RAND intellectuals who were by then in powerful university administrative positions. Thomas Schilling was one of the key figures in established rational choice theory, probably the most direct enemy of communist psychology.

    Propaganda supporting individualism such as social contract theory has kept social scientists from solving complex social problems by refusing to understand these problems as structural and due to capitalism. Instead, the psyches of individuals are blamed. It enlists a massive social apparatus to block the truth and reality of exploitation as the real source of most psychological problems today.

    Being mystified by this propaganda does not mean people are blind to every aspect of society. It only means they do not fundamentally understand how their society works. They are ignorant of the following deep issues of how power is distributed: the infrastructural relationships between the Deep State and particular political regimes; how capitalism operates and why it gets into crises roughly every seven years. The Mordor public, whether liberal or conservative, may know about lobbying, corruption, lying and cheating. They may be aware of inequality, poverty and discrimination. However, propaganda keeps them from not understanding the basis of these, or how these problems are interrelated and macro cultural in both form and content. Propagandists do not have to directly intervene in an institution in order to bend it to its will as Stephen Lukes points out in his third dimension of power. Furthermore, these propagandists can commit evil and be agents of oppression without themselves being perverted, sadistic or psychotic.

    Consumer Psychology
    Ratner writes that  consumer spending accounts for 70% of Mordor’s GDP. For capitalists, it is vitally important for the population to not only consume a great deal but to do so quickly. He writes that for capitalists, the natural cycles of growth of animals  are too slow for the profit motive so cows are fed hormones to speed up that growth. Fish  are also farmed in conditions that speed their growth. The same is true for people.  Capitalists do not want people to eat according to when they are hungry. This takes hours to peak. Instead, the act of eating has to be decoupled from hunger and coupled with fun because no other consumer activity can be performed as continuously as eating. We cannot wear new shoes all the time, but one can eat food every hour when watching TV, going to the movies or attending ball games because they require the rapid turnover to generate profit. It includes getting to work faster, working faster and spending money faster when these same workers consume.

    Wholesome food takes a long time to digest, and afterword the person is sated and has no desire for more. Added to the headaches of capitalists, some wholesome food can be cheap to buy and generates low profit. On the other hand, junk food is digested quickly and its fat, sugar and salt provide instant gratification without real satiation while stimulating new cravings.  Ratner refers to Jules Henry’s book Culture Against Man who uses the adjective “pecuniary” to describe various aspects of consumer psychology. Pecuniary is synonymous with commodified. Furthermore, enjoyment and desire have to be shifted from use to acquisition. For many consumers the process of shopping becomes more enjoyable than using the product. Many compulsive consumers never use the products they buy. We can go window shopping and browse catalogues and ads without any particular object in mind. Obsessive shopping can become a pathology. One researcher, H. Dittmar found that compulsive shoppers have a larger discrepancy between their present self and their ideal self than others.

    Sensationalism is rampant in modern culture, in popular music, in entertainment with car crashes, special technical effects and plenty of sexual suggestion. There is minimal, trivial content with little character development or substantive plot. Sensationalism offers no continuity between people and product. Throw-away products are deliberately designed for the short term and wear out quickly. They are unrepairable and replaced by new purchases. Capitalist intervention into the emotional life of the consumer with advertising campaigns is fueled by mass market psychologists. Capitalists can’t admit what they are doing to anyone else, let alone to themselves so they invent a theory that is the opposite of what they are doing.

    A rational choice theory of economics ignores the emotional and sexual appeal of the advertising industry that posits the consumer as having a natural rationality where you know what you need, you gather information and weigh the pros and cons of purchasing. Rational choice theory was developed at the RAND Corporation in the 1950s and 60s. Rational choice theory is a mainstay of bourgeois ideology because it construes society as an outcome of interpersonal negotiations. It is the mother of contemporary individualistic social theory, one of whose forms is micro-cultural psychology

    Why Can’t We See Through The Hard Facts of Political Economy, Propaganda and Consumer Psychology?
    In order to penetrate below the surface of capitalist society and analyze what is going on, we need a communist psychology which requires more than a liberal or conservative understanding of what is what is happening in the political economy. Understanding communist psychology requires:

    • understanding infrastructural and structural dynamics of capitalism that are invisible to the naked eye;
    • understanding that these factors may contradict common sense. Because reality is complex and expanding we cannot experience its totality through sense impressions. We must use sense impressions to infer and deduce unobservable properties of reality on which science is based;
    • understanding society as a kind of verb in motion, not a noun, an unchanging thing.

    Carl Ratner gives three examples from the sciences which show that they have to move beyond their senses and beyond common sense in order to make new discoveries.

    Astronomy is concerned with the immense, broad system of factors beyond the earth that bear on earth and bring it into being. Just as the characteristics of earth are unintelligible if one doesn’t understand the astrophysics of the sun, other planets, distant galaxies and the big bang, so characteristics of psychology are unintelligible without first understanding macro-cultural factors.

    Secondly, Darwin could have never discovered how species evolved from changing environmental circumstances if all he had to go on was the plant and animal life in Britain in the 19th century. He had to travel half-way around the world to discover fossils of plant and animal life thousands of years old. He needed the geological work of Lyell in order to familiarize himself with ages much larger than human history to begin to understand the gradualness of bio-evolutionary change. He had to refuse the easy and infantile explanations of theologians who could not imagine that matter was self-organizing and not a passive lump molded by the will of God.

    Lastly, in the atomic structure of steel beams:

    Cultural factors in psychology may be analogized to atoms in steel: they are constituents which areinvisible to the naked eye, are difficult to accept from the perspective of common sense. Looking at a steel beam it seems inconceivable that it is composed of atomic particles which are in motion…. Macro cultural psychology is analogous to atomic science in revealing constituents that are invisible to the naked eye, …macro cultural psychology changes our way of understanding psychology just as fundamentally as atomic theory changes our way of understanding steel beams.

    Macro cultural psychology is also like unseen distal sun in Plato’s cave. Everyday life in capitalist society with its villains and heroes in the movies, sports, music and politics are like the shadows cast by the sun’s light on the back of the cave. When we get involved in the puppet show of the shadows on the wall we ignore the capitalist sun that is responsible for the whole show. People act on the basis of their needs, interests, aims, passions and thoughts based on the shadows on the wall in the hopes of achieving satisfaction. However, behind these subjective experiences lies a macro cultural, political economic logic of the sun that structurally patterns them unconsciously in particular ways to remain focused on the puppet show rather than the light behind them.

    From Flatland to Spaceland
    Another way to capture the difference between liberal psychology and communist psychology is to imagine that each inhabits different dimensions of reality. In his mathematical science fiction book Flatland Edwin Abbot tells a story of life in the two-dimensional plane of Flatland. The people on Flatland take their world as self-evident. The higher functioning ones get around quite well just as working or middle-class people get along in capitalist society. What they don’t understand is that there is a third dimension of height. By accident, one of the Flatland inhabitants is visited  by someone from the third dimension which is called Spaceland. The third dimensional being can get along in the two-dimensional world, just as communists can get along in a capitalist world but their full life is more complex, living in the third dimension.

    When the three dimensional being tells the Flatlander (a square) about the existence of Spaceland, the Flatlander is cynical. Finally the Spacelander challenges the square to ride with him into the dimension of height. The Flatlander is both frightened and delighted to find the real existence of Spaceland. In our time, the Flatlander being drawn into Spaceland would be like a Flatlander living through a socialist revolution. The square returns to Flatland to proselytize about the existence of Spaceland but he finds their resistance to the existence of Spaceland remains entrenched. Below is the link to a 30-minute video about the story.

    What is Macro Cultural Psychology?
    From the political to the economic to the psychological
    Infrastructural macro cultural psychology posits that psychology is rooted in political and economic institutions that are neglected by neoliberal psychology. They include the state, the army, the stock market, the Catholic Church, corporate farms, banks, pharmaceutical companies, the healthcare industries, capitalist media and their impact on psychology. From this flow capitalist relations like commodification, alienation, surplus value, consumerism, class structure and possessive individualism. Lastly, these influence the familiar psychological expression such as emotion, perception, motivation, reasoning, self, sexuality and the senses. Interpersonal relations must be congruent with these macro factors if they are to function effectively. Whenever people express themselves psychologically, they mostly express and promulgate macro cultural factors embodied within it. Vygotsky writes that mental structures are inseparable from a social structure and that there is a social structure designed just for psychology.

    Invisible levels in deep time beyond the senses
    For macro cultural psychology nature is both outside and inside us. Culture mediates both outside and inside. Macro culture mediates our external interactions with nature (earthquakes, food sources, trees, animals, air, water, oil) and it mediates our internal relation to our own biology (our hormones, sense organs, motor organs, and cortical processes). This structure is invisible, yet implicit and outlasts the lives of the individuals who shape it. Macro culture imposes constraints as more than a mere sum of individual acts as claimed in liberal micro psychology.

    Macro cultural factors cannot be known or managed by sensory impressions by themselves. One cannot see or hear the full dynamics of the stock market or a transportation system over time and around the world. Culture and communication are the most immediate bases for mental and psychological life. Without the symbolic duplication of objects over deep social space and time there would be little freedom to imagine variations in our choices. The freedom to imagine new things is a cultural product. Far from stifling imagination and freedom, macro culture provides the mechanism for making anything in culture psychologically possible. In Ratner’s conical model, every phenomenon is a complex of three qualities:

    • its own distinct quality (family as a distinct institution);
    • the qualities that are imparted from structural forces such as the state, laws, educational practices;
    • the political economy – the stability of the stock market, as work opportunities and the cost of goods and services.

    All layers of macro culture are not equal. The economics of manufacturing are more influential in society than painting or sculpture. For example, automobile production employs hundreds of thousands of workers. In its success or failure, it affects the steel, oil and transportation industries.

    Beyond mind-body problems
    Ratner argues that the so-called the mind-body problem of how the physical body-brain produces mental life is the wrong way to frame the origin of consciousness. It is culture that produces the mind, not brain circuitry. If nature is world one and culture is world two, consciousness/psychology is world three. Culture does not influence some primordial consciousness and then adds certain extrinsic elements to it. Rather, culture forms consciousness. A major difference between human and animal cognition it’s that animals perceive relations of observable features of immediately present entities (first order relations). With the exception of chimps dolphins, ravens and crows, for humans, the socio-cultural world mediates their relations. For the rest of the animal kingdom, present sensuous relations are all there is.

    Interpersonal micro relations vs interpenetrating macro relations
    Neoliberal micro psychology finds it roots in the social contract theory of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. It assumes that individual relations with society are associative, contractual and voluntary. Furthermore, society is confined to sensual relations between people in Everyday life.  Macro cultural psychology is grounded in the interpenetrating, interdependent relations of Hegel and Marx. It assumes individual relations with society are organic, necessary and involuntary. Society includes not just personal relations in everyday life, but structures and networks beyond sensuous interpersonal relations that impact an individual whether we like it or not.

    For neoliberal capitalist psychology, psychological functions evolve on the individual level in order to realize individual agency or expression. For neoliberal psychology agency is usually touted as independent of macro culture – as expressing the individual resisting culture or recasting culture in more fulfilling personal terms. But this championing of individual agency breaks down. A good example of why this doesn’t make sense is early advertising campaigns to get women to smoke. Women’s “agency” did not create the demand to smoke out of personal choice. It was the macro culture of advertising agencies that began and sustained the process. Micro cultural society ignores macro cultural socialization such as various types of propaganda which are necessary to spread common cultural psychological signification throughout the population. Interpersonal socialization would be too fragmented and idiosyncratic to accomplish this massive, common socialization.

    Overcoming Conventional Methodology
    From idealism and mechanism to political practice
    It is important not to restrict macro cultural psychology to conventional methodology. We should not conceptualize macro principles to terms that are amenable to simple, superficial, fragmental statements on a questionnaire or fragmented behavioral observations. But how are the objective and the subjective integrated? Because in liberal micro psychology the objective and the subjective are kept separate, their studies always are either overstressing the objective, resulting in mechanism or reification, such as behaviorism. The other possibility is they overstate the subjective which results in idealism, like humanistic psychology. In macro cultural psychology, the ultimate integration of the objective and the subjective is collective political practice of a party, union, or social movement in which individuals engage in attempting to change the world. This practice enriches and changes the objective world while transforming subjective experience. This collective political practice avoids the twin dangers of mechanism and idealism, reification and subjectivism.

    Individualism in liberal micro psychology research methods
    Individualism in research methods  are designed to validate subjects by:

    • allowing them to speak freely;
    • accepting their point of view uncritically;
    • renouncing systematic interview and analytical methods that constrain the spontaneous subjectivity;
    • ignoring cultural pressures that constrain the spontaneous subjectivity.

    A central political issue in capitalist society as in all class societies is exploitation. Micro liberal psychology avoids the reality of exploitation marginalizing by:

    • reducing it to personal meanings;
    • interpersonal negotiations;
    • discourse symbols;
    • fragmenting it into variables.

    Macro Cultural Psychology Qualitative Research

    A phenomenon’s function is revealed when it answer at least these four questions:

    • why it exists in the sense of why it is necessary for that particular constellation of elements;
    • what role the element plays in the capitalist or socialist system;
    • what it reciprocally contributes to the system;
    • why the system needs it.

    Ratner identifies primary questions for research which include:

    • How can it conceptualize these elements as parts of a system?
    • Which system are they part of?
    • What are the other elements of this system?
    • How do they depend upon and support one another?
    • What features do each element acquire through its role in the system?
    • How are the elemental features distinctive to or particular to this system?
    • How might the features of the elements change if they played different roles

    in this system or if they were transposed to a different system?

    • What kinds of methods must be used to elicit answers to these questions?
    • What kinds of probing questions must we ask to extract these answers?

    Please see Table 1 at the end of Part I for a summary of the differences between micro and macro cultural psychology.

    Let us close out Part I of this article with a discussion of the emotions.

    Macro Origin of Emotions
    The starting point of human emotions is not internal private experiences based the individual’s private history. These emotions are already always housed in macro cultural emotions. Ratner names love of country, anger at capitalists or racial minorities, hatred of socialism, national shame, dejection about political trends, fear of economic depressions, fierce loyalty to professional baseball, football, basketball or hockey teams or devotion to certain kinds of music or dance. Anger that culminates in violence exists on the macro cultural level in the form of a working-class person who fought in wars has PTSD and is homeless. Other working-class people are competing for jobs and whose union is not treating them well. Others face low wages and lack of medical benefits. These macro cultural emotional states are environmental, not outside private emotions. The macro-cultural environment is already inside of psychological private states.

    Personal and interpersonal behaviors do not exist on their own. What appears to be individual behavior is only the immediate, apparent appearance that masks a deeper macro culture of emotions as a window into it. The same is true of memory. Personal memories are embedded in collective memories that involve systematically remembering favorable aspects of political life while forgetting other events as a result of political propaganda. These unify people whether they are based on reality or illusions. Whether individuals are conscious or not of having been internalized, these collective memories are the soil for private in which memories to grow or die.

    It used to be thought in the 50s and 60s that advertising propaganda influenced people in a very heavy-handed way, implying the public was passive (Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders).  Then it was found by Michael Schudson in his book Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion that people were less snowed by advertisers than researchers thought. What I want to bring to your attention is the way advertisers directly impact the public emotions by fragmenting emotional experience during a television program.

    Advertisements are strategically placed immediately before or after an intense emotional scene. This emotional fragmentation is built into the formatting of television scenes. One must wait for the ad to pass in order to complete the emotion. It does not permit long, continuous development and resolution of our emotions (168-169)

    Ratner says this emotional format is recapitulated by people in their personal relationships. Individuals get used to experiencing fragmented emotions because cell phones, text messages, Twitter and Instagram break up a full emotional expression. Ratner says that individuals get so used to this that grow uncomfortable with extended continuous emotional responses.

    Coming Attractions
    “But” you might say, “I’ve heard of this Vygotsky you speak of. He worked in the field of cooperative learning and developed something called the zone of proximal development. So Vygotsky’s communist ideas are here in the United States.” The problem is this assumes that the communist ideas of a theorist can be directly translated into a capitalist society with no distortion, exaggeration or even censorship. In part two of this article, I will show 11 differences in how Vygotsky is interpreted by those whom Ratner calls “neoliberal” Vygotskyan psychologists.

    Differences Between Micro and Macro Cultural Psychology

     

    Macro Cultural Psychology Category of Comparison Micro Cultural Psychology
    Socialist Political, economic orientation Liberal
    Organic, interdependent and necessary What are social relations? Associative and independent
    Social contract theory, voluntary
    No – they are the result of historical processes which outlive the individual Are social relations visible? Yes. Sensual and interactive

    rise and fall within local culture
    Massive, political, social institutions such as transnational corporations, and psychology have those characteristics What is culture? Primarily interpersonal, face-to-face interactions, then psychology would have those characteristics, not the characteristics of the political economy.
    The state, stock market, mass media, the military Ultimate subject matter Parent-child relations, teacher child relations,
    Surplus value, exploitation, alienation, social class, reification, ideology Presence of capitalist phenomena These are rarely mentioned
    Culture creates individuals Relationship between culture and individuals Individuals exist first, then create culture
    No problem
    Culture creates the mind, brain-circuitry does not    		 Mind-body problem Mind-body problem of how the physical body/brain produces mental life
    Psychological relations are indirect, mediate social relations to stimulus
    Personal comes later    		 Are psychological relations immediate and natural or not

     

    		 Psychological relations are direct, immediate, natural and personal responses to stimulates
    Macro-cultural socialization; political, economic, religious propaganda
    Macro psychology is an emergent extrinsic, exogram that transcends idiosyncratic individuals    		 How common cultural socialization is spread Interpersonal socialization is too fragmented and idiosyncratic to achieve this massive common socialization.

    Slippage form the first dyad to the last—as studies of rumor indicate
    Politics integrates the objective and subjective How objective and subjective are integrated No political integration

    Danger of mechanism or idealism
    Imagining new things are the result of cultural processes Where imagination begins In the psyche of individuals
    Qualitative questions are complete, deep connected over time and space that go beyond present fragmented behavioral observations Methodology Conventional, quantitative

    Simple, superficial, fragmental statements on a questionnaire or fragmented behavioral observations
    Attempts to explain the variation What cultural psychology attempts to do Describe  psychological variations in different cultures
    Explains their synthesis of culture and psychology though a parsimonious set of unobservable but real constructs How to explain diverse phenomenon Explain culture and psychology as separate and distinct
    Dialectical model of interdependence with each element impacting the others and permeating everything.
    It explains the organic relation between culture and psychology.    		 Causation Atomistic model of causation independent variable causing dependent variables

    Each element is separate and qualitatively independent. They come together only momentarily
    Realism
    Postulating unobservable cells, atoms, germs, gravity and genes before the microscope could detect them is more objective than sensory observation and has more explanatory and predictive power than empirical facts    		 Philosophy of science Positivism

    What is immediately observable, measurable and testable.
    Sensory observation
    Empirical facts

    The post Neoliberal Micro Psychology vs Communist Macro Psychology first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Nicaragua Withdraws From United Nations Human Rights Council

    The Nicaraguan government announced its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) in protest against the falsehoods and slanders against the country perpetrated at the institution.

    In a statement issued on Thursday, February 27, the Nicaraguan authorities stated that the UNHRC has become a platform for those who are attempting to destabilize Nicaragua and are the perpetrators of numerous murders, abductions, and violations of human rights of the Nicaraguan people.

    The statement further stressed that the report against the Nicaraguan authorities by the self-styled group of “experts” is evidence of the double standards and politicization of the multilateral mechanisms where human rights are being weaponized.

    The post Nicaragua Withdraws From United Nations Human Rights Council appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Cross-Cultural Comparative Politics: Social Science or Cold War Propaganda?

    Orientation
    What is the meaning of politics?

    Nine questions for determining what is politics
    In Part I of my article Seven Theories of Politics I posed ten questions for narrowing down what the range for defining what is politics.

    Temporal reach

    How far back into human history does politics go? Does politics go back to pre-state societies? Or does politics begin with state societies? Is politics possible before there were political parties?

    Cross species scope

    Is politics confined to the human species or does it ooze into the life of other species? If so, which ones? If politics crosses species, is it social species that are political? Is it possible to have animal societies which are social such as lions or wolves, but not political? Does a species need to be social to be political? Is being social a necessary but not sufficient condition for politics? Is being social a necessary and sufficient condition for politics? Or is being social neither a necessary nor sufficient condition? In other words, is it possible for a non-social species to have political relationships?

    How much does evolutionary biology impact politics    ?

    At a macro level, how does natural adaptation impact human politics? In terms of men and women, how much does sexual selection determine politics? At the micro level, how much do genetics and brain chemistry determine the level and the interest and skill in politics? Or is politics primarily a creature of the socio-historical level of reality?

    Spatial reach

    Where does politics take place? Many political scientists limit politics to what is taking place within states. Is that casting the net too narrowly? Can there be politics through discussions in private  space? Is it politics when I get into a discussion about the viability of capitalism while I am at the unemployment line waiting for my check? Are there politics within families? Are there politics between lovers? Or are politics only about public affairs?

    Am I being political if I ask my partner if she wants to go to the movies and propose a movie and she agrees to both proposals, is spontaneous agreement political? Suppose she said she wants to go to a movie but prefers another movie. We debate about it, and one of us persuades the other. Has the discussion become political? Suppose you and I are riding bicycles. We reach a crossroads where we have to decide whether to turn left or right. We each want to go in a different direction. Is the process of deciding this political?

    Political agency

    Who does politics? Is politics done only by politicians? If I argue with my neighbor about police brutality in my neighborhood, are my neighbor and I political beings in this discussion? Do I become political only when I vote on the issue in the next election? Do I become political when I bring police brutality to a town hall meeting next month? Or is the only person who is political the mayor who decides whether or not to make it part of his platform for his campaign next month?

    What is the relationship between politics and power?

    Can you have politics without having power? Can you have power without having politics? If power and politics are related, in what way? Are politics and power interchangeable? Is one a means to another? Is power the means and politics is the end? Is politics the means and power the end?

    Politics, force and coercion

    Let’s go back to this movie issue. Suppose Sandy has been drinking, and in the past she has been bad-tempered to her partner. She starts drinking while they are deciding on a movie. Sandy’s partner starts worrying and gives in to the movie Sandy wants to watch prematurely to avoid the risk of being yelled at. Is that politics?

    This example is a small slice of a larger issue: what is the relationship between politics and force or the threat of force? Is violence an inherent part of politics or is politics what you do to win someone over without being violent?  Some political theorists like Bernard Crick say that politics is the art of compromising when you know you cannot get what you want. Others say that the whole political system is based on violence because the entire class system is based on exploitation and force. All attempts to change things must come up against this militaristic force which protects the rulers. Some say that the only force is political and that the state is the ultimate political actor because it has, in Weber’s words, a monopoly on the means of violence.

    Interdisciplinary span of politics

    How (if at all) is politics related to economics? What is the relationship between technology and politics?  Does the economy dictate politics? Does politics determine economics? Does technology determine politics or does politics determine technology? The same question could be asked about religion or mass media.

    What, if any, is the relationship between theories of politics and political ideologies?

    Is there a relationship between a consistent set of answers to these questions and whether you are a liberal or conservative? How will the answers of social democrats, communists and fascists be different than that of either anarchists on the left or libertarian capitalists on the right?

    As it turns out, the field of cross-cultural politics I will be discussing gives very narrow answers to these questions and therefore leaves a great deal out.

    • Temporal reach – narrow, starts with class societies and leaves out tribal societies
    • Cross-species – narrow, limits it to the human species
    • Is politics biological? Narrow, politics is limited to the social, psychological
    • Spatial reach – narrow, limited to what happens in states
    • Political agency—limited to what politicians do, no one else
    • Relationship between politics and power, wide, used interchangeably
    • How is politics related to force or coercion? Narrow, understates force
    • Interdisciplinary span of politics – narrow, it excludes economics
    • Theories of politics and ideology -narrow, it tries to make politics scientific and above ideology

    In Part II of my article, I identity seven theories of politics:

    Old Institutionalists

    Civil Republicans

    • Weberian political sociologists
    • Marxian political scientists
    • Rational choice theorists
    • Radical feminists
    • Bio-evolutionary

    All the answers comparative politics gives to those questions primarily come from two schools, the old institutionalists and rational choice theorists. They pretty much leave out the other five schools.

    Connection to past articles
    About three years ago I wrote four articles about the ideological nature of political science. One article Anti-Communist Political Science: Propaganda for the Capitalist State was primarily about political science as it is practiced in the United States (not Europe). The second article, Invasion of the Body Snatchersconnects political science to neo-classical economics and shows how both support each other while blocking out an integrated approach called political economy. In my third article Dictatorship and Democracy I expose how Mordor political scientists were quite interested in dictatorships both in Europe and even within the United States in the 1930s. On the other hand, their interpretation of democracy was thin and lacked any subsistence. Lastly, my piece Totalitarian Anti-Communism showed the manipulation of the use of the word “Totalitarian” from the 1930s into the late 20th century. However, there is one topic that I did not cover in much detail and that is the subject of comparative politics. I did discuss it a bit in the last part of my first article but not in any depth. I would especially like to write about it now because while the field of comparative politics is not taken seriously outside the United States because its political manipulation is well-known, it still serves as propaganda for war and imperialism within the United States. It is as part of Yankee self-propaganda that discussing the field of comparative politics is still worth an analysis.

    Sources for my criticisms of comparative politics
    Sources for my criticisms of comparative politics are as follows. Ronald Chilcote wrote a very good criticism of comparative politics from a Marxian point of view. He was especially good at exposing the ideological nature in the field. For example he pointed out the connection between the social sciences and the CIA. Ido Oren was also really excellent at showing the connection between modernization theorists and the promotion of US foreign policy. Michael Latham’s book Modernization as Ideology
    reveals how modernization theory was behind JFK’s international anti-communist program, Alliance for Progress. Lastly, Irene Gendzier’s book Development Against Democracy explains how the word “development” was used by comparative politics involved in foreign policy to railroad countries on the capitalist periphery away from socialist and communist transition programs.

    Where are we going?
    In this article I will show eight foundational problems with comparative politics:

    • Its characterization of capitalist societies as democratic;
    • Its characterization of states as governing rather than ruling;
    • Its relative exclusion of propaganda from political communication in the West;
    • Its ignoring the presence of how capitalism undermines political relations;
    • Its ignoring of the Secret Service and the rest of deep state in political decision-making processes;
    • Its blanket characterization of socialism with authoritarian;
    • Its neglect of anarchism as a legitimate part of socialism;
    • Its treatment of nation-states as autonomous and not determined by alliances and between larger, more powerful states and transnational capitalists.

    Oligarchies vs Democracy

    Those of you who were unlucky enough to take a political science class might have been exposed to a cross-cultural version of the same thing. I refer to the field of comparative politics. The first thing that struck my eye in looking at the table of contents of a college textbook on comparative politics was the different types of rule. According to mainstream theorists, there are only two kinds of rule, democratic and authoritarian. The United States and Western Europe are deemed “democratic” whereas Russia, China and Iran are deemed authoritarian.

    The unpopularity of democracy in the West until the 20th century
    One problem with this formulation is that it fails to address the unpopularity of democracy in Yankee history itself, not only among conservatives but liberals as well all the way to the end of the 19th century. In the 19thcentury when liberalism really took hold as a political ideology, liberals were not interested in democracy, and considered it “mob rule”. Most industrialized countries did not have the right to vote at the end of the 19th century. Back then farmer populist parties and socialist parties took their democracy seriously, bringing economics into it. The result was a “substantive democracy” championed by Charles Merriman and Charles Beard in the 1930s. But the rise of fascism and communism had shaken liberal confidence in the natural sympathy between democracy and capitalism. So in the 1940s Joseph Schumpeter introduced a weakened form of democracy as simply the circulation of elite politicians  that people choose between. The procedural democracy of Robert Dahl of the 1950s involved choosing between these elites through voting. There was nothing about economics.

    In his book Strong Democracy, Benjamin Barber distinguishes “thick democracy” from the “thin democracy” of Dahl. My point is by the standards of thick democracy few if any Western countries are democratic. To call them democratic serves the ideological purposes of cold warriors and their desire to fight communism. Since democracy is a loaded virtue word, and authoritarian is a loaded vice word, a cold war opposition between the two is built into the entire field of comparative politics.

    How many parties make a democracy?
    What is striking is the criteria for what constitutes democracy when it comes to political parties. For comparative politics, a single party rule constitutes authoritarian rule. But the addition of just one more party, as in the American political system, we suddenly then have a democracy. Countries with many parties including most of Europe are also constituted as democracies. Aristotle argued that there were 3 forms of rule – monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. Oligarchy is the rule of the few. Given the actual nature of who controls the elections in the United States, it is most reasonable to say the United States and Western Europe are oligarchies, ruled by the ruling class, the upper class and the upper middle class. Taken together this is about 20% of the population, hardly a democracy. In the United States most of middle class, working class and poor have no representation and yet the country is called democratic.

    One party – authoritarian

    Two parties – democratic

    Many parties – democratic

    In other words, the difference between one and two parties is greater than the difference between two parties and many parties. In fact, the implication of those who defend the two-party system is that having many parties can be confusing and unwieldly. So we wind up with the two parties of the United States as a kind center of stability. This is so despite the fact that for about the last 50 years, forty percent or more people in the United States do not vote. Is this a sign that democracy in the United States doesn’t work? Not at all. Those who don’t vote are dismissed as ignorant, apathetic or pathological in some way. The reason people don’t vote is simply because neither party represents their interest is never present. When voting tallies are presented, the number of people who don’t vote is rarely presented. Voting tallies are presented like 50% vs 49% for the two parties as if that constituted all the people who could have voted. In fact, in the actual tallies the winning party gets 30% of the vote. The loser gets 29%. What is ignored is the highest tally: 40% who don’t vote. This is democracy? What we have here is an oligarchy. But in comparative politics, democracy is not a process that actually exists but a self-congratulating ideology for the ruling capitalist oligarchs who control both parties.

    Governing vs Ruling
    In comparative politics, “governing” is a taken for granted term for Western capitalist societies. “Ruling” is saved for countries suspected of not being democratic, like “authoritarian” countries. I prefer to take the governing word very seriously as it is used in cybernetic systems. Governing in cybernetic systems means steering a system which includes goals, communication within the system, adaptation to the environment, feedback systems which allow for adjustment and few forward system which results in planning. The human heart is a “governor” of the human body. By these standards the only type of society in which there was governing was the egalitarian politics of hunting and gathering societies. Simple horticulture societies in these societies decision-making was collective. They adapted and moved when the ecology dictated a change.

    For the last 5,000 years, complex political systems had rulers. This means that political goals were rarely carried out, communication systems were blocked and muddled by self-interested bureaucracies. Adaptations to the environment were slowed down by the machinations of the short-term thinking of ruling classes. Feedback systems were ignored such as extreme weather and pollution. Feed forward mechanisms were clogged by myopic ruling classes who couldn’t think three months ahead – if that. In Joseph Tainter’s book The Collapse of Complex Societies he describes how inept the ruling classes can be. Calling complex societies “governing” is ridiculous when compared to hunting and gathering societies which prevailed for 90% of human history. We are ruled by oligarchies and this should be reflected in any political field that considers itself scientific.

    The Exclusion of Propaganda from Political Communication in the West
    In part, the reason we have the illusion of democracy and a governing class rather than rulers of an oligarchy is because of Western propaganda. There are many textbooks describing propaganda in the West. If you like videos more than books, check out Adam Curtis’ documentary, The Century of the Self. This video demonstrates how 100 years of psychological propaganda in the person of Edward Bernays and the brainwashing in the work of Ewen Cameron controlled the Mordor public. Despite this, the only mention of propaganda in my comparative politics textbook is when it comes of “authoritarian” regimes. No surprises here.

    Comparative Politics Ignores Capitalism
    Following the tradition of Mordor social sciences, just as political science excludes economics while neoclassical economics ignores politics, comparative politics ignores the economic system of capitalism when it discusses Western politics. They ignore economic exchange and act as if politics was merely system of law, voting, institutional systems of bureaucracies and foreign policies. Without saying so, countries that count as “democratic” have capitalist exchanges. The field of comparative politics theorists act as if there was a natural, unremarkable relationship between capitalism and democracy. But as Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens have described in their book Capitalist Development and Democracy, it was not the capitalist merchants that brought representative democracy to the West, but the working class. Capitalist economic exchanges should be foundational to understanding political systems. Yet in my comparative poetics textbook that I’m reading, “political economy” is buried in the last chapter of the book.

    Two reasons why capitalism should be included in politics
    Capitalism should be foundational to politics because countries that have counted as politically “underdeveloped” have become so because of capitalist imperialism, as Gunder Frank pointed out decades ago. At the same time capitalist societies should be foundational to politics because it was under capitalist crisis that fascism emerged. The political ideology of fascism can never be understood without its roots in capitalism. There has never been fascism in human history before capitalism and there has never been fascism without the presence of capitalism.

    The Deep State and International Pressure Groups are Not Included in the Decision-making Processes of Politics

    Supposedly, democratically elected leaders of political parties govern their populations by carrying out “the will of the people”. I am countering this by saying these politicians represent the will of the oligarchs who rule over people. But the oligarchs do not just use political leaders to carry out their will. Besides capitalists that politicians have to answer to, there are agencies such as the FBI, the CIA as well as international pressure groups such as AIPAC, Five Eyes, and NED. None of these groups are mentioned in my comparative politics textbook as involving political decision making. The textbook on Political Psychology in International Relations writes as if political leaders make decisions for their nation by themselves. It is only in “authoritarian” societies that bureaucracies, revolutionary factions and terrorist groups come into play that constrain the decision-making will of the official political leaders.

    Authoritarian Politics is Synonymous With Socialism 

    When it comes to the West the field of comparative politics ignores the fact that its ruling oligarchy is run by capitalism. However, they have no problem declaring that authoritarian politics goes with a socialist “command economy”. Western countries that became socialist, such as Sweden and Norway, are presented as socialist democracies only because the presence of a market or capitalism. This made the naturally socialist authoritarian states more democratic.

    Most military dictatorships are capitalists

    Advocates of comparative politics ignore the fact that military dictatorships are often attempts by capitalists to hold on to power in the face of socialist uprisings. Most dictatorships are not socialist, but capitalist installations. In the case of socialism, the textbook cases that are trotted out are the old Soviet Union, Cuba or China. These countries have oligarchies as well. But whether or not they are more authoritarian than the capitalist West is much more complex than it first appears. Theories of comparative politics play down or ignore the relentless international class war any socialist system has to endure on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis at the hands of the heads of state in the West along with their capitalist rulers. Capitalists in the West act as if the whole world is their private property. They treat any elected national leader (even if not a socialist) who has the nerve to set their own agenda for international trade as an enemy. All socialist leaders have to treat most any oppositional party in their country as potentially a tool of international capital. The extent to which socialist countries are authoritarian has a great deal to do with the pressure they experience from international capital.

    What about “totalitarian”? 

    Fortunately, this Cold War vice word is now internationally  discredited. However, the use of the term totalitarian to characterize socialist or communist countries, leaves out at least the following. If we grant that Sweden and Norway were once socialist, there has never been a socialist country with an advanced technology, communication systems, or advanced science. These societies have never had the ability to control the messages sent out to the population so that people were all thinking the same thing at the same time due to centralized control of propaganda. It is only advanced capitalist countries that have the capacity to do this. For example, Mordor’s media has roughly five corporations that all send out the same propaganda message in the case of Israel. People are severely punished by the police for supporting the Palestinians. All third parties in Mordor are blacked out. They cannot get into the “debates”. My point is that because of its control over mass media, capitalist control of the state is much closer to real totalitarianism than anything Stalin or Orwell ever dreamed up. The Soviet Union and China are poor countries. Their communist parties have no centralized control over their entire nation state. Peasants in both countries made up their own mind as to what was happening. Only in Mordor do you hear the same anti-working-class slogans against health care, or “welfare queens” from New York to San Francisco, from Houston Texas to Missoula in Montana. This is the power political propaganda holds to be internalized by people who imagine they are making up their own minds.

    Comparative Politics Ignores Anarchism as Part of Socialism
    The claim that all socialism is authoritarian ignores the 180-year history of the anarchist movement and its leaders from Proudhon to Bakunin to Malatesta, Kropotkin, to Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman to Durruti. Anarchism was no intellectual movement. It was followed by thousands of people who fought in and out of labor unions and in the Russian and Spanish revolutions. This negligence on the part of comparative political theorists is ironic given that anarchism at its best is the purist form of democracy – direct democracy. If comparative political theorists understood the scale that the anarchists organized during the Spanish revolution of 1936-1939, they would be ashamed to think that what goes on in Western societies has anything to do with democracy, at least comparatively speaking.

    Comparative Politics Ignores the International Pressures Within Larger States or Alliances Between other States

    Comparative politics acts as if political decisions begin and end at national borders and with only official political leaders. But today’s nation-states have formed alliances with other nation-states. They have agreements about where they or won’t all act together. In the West we have the alliance of United States, England and Israel. None of those countries enacts a political decision by themselves. The same is true with China, Russia and Iran. Nation-states are interdependent, not independent actors.

    Conclusion

    I began this article with nine foundational questions of what politics is. I described how narrowly the field of comparative politics is in answering these questions. Then I identified seven theories of politics and showed how each of the seven theories of politics answers these nine questions differently. As it turned out, the field of political science uses only two of the seven theories: old institutionalism as rational choice theory.

    Then I embedded within this article other articles I had written about how anticommunist domestic political science and neoclassical economics are in their studies and how international political science (comparative politics) is in carrying on that tradition. After that I named eight areas in which comparative politics are weak, including:

    • Its propagandistic use of the word “democracy”. I claim that no state society on this planet is democratic. They are oligarchies.
    • Its propagandistic use of the world governance. I identify with a cybernetic definition of governance, using the heart as an example. With this as criteria, no state system in the world governs a society. They all rule, not govern.
    • Comparative politics over-emphasizes the use of propaganda in “authoritarian” societies while barely even mentioning propaganda in capitalist ruling  oligarchies.
    • Comparative politics does not successfully integrate capitalism into the comparative systems it analyzes . One textbook tacks it on as a last chapter.
    • Comparative politics ignores the power of the institutions of the deep state and transnational capitalists in determining the decision-making capacities of politicians.
    • Its treatment of the term “authoritarian” is more or less synonymous with socialism. It plays down the existence of socialism in Scandinavian countries and communal councils in Venezuela.
    • Lastly, the use of the term “totalitarian” to depict Soviet Union, China and Cuba is completely false. In the case of the Soviet Union and China they were too poor to have a centralized state that could reach down to every peasant village and bombard them with propaganda. The foundation for this totalitarian state is a centralized media apparatus, mass transportation, a country that was electrified. Paradoxically it is Mordor’s control over its mass media where we see the closest approximation to totalitarianism.
    The post Cross-Cultural Comparative Politics: Social Science or Cold War Propaganda? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • How Israeli propaganda filters into NZ media – drop it, says Mediawatch

    COMMENTARY: By Saige England

    Mediawatch on RNZ today strongly criticised Stuff and YouTube among other media for using Israeli propaganda’s “Outbrain” service.

    Outbrain is a company founded by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) military and its technology can be tracked back to a wealthy entrepreneur, which in this case could be a euphemism for a megalomaniac.

    He uses the metaphor of a “dome”, likening it to the dome used in warfare.

    Outbrain, which publishes content on New Zealand media, picks up what’s out there and converts and distorts it to support Israel. It twists, it turns, it deceives the reader.

    Presenter Colin Peacock of RNZ’s Mediawatch programme today advised NZ media to ditch the propaganda service.

    Outbrain uses the media in the following way. The content user such as Stuff pays Outbrain and Outbrain pays the user, like Stuff.

    “Both parties make money when users click on the content,” said Peacock.

    ‘Digital Iron Dome’
    The content on the Stuff website came via “Digital Iron Dome” named after the State of Genociders’ actual defence system. It is run by a tech entrepreneur quoted on Mediawatch:

    “Just like a physical iron dome that scans the open air and watches for any missiles . . . the digital iron dome knows how to scan the internet. We know how to buy media. Pro-Israeli videos and articles and images inside the very same articles going against Israel,” says the developer of the propaganda “dome” machine.

    Peacock said the developer had stated that the digital dome delivered “pro-Jewish”* messages to more than 100 million people worldwide on platforms like Al Jazeera, CNN — and last weekend on Stuff NZ — and said this information went undetected as pro-Israel material, ensuring it reached, according to the entrepreneur: “The right audience without interference.”

    According to Wikipedia, Outbrain was founded by Yaron Galai and Ori Lahav, officers in the Israeli Navy. Galai sold his company Quigo to AOL in 2007 for $363 million. Lahav worked at an online shopping company acquired by eBay in 2005.

    The company is headquartered in New York with global offices in London, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC, Cologne, Gurugram, Paris, Ljubljana, Munich, Milan, Madrid, Tokyo, São Paulo, Netanya, Singapore, and Sydney.

    Peacock pointed out that other advocacy organisations had already been buying and posting content, there was nothing new about this with New Zealand news media.

    But — and this is important — the Media Council ruled in 2017 that Outbrain content was the publisher’s responsibility: that the news media in NZ were responsible for promoted links that were offered to their readers.

    “Back then publishers at Stuff and the Herald said they would do more to oversee the content, with Stuff stating it is paid promoted content,” said Peacock, in his role as the media watchdog.

    Still ‘big money business’
    “But this is also still a big money business and the outfits using these tools are getting much bigger exposure from their arrangements with news publishers such as Stuff,” he said.

    He pointed out that the recently appointed Outbrain boss for Australia New Zealand and Singapore, Chris Oxley, had described Outbrain as “a leader in digital media connecting advertisers with premium audiences in contextually relevant environments”.

    The watchdog Mediawatch said that news organisations should drop Outbrain.

    “Media environments where news and neutrality are important aren’t really relevant environments for political propaganda that’s propagated by online opportunists who know how to make money out of it and also to raise funds while they are at it, ” said Peacock.

    “These services like Outbrain are sometimes called ‘recommendation engines’ but our recommendation to news media is don’t use them for the sake of the trust of the people you say you want to earn and keep: the readers,” said Peacock.

    Saige England is a journalist and author, and member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

    * Being “pro-Jewish” should not be equated with being pro-genocide nor should antisemitism be levelled at Jews who are against this genocide. The propaganda from Outbrain does a disservice to Palestinians and also to those Jewish people who support all human rights — the right of Palestinians to life and the right to live on their land.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Cuba Doubles Down Against USAID

    Foreign Minister of Cuba Bruno Rodriguez has once again denounced the use of USAID against Cuba. Between 1998 and 1999 alone, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) spent more than six million dollars (USD) to carry out hundreds of illegal operations in Cuba.

    Between 2001 and 2006, it allocated $61 million for 142 illegal projects and activities against the Cuban people.

    Cuba has repeatedly denounced the use of USAID and other organizations presented as humanitarian or in defense of democracy, as fronts to penetrate and undermine societies, impose colonial values ​​and customs, as well as manipulate or outright control local elites and the press, with the aim of strengthening U.S. hegemony.

    The post Cuba Doubles Down Against USAID appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Brainwashing Is Not a Form of Personal Hygiene

    Nor is being brainwashed a guarantee of personal bliss, though it’s becoming apparent that there are many who swear by it.

    It’s like reverence for innocence. Well, yes, kids sure are sweet, unsullied, open, positive, vibrant, curious. They wear their innocence well and we all envy their abandon. But we’re protecting them. So we bear all the risks and potential for endangerment. They play. We watch the playground to make sure there are no perverts, rabid dogs, snipers, or kidnappers.

    As adults, it’s a different story. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ and ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you’ work for a while until the axe falls. Or the bill comes due. Or the door is kicked down in the middle of the night. Being stupidly innocent as an adult can bring heartache and tragedy. In fact, it typically does. While embracing wholesome open-mindedness and holistic trust, so as to not preclude learning and discovery, we are also well-advised to maintain a wary eye for the sham, the con, the manipulation, the lie, the entire range of possible mischief humans are capable of.

    From what I now see reported on the news, such prudence is no longer at all possible. Evidence would suggest that a dam has been breached. A tsunami of misinformation, disinformation, fake news, deep fakes, propaganda, calculated deceptions, AI artifacts, accompanied by a bottomless barrel of salacious scandals and mindless trivia, has flooded the once-habitable terrain of public discourse and understanding. We are drowning in bullshit.

    It shows. People are becoming confused, erratic, and increasingly desperate. We’re being constantly bombarded with bad news, rendering us numb, dumb, wary and increasingly frightened. It seems that folks constantly are stressed out to the max. We have the firing squad of 24/7 if-it-bleeds-it-leads news coming at us from every direction. We’re surrounded by crises — personal, political, national, international. It’s beyond overwhelming.

    This makes us hunger for both relief and anything that will make sense out of the chaos.

    Which renders many, if not most people, vulnerable to brainwashing.

    I recently saw a compilation of talking heads relentlessly hammering home completely vaporous, frankly ridiculous but engaging, arresting, highly charged, and clearly effective memes. I presume that a majority of citizens, already reeling and punch drunk from years of propaganda, hearts and minds filled with hatred and fear, stumbling about in the house of mirrors that media has become, react to a frightening degree by buying into what these people are saying. Repetition is like kickboxing. Or like kneading dough. It’s just a matter of time before the target succumbs to persistence and becomes a subdued and unresisting lump, next to be carted off on a stretcher or put in the oven. Or in the case of the TV/smart phone-addicted public, put in a coma-like trance, a hypnotic stupor, an obedient oblivion. Cut to KFC commercial or ad for a miracle age spots remedy. Save now like never before!

    Here’s the video (if you can handle epic levels of tedious repetition).

    Seriously? We are fine with media messaging that’s like Chinese water torture? To have our brainwaves flat-lined by nonsensical, hyperventilating, Orwellian vapor. This is not news reporting. To think so is like mistaking a metronome for a symphony orchestra.

    But that’s where we’re at.

    To suggest for even a moment that somehow this state of mental paralysis came about organically, the result of societal entropy or personal devolution — as if random impulse, modernity, complexity, technology, solar flares, pollen, coronavirus, climate change, over-the-counter drugs, 5G, GMOs, aspartame, and ozone depletion, randomly interacted and the default became wholesale stupidity — is both foolhardy and extremely dangerous. It didn’t just happen. It is part of a plan. That plan is about control and oppression, gross manipulation and enslavement.

    Let’s give credit where it’s due. Our manipulators, our oppressors, our autocratic puppet masters, are phenomenal at what they do. They’re organized; they’ve got the bucks; they’ve gained a total monopoly over the seats of power and the social/political levers of control; they are unencumbered by ambivalence, morals, common decency; they are merciless, ruthless, focused.

    For just a single but highly representative example, read this article about how the lunatic power elite work to shape the entire narrative about the conflict in Ukraine.

    Now, take that level of calculated deceit, cold manipulation, audacity, unscrupulousness, ruthlessness, arrogance, pernicious intent, disdain for we the people, and scornful sense of entitlement, then replicate it over the entire spectrum of social/political ills, crises, and dysfunction — the things we whine about and debate constantly: the economy, wealth inequality, corporate welfare, socialism for corporations and Wall Street, our deteriorating education system, our crumbling infrastructure, our fake democracy, the ruling elite-controlled two-party duopoly, Covid-19 “pandemic”, our entire shameful health care system, the destruction of labor unions, the criminalizing of dissent, the marginalization and disempowerment of minorities, the Fed, the CDC, the FDA, the FCC, censorship, citizen surveillance, our two-tier justice system, and perhaps the worst and most egregious of them all, the expanding militarization of our country and its foolhardy, suicidal pursuit of world conquest.

    Yes, just imagine all of this contention as the product of sociopaths and power-drunk bullies, who have no sense of duty to country, or responsibility to you and I normal everyday citizens, smug self-anointed sociopathic despots who are incapable of conceiving of, inaugurating, and promoting anything which doesn’t serve the narrow agenda of an ultra-wealthy ruling aristocratic class — truly sinister malefactors who live and breathe to humiliate and subjugate others, abuse their power and privilege, gain advantage and mount incomprehensible piles of money and affluence, regardless of the harm and suffering it causes everyone else.

    Yes, imagine that!

    But wait! … you don’t have to imagine it after all. You just have to look around you.

    Because that is exactly what is going on.

    This is what we end up with when WE THE PEOPLE lose control of our country.

    This is what we end up with when self-serving oligarchs control the narrative.

    This is what we end up with when fed a 24/7 diet of lies and propaganda.

    Now the question is: What can we do?

    The answer couldn’t be simpler. Or more difficult.

    This is where improbable teams up with impossible. Because the only way to stop this is through individual responsibility — everyday citizens taking charge, both of their own lives and our government. The existing private and public institutions which have engineered this juggernaut of blind ignorance and social control surely are not going to change. The puppets of the oligarchy we dutifully “elect” to represent we the people know who butters their bread. They and their ruling elite sponsors reap huge rewards from keeping us dumb and misinformed. So if anything is going to reverse this disastrous course, it will be us as individuals, hopefully working collectively to provide support and reinforcement, wielding the power of ‘NO’.

    Obviously, this is a very tall order, as epic in scale as apocalyptic it is to be on the present course. We have to be honest. Perhaps it’s impossible. Old habits die hard. For most of our lives, we everyday folks, busy with their personal lives and trusting by nature, have relied on what we thought were worthy, reliable government spokespersons, TV news anchors, elected representatives, thought leaders, even celebrities, for the honest scoop on the specific events going on across our nation, more generally for our broad understanding of the world out there beyond our immediate reach. But slowly, imperceptibly, they turned on us. They increasingly recited from an intentionally faulty script, designed to hide the truth and substitute a fabricated reality. This was calculated — correctly so — to make us easily manipulable, often voting and behaving against our own interests. They fooled us so many times, we lost count and became completely detached from reality. Evidence? Look at what we put up with as citizens. We are treated abysmally, our government no longer works for us, and somehow we maintain pride in a nation which regards us as some necessary evil it needs to patronize with hollow promises and fairy tales about exceptionalism and greatness.

    Most Americans now are totally brainwashed. We everyday citizens have no idea that those who we were certain we could trust are now lying to us with every breath they take. Any resemblance between what we are told and reality is a coincidence, or a convenience because it just happens to fit with the web of lies which surrounds it.

    That’s hard for anyone to swallow. It’s depressing, demoralizing, unsettling, infuriating. Worse, thinking we’re “staying informed” has always been and still is so convenient. Just flip on the News at 6, read Time or Newsweek or USA Today. Scroll through Yahoo News on a smartphone. These wonderful trusted sources look and feel as they always have. But now they’re all streams of toxic misinformation and propaganda. And most people have no clue.

    So quite honestly, I’m not very optimistic.

    But of one thing I’m sure. We can stop this. We know what to do.

    The only question is: Will we develop the presence of mind and resolve to … ?

    STOP DRINKING THE KOOL-AID!

    The post Brainwashing Is Not a Form of Personal Hygiene first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Tom Brady And Snoop Dogg’s Super Bowl Ad Isn’t What You Think

    Football star Tom Brady and rap legend Snoop Dogg will appear in a big-money Superbowl ad denouncing hatred. The ad is paid for by the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, a group staffed by Israel lobbyists that attempts to equate opposition to Israel’s destruction of Gaza with anti-Jewish racism. The group was founded by billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft, who is one of the pro-Israel Lobby’s most generous benefactors. Kraft has used his power to attempt to crush the nationwide Palestine solidarity movement on campus and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

    The post Tom Brady And Snoop Dogg’s Super Bowl Ad Isn’t What You Think appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Venezuelan President Criticized For Not Being A Proper Dictator

    Hot off the newswires are shocking tales of democratic elections in Venezuela, grassroots organizations forming food cooperatives, and repatriation of migrants. What will one of the media establishment’s most demonized “authoritarian regimes” do next?

    Bloomberg approvingly quotes an opposition-supporting Venezuelan living in Chile that Venezuela’s scheduling of parliamentary and regional elections in April is a desperate attempt by President Maduro to “obtain some kind of legitimacy for the regime.”

    Not to be caught in the trap of participating in elections, US-backed far-right Venezuelan “opposition leader” María Corina Machado called for an electoral boycott.

    The post Venezuelan President Criticized For Not Being A Proper Dictator appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Prisoner exchange exposes Israeli propaganda hoaxes


    This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Vietnam arrests Protestant pastor for ‘anti-state propaganda’

    Read a version of this story in Vietnamese.

    Vietnamese authorities have arrested a Protestant pastor known for his criticism of the government on Facebook on charges of “anti-state propaganda,” according to his son.

    Pastor Nguyen Manh Hung, 71, is the first person to be arrested on the charges since the beginning of the year, and the second since former Minister of Public Security To Lam became Vietnam’s general secretary in August 2024. The charges carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

    Nguyen Manh Hung was at his home in Ho Chi Minh City on Jan. 16 when the electricity was suddenly cut off, his son, Nguyen Tran Hien, told RFA Vietnamese.

    Around 10 minutes later, someone knocked on the door, asking that the pastor let him in to “check for fire risks.” When Nguyen Manh Hung opened the door, police rushed in and handcuffed him, his son said.

    Nguyen Tran Hien said the police showed him an arrest warrant for “anti-state propaganda” under Article 117 of Vietnam’s Penal Code, which also stated that his father would be “temporarily detained for four months.”

    “They then read a house search warrant and confiscated some of my father’s documents, two mobile phones, and a laptop,” he said. “They also took my mobile phone and laptop.”

    Police then told Nguyen Tran Hien to go to the Ministry of Public Security’s Institute for Criminal Sciences, where authorities interrogated him “for hours” about his father’s activities, including bank transactions.

    He said he was released at midnight after assuring police that he didn’t know anything about his father’s activities.

    Soldier-turned-pastor

    Nguyen Manh Hung, whose hometown is Hai Phong City, is a former soldier of the Northern Vietnam Army who fought in the Vietnam War. After his military service, he briefly worked as a manager before entering a monastery.

    He became a pastor in 2011 and formerly served as administrator of Chuong Bo Protestant Church under the independent Mennonite Church. He is currently a member of the Interfaith Council of Vietnam, which advocates for religious freedom.

    He has been repeatedly harassed by Vietnamese authorities, including in an incident in 2014 when police forcibly entered his home and beat him up.

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    In 2015, he participated in a hearing before the Human Rights Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee.

    The hearing was about Vietnam’s crackdowns on independent religious groups, including the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam, some independent Protestant churches, the Cao Dai Chon Truyen sect and the Pure Hoa Hao Buddhist Church.

    Nguyen Manh Hung was also highly active and vocal on Facebook, where he condemned Vietnam’s government over human rights violations, corruption, and the confiscation of land from residents without fair compensation. He also voiced strong support for political dissidents and prisoners of conscience.

    His most recent post, dated Jan. 14, noted that Vietnam’s Communist Party once referred to those who bought land as “cruel landlords,” while these days, “those who abuse power to acquire land are called ‘outstanding cadres.’”

    “Interest groups that exploit residents must be eradicated,” he wrote. “The fight for democracy will be passed on to [and inspire] future generations.”

    Lam Dong connection

    Nguyen Tran Hien said that the police who arrested his father were from Lam Dong province, where Nguyen Manh Hung had been living for the past two years with a woman known as N.T.T.

    The police officers didn’t leave any documents related to the arrest and house search, he said.

    Nguyen Tran Hien told RFA that he had since tried unsuccessfully to contact N.T.T. and suspects that she may have also been arrested.

    RFA called the Lam Dong Provincial Police to verify information about Nguyen Manh Hung’s arrest, but staff who answered the phone refused to comment.

    To date, state media have not reported the pastor’s arrest.

    Human Rights Council membership

    Josef Benedict, advocacy expert for civil space in Asia-Pacific for the global civil society alliance CIVICUS, said that Nguyen Manh Hung’s arrest “highlights the repressive environment in Vietnam, including for those belonging to the religious community.”

    “He has been targeted for bravely speaking out in a country where freedom of expression is under systematic attack and his arrest makes a mockery of Vietnam’s membership of the UN Human Rights Council,” Benedict said.

    He also called on the Vietnamese government to drop all charges against Nguyen Manh Hung and release him immediately and unconditionally.

    Just one day after Nguyen Manh Hung’s arrest, Dong Nai Provincial Police detained Pham Xuan Thoi and Dao Cong Hieu on charges of “abusing democratic freedoms” under Article 331 of Vietnam’s Penal Code.

    The two allegedly posted information on Facebook that “distorted the Party’s policies and the State’s laws” and “abused their rights to file complaints and denunciations to distort, defame, and undermine the reputation of the Party, the State, and officials at all levels,” according to state media.

    In its 2025 annual global report, released just hours after the pastor’s arrest, Human Rights Watch said that Vietnam’s new leadership had intensified repression since former Minister of Public Security To Lam assumed the role of General Secretary, the highest position in the one-party state.

    In early December 2024, the group claimed that Vietnam was holding more than 170 political prisoners, which Hanoi denies.

    Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Vietnamese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Can the Internet Wage Peace? Amidst a Push for War, Chinese and American Citizens Connect Online

    With the Tiktok ban just days away, American youth have started flooding the Chinese social media app RedNote, pushing it into #1 position on the app store. Labeled “Tiktok refugees” by Chinese netizens, the newcomers have been welcomed by app users with open arms, curiosity, and a fair bit of humor.

    Though initially confused at the sudden influx of English speakers, long-dwelling app users quickly connected the dots and were quick to poke fun at the US government’s accusations of China spying on your typical American citizen.

    The app “Xiaohongshu” directly translates to ‘Little Red Book,” but it has been dubbed RedNote in the United States. Many are quick to think of Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong’s famous Little Red Book, though app officials say it isn’t a direct reference. Still, the comedic composition is something to celebrate.

    The Tiktok ban is quite evidently backfiring on the US government. As users snub the ban and move to a real Chinese social media app, spontaneous interactions between US and Chinese citizens are naturally sorting through years and years of anti-China propaganda.

    WAIT! The social credit thing isn’t real??? One user commented, after locals revealed that there is no such thing as a social credit score in China — just one of the many stories the media has falsely fed us.

    The app has ushered in a new wave of cross-cultural learning. Americans have been posting questions like, “How does China feel about Palestine?” and “What does the US government tell us about China that isn’t true?” There’s been comparisons between the US and China health systems (of which China’s is undoubtedly superior) and tours of China’s incredible EVs. The vast number of Americans agree: the US has fallen way behind.

    Not only that, but American citizens cite a new appreciation for China, and the number of people learning Mandarin has grown. Duolingo has already seen a 216% spike. While Chinese citizens have taken it upon themselves to start teaching newcomers common Chinese phrases, Americans simultaneously help local users with their English homework.

    It is more than just cultural exchange, however. This is an unprecedented people-to-people moment, allowing two communities to come together and realize they are more alike than not. Such a realization is desperately needed, and undercuts a rapidly escalating war climate between the US and China.

    Recently, the US approved a $2 billion arms sale to Taiwan, citing potential war with China. In response, China sanctioned numerous US weapons companies for violating the one-China principle and destabilizing the region. War talk isn’t new — the US government has been pushing and planning for it ever since China rose to power in the early 2000s. A natural threat to US global hegemony, our politicians have been plotting the fall of China for decades, spending billions and billions of dollars to militarize the region around China and pushing a narrative of hatred and fear in the media.

    Just this week, China hawk Marco Rubio underwent his Secretary of State confirmation hearing. Due to his push for war against China, he has been travel-sanctioned by the Chinese government for years. Our nation’s top “diplomat” is going to have some trouble conducting diplomacy when he’s unable to even travel to the nation where we need it most. Not that anything Rubio does could ever be considered diplomacy.

    But despite the constant anti-China rhetoric plaguing our politicians and media, new RedNote users appear to be taking a different path:

    The internet is a modern tool not previously available to the people during the great power wars of previous decades. It provides a fresh avenue that can circumvent the weaponization of the media and allow people to easily connect from different sides of the globe.

    Perhaps an app like RedNote is exactly what we need to continue diffusing all the anti-China propaganda attempting to manufacture consent for the next great war. It’s about time the people decide for themselves who they should and shouldn’t be calling “enemy” rather than adhering to the whims of a war-obsessed government.

    The post Can the Internet Wage Peace? Amidst a Push for War, Chinese and American Citizens Connect Online first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Baltimore Media Create A False Impression That Youth Are Responsible For A Lot Of Very Dangerous Crime

    Some listeners may know the Sentencing Project for their work calling out racial disparities in sentencing associated with crack versus powder cocaine, and mandatory minimums. A recent project involves looking into another factor shaping public understanding and public policy around criminal justice—the news media. In this case, the focus is young people.

    “The Real Cost of ‘Bad News’: How Misinformation Is Undermining Youth Justice Policy in Baltimore” has just been released. We’re joined now by the report’s author. Richard Mendel is senior research fellow for youth justice at the Sentencing Project. He joins us now by phone from Prague.

    The post Baltimore Media Create A False Impression That Youth Are Responsible For A Lot Of Very Dangerous Crime appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Twisting The Terrorism Narrative

    There was absolutely nothing stopping them. But not one single member of Western mainstream media ever visited a bomb site in Lebanon to verify whether Israeli claims it was a Hezbollah base or missile site were true because they knew the answer is negative, as I found across dozens of bomb sites, and that is not the narrative they are paid to promote.

    But when a narrative they are paid to promote came to the fore, they flocked to Damascus – driving right past the bombed civilian homes, ambulance centres and schools of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to get there – to promote Syria’s new Israel-, U.S.A- and Turkey-sponsored “democratic” government of entirely “reformed” HTS (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) Wahhabists.

    The post Twisting The Terrorism Narrative appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Exposing Big Tech’s Complicity In Genocide

    The vast censorship and suppression campaign launched by American tech companies since October 7, 2023 has been both systemic and deliberate. Instagram, Facebook, X as well as other tech platforms and companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple have actively worked to stifle information regarding the genocide in Gaza. Dissent against policies or individuals who enable these decisions is often met with swift reprimand in the form of job loss.

    Joining host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report are three courageous individuals who chose to put their careers on the line to fight against Big Tech suppression of voices fighting for Palestinian lives.

    The post Exposing Big Tech’s Complicity In Genocide appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Taipei hits back over Chinese military’s New Year propaganda video

    Taiwan’s government on Thursday hit back at a New Year’s propaganda video created by China’s People’s Liberation Army in which President Xi Jinping reiterated Beijing’s claims on the democratic island.

    The video, set to the song “Chinese People” by veteran Hong Kong pop star Andy Lau, features Chinese warships and planes, and what appeared to be a Chinese fighter jet flying near a P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft that the United States sometimes sends through the Taiwan Strait.

    The accompanying Weibo post read: “The officers and soldiers in the war zone are ready to fight at any time and resolutely safeguard the reunification of the motherland.”

    In a Jan. 1 address to the nation, Xi vowed to unify Taiwan with the mainland.

    “We Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one and the same family,” Xi declared. “No one can ever sever the bond of kinship between us, and no one will ever stop China’s unification.”

    Taiwan has never been ruled by Beijing, nor formed part of the People’s Republic of China. It is governed by the Republic of China government, formed after the 1911 fall of the Qing Dynasty under Sun Yat-sen, that fled to Taipei in 1949 after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists.

    Psychological warfare

    Taiwanese Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung told reporters that the video is an example of China’s United Front propaganda targeting the island’s 23 million people, and aimed to intimidate them with an “illusion” of unity.

    “It is the People’s Liberation Army showing its intimidation of Taiwan,” Lin said, adding that the video was a form of psychological warfare.

    A music video published by the People's Liberation Army's Eastern Theater Command shows China as ready to invade democratic Taiwan, Jan. 1, 2025.
    A music video published by the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command shows China as ready to invade democratic Taiwan, Jan. 1, 2025.
    (PLA Eastern Theater via Weibo)

    While China insists on eventual “unification” with Taiwan — by armed invasion if necessary — the majority of Taiwan’s 23 million people have no wish to give up their democratic way of life to submit to Communist Party rule.

    China has threatened the death penalty for supporters of Taiwan independence, while Taipei says Beijing has no jurisdiction over the actions of its citizens.

    A recent public opinion poll from the Institute for National Defense and Security Research showed that 67.8% of respondents were willing to fight to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

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    The video came as Chinese warplanes and ships carried out the first “combat patrol” around Taiwan in 2025. The island’s defense ministry said it had detected 22 Chinese military aircraft including J-16 fighter jets, carrying out a “joint combat readiness patrol” around Taiwan in conjunction with Chinese warships starting Jan. 2.

    The People’s Liberation Army video also included images of Chinese students visiting Taiwan late last year at the invitation of former president Ma Ying-jeou, who has been criticized by many in Taiwan for undermining its government.

    It omits footage of Taiwanese students shouting and waving pro-democracy slogans at the Chinese delegation, however.

    ‘No discounts on freedom’

    Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te said his government would boost defense spending this year to keep up its defenses and protect it’s democratic way of life.

    “Taiwan needs to prepare for danger in times of peace,” Lai said in his Jan. 1 address. “We must continue increasing our national defense budget, bolster our national defense capabilities, and show our determination to protect our country.”

    He called on the island’s people to build resilience, vowing to “combat information and cognitive warfare, so that the populace rejects threats and enticements and jointly guards against malicious infiltration by external forces.”

    He warned people not to be enticed by Chinese ID card schemes or junkets to China, quoting a Taiwanese saying: “Nothing costs more than a freebie.”

    “Democracy is priceless, and there are no discounts on freedom,” Lai warned. “A wrong step today could mean a far higher price to pay in future.”

    Stealth fighter

    Across the Taiwan Strait, state media said the People’s Liberation Army video showed “the determination, will and ability of officers and soldiers in the theater to stay vigilant, remain ready to fight at any time and resolutely safeguard the reunification of the motherland.”

    The nationalistic Global Times newspaper quoted military experts as saying that the video also highlighted China’s latest military equipment, including references to the “ginkgo leaf” sixth-generation stealth fighter jet and the Type 076 amphibious assault ship.

    A music video published by the People's Liberation Army's Eastern Theater Command shows Chinese celebrities visiting democratic Taiwan, Jan. 1, 2025.
    A music video published by the People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command shows Chinese celebrities visiting democratic Taiwan, Jan. 1, 2025.
    (PLA Eastern Theater via Weibo)

    “The PLA Eastern Theater Command’s release of the video on the first day of the New Year also issued a stern warning to the separatist forces of ‘Taiwan independence’,” the paper reported on Thursday.

    It quoted Chinese military expert Zhang Junshe as saying that it showed China would “resolutely fight back and … will never allow any forces to split the island of Taiwan from China’s sovereign territory.”

    Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said the song reminded people in Taiwan that they are “all Chinese.”

    Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council responded: “Taiwanese people should be more alert to China’s United Front propaganda targeting Taiwan and strengthen their understanding of cross-strait relations.”

    Andy Lau

    Hong Kong current affairs commentator Sang Pu said Lau was a shrewd choice to act as Beijing’s mouthpiece, given his huge fan-base across the sinophone world.

    “People who love freedom and democracy definitely won’t like Andy Lau, but he’s a very good United Front tool when it comes to centrists, or the politically apathetic,” Sang said. “He can be used as leverage.”

    He said Lau, who is also a movie actor, holds a number of official posts in the Chinese Communist Party regime, including vice chairman of the China Film Association and visiting professor at the Sichuan Opera School.

    Sang called on Taiwan to ban him from performing there, following a visit in November where Lau performed “Chinese People” on Taiwanese soil.

    Former Hong Kong district councilor Lee Man-ho said Hong Kongers have known Lau is a mouthpiece for Chinese propaganda for years.

    “A few years ago he made a video promoting the ‘Tomorrow’s Lantau’ [development] project, which was an attempt at United Front brainwashing in Hong Kong,” Lee, who now lives in Taiwan, told RFA Cantonese.

    “But nobody fell for it. Everyone in Hong Kong has seen through Andy Lau.”

    Lee said that back in the 1990s, Lau had been a staunch supporter of Taiwan, and used to make a point of celebrating the Republic of China’s national day on Oct. 10, instead of the Chinese Communist Party’s national day on Oct. 1.

    “But after 30 years of manipulation by the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party, he has totally changed,” he said.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Yam Chi Yau for RFA Cantonese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Organizers Fight The Greenwashing Of Plastic Pollution

    By now, it’s indisputable that we’re experiencing a global crisis of plastics production and plastics waste. There may be as much as 200 million tonnes of plastic in our oceans. Humans annually consume thousands of plastic particles and their harmful chemicals. The Global North dumps massive amounts of plastic waste on the Global South.

    Powerful corporate interests, especially in fossil fuels and petrochemicals, are driving the ongoing boom in plastics production. The plastics industry is pushing false solutions like chemical recycling, even as it’s clear that we can’t recycle our way out of this crisis.

    The post Organizers Fight The Greenwashing Of Plastic Pollution appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Between Lessons on Solidarity and Fascism, “Wicked” Is a Movie for These Times

    In an attempt to ground myself at the turn of the year, I recently attended two webinars hosted by abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba. A common thread through both talks was the need for the left — or lefts, as Kaba astutely observes — to abandon purity and embrace difference; to ground ourselves in common purpose to meet what comes ahead. In an increasingly divided world…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • BBC Staffers Reveal Editor’s ‘Entire Job’ To Whitewash Israeli War Crimes

    BBC editor Raffi Berg has almost complete control of the British broadcaster’s online coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and is ensuring that all events are reported with a pro-Israel bias, according to a new report published on 28 December by Drop Site News.

    “This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel,” one former BBC journalist said.

    Drop Site News spoke to 13 current and former staffers who stated that the BBC’s coverage consistently devalues Palestinian life, ignores Israeli atrocities, and creates a false equivalence in an entirely unbalanced conflict.

    The post BBC Staffers Reveal Editor’s ‘Entire Job’ To Whitewash Israeli War Crimes appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Cuban Healthcare System And Its Lessons For The US

    I was in Cuba (again) during the first week of December. I traveled with a delegation of members of the National Single Payer organization, which is working to achieve a national healthcare system in the US that would fully cover everyone under a single, comprehensive, government-funded program. We visited a variety of healthcare institutions in the cities of Havana and Matanzas, the capital of the province of the same name.

    One of the most memorable interactions took place at the University of Medical Sciences in Matanzas. After receiving a presentation about the organization and curriculum by one of the leaders of the institution, I asked the assembled academic and clinical professors how many of them had participated in international medical missions.

    The post The Cuban Healthcare System And Its Lessons For The US appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • China’s propaganda office taps Taiwanese god of cities as ally

    Read this story in Chinese

    The Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department is counting on a new ally in the fight to persuade Taiwan’s 23 million people to give up their democratic way of life to be ruled by Beijing — Cheng Huang, the god of cities.

    Officials in the southeastern province of Fujian, just across the Taiwan Strait from self-ruled Taiwan, invited hundreds of Taoists, temple representatives, scholars and experts to a lavish cultural exchange event last month, according to the provincial government’s official website.

    The event included seminars on Cheng Huang temples across Fujian as well as beliefs around the god in Taiwan, particularly in smaller towns on the island, the Nov. 14 report said.

    Cheng Huang isn’t the first supernatural being to be enlisted by the Chinese Communist Party in pursuit of its political goals, in this case, to control Taiwan, whether by soft power and propaganda or by military force if necessary.

    China has already tried to co-opt the sea goddess Matsu, widely revered in Taiwan, as part of a United Front operation targeting millions of voters.

    And it has also encouraged the worship of the controversial Tibetan dharma protector Shugden, a move at loggerheads with the Tibetan Buddhist Gelugpa sect of the exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

    A man places incense sticks at the Taishan Up Temple, a Taoist temple built in 1754, New Taipei City, Taiwan, March 2, 2023.
    A man places incense sticks at the Taishan Up Temple, a Taoist temple built in 1754, New Taipei City, Taiwan, March 2, 2023.
    (Sam Yeh/AFP)

    The United Front is a shadowy government agency in charge of seeking Chinese influence outside the country through individuals and often innocuous-sounding organizations.

    The Chinese Communist Party embraces atheism and exercises tight controls over any form of religious practice among its citizens, requiring them to join government-backed governing bodies and to display the Chinese flag, along with other demonstrations of loyalty to Beijing.

    But apparently it isn’t opposed to using religion to further its political objectives.

    Religious cross-straits links

    Cheng Huang emerged in Chinese folk belief as a spirit protector of city walls and moats, and later diversified into a more complex deity with his own following and underworld bureaucracy mirroring structures found in the land of the living.

    “Cheng Huang culture is one of the important links connecting compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” the report quoted Cheng Ming-hui of Taiwan’s Wuji Sanching Temple as saying.

    “I hope we can to hold more such activities in the future to further enhance the understanding and friendship between believers on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” Cheng said.

    Worshippers carry the Matsu statue, center, during the annual pilgrimage in honor of sea goddess Matsu in Dajia, Taiwan, April 17, 2010.
    Worshippers carry the Matsu statue, center, during the annual pilgrimage in honor of sea goddess Matsu in Dajia, Taiwan, April 17, 2010.
    (Pichi Chuang/Reuters)

    Taiwan has never been ruled by Beijing and is formally governed by the Republic of China government, formed after the 1911 fall of the Qing Dynasty under Sun Yat-sen, that later fled to Taipei after losing the civil war in 1949 to Mao Zedong’s communists on the mainland.

    While China insists on eventual “unification” with Taiwan, by armed invasion if necessary, the majority of Taiwan’s 23 million people have no wish to give up their democratic way of life to submit to Chinese rule.

    RELATED STORIES

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    EXPLAINED: What is China’s United Front and how does it operate?

    China targets Taiwan’s temples, Matsu worshippers in influence ops

    Ho Cheng-Hui, who heads Taiwanese civil defense organization the Kuma Academy, said China likes to cash in politically on religious devotion of any kind, citing its involvement in the cult of Matsu as an example.

    “They are catering to the customs of the Taiwanese people, but with other motives behind it,” Ho said. “They call it religious exchange, but actually it’s a United Front operation — scholars have defined it as the warfare of influence in recent years.”

    “Some Taiwanese take part in these so-called exchanges because of their religious feeling, or sense of the historical origins [of their beliefs],” he said. “But that’s not what’s happening here.”

    He called on religious believers in Taiwan to become more aware of China’s motives, “so as not to be used” by Beijing.

    ‘Living chess pieces’

    Wu Se-Chih, a researcher at Taiwan’s Cross-Straits Policy Association, agreed.

    “There is also a certain degree of United Front motivation,” he said. “China will always try to leverage any United Front gains from the people of Taiwan.”

    Wu said the “deep connection between folk beliefs and local politics” in Taiwan also offers a channel for funds to flow into — and influence — the island’s messily democratic political life.

    The Chinese government has acquired a number of local temples in Taiwan in recent years, which he described as “living chess pieces” in Beijing’s hands, to boost its influence in Taiwanese politics at a local level.

    “These interest groups haven’t been subjected to enough supervision,” Wu said. “That’s the main reason the Chinese Communist Party targets local temples.”

    And there are also personal risks involved for any religious believers traveling to China, according to Wu, who cited the recent detention of three elderly Taiwanese members of the I-Kuan Tao religion in Zhongshan city.

    “Sometimes the red lines aren’t very clear … so people need to think twice and be vigilant, which is the best way to protect themselves,” Wu said.

    Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Huang Chun-mei for RFA Mandarin.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Scandal Deepens Around CNN’s Clarissa Ward Staging Syria Prison Scene

    “In nearly twenty years as a journalist, this was one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed.”

    That’s how veteran CNN journalist Clarissa Ward described her foray into a Syrian prison on December 12, where she promptly claimed to have rescued a forgotten inmate after three months in jail. But there was just one problem with the “extraordinary moment”: a review of a dramatic story depicted by CNN reveals a number of glaring inconsistencies, the greatest of which is that the man stands accused of being an impostor.

    The post Scandal Deepens Around CNN’s Clarissa Ward Staging Syria Prison Scene appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • War Propaganda And The Fall Of Syria

    The rapid fall of the Syrian Arab Republic government was both a shock and a catastrophe for that region and for the world. It was incomprehensible that the state which withstood a sustained attack since 2011 from the United States, Israel, Turkey and other NATO members, and gulf monarch states such as Saudi Arabia, would collapse so swiftly. The defeat was political, not military. There was surprisingly little actual fighting on the battlefield.

    Russia, Syria’s most powerful ally, is engaged in Ukraine, while Turkey, Syria’s nemesis, played a two-sided game of working with its NATO allies while claiming to be negotiating in good faith with Russia.

    The post War Propaganda And The Fall Of Syria appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Congress Revives Cold War Tactics With New Anti-Communism Curriculum

    Congress has just passed a new bill that will see the U.S. spend huge sums of money redesigning much of the public school system around the ideology of anti-communism. The “Crucial Communism Teaching Act” is now being read in the Senate, where it is all but certain to pass. The move comes amid growing public anger at the economic system and increased public support for socialism.

    The Crucial Communism Teaching Act, in its own words, is designed to teach children that “certain political ideologies, including communism and totalitarianism…conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy that are essential to the founding of the United States.”

    The post Congress Revives Cold War Tactics With New Anti-Communism Curriculum appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Corporate Fearmongering Over Fast Food Wage Hike Aged Like Cold Fries

    In September 2023, California passed a law requiring fast food restaurants with more than 60 locations nationwide to pay workers a minimum of $20 an hour, affecting more than 700,000 people working in the state’s fast food industry.

    Readers will be unsurprised to hear that corporate media told us that this would devastate the industry. As Conor Smyth reported for FAIR (1/19/24) before the law went into effect, outlets like USA Today (12/26/23) and CBS (12/27/23) were telling us that, due to efforts to help those darn workers, going to McDonald’s or Chipotle was going to cost you more, and also force joblessness. This past April, Good Morning America (4/29/24) doubled down with a piece about the “stark realities” and “burdens” restaurants would now face due to the law.

    The post Corporate Fearmongering Over Fast Food Wage Hike Aged Like Cold Fries appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Ungrateful Lying Upstarts

    Orientation
    Situating my article

    Often the rise of China and the Middle East appears to many Westerners as something recent, maybe 30 years old. Before that? Is Western dominance beginning with the Greeks and Romans – right? Wrong, not even close! The rise of the East and the South has roughly a 1,300 year history of dominance from 500 CE to 1800 CE. What is happening in the East today is no “Eurasian Miracle”. With the wind of 1,300 years at its back, it is returning to its long historical prominence today.

    In two my recent articles, Neocon Realists and Global Neoliberals Dead on Arrival and The Myopia of Anglo Saxons Rulers, I attempted to show how narrow International Relations Theory is in its systematic exclusion of the Eastern and Southern parts of the world from its theoretical history. In his book The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics, John Hobson rightfully accuses the West of Eurocentrism, paternalism, and imperialism. But in an earlier book, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization, he methodically shows how the West first depended on and then denied that Eastern and Southern civilizations were a source of most of their technological, scientific and cultural breakthroughs. This article is based on The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization.

     Western claims about their place in world history

    • Charles Martel’s victory over the Saracens at the battle of Tours and Poitiers 732 CE
    • Europe pioneers the medieval agricultural revolution 600-1000 CE
    • Italian pioneers long-distance trade and early capitalism. Italy the leading global power 1000 CE
    • European crusaders assert control over the Islamic Middle East Post 1095 CE
    • Italian Renaissance and scientific revolution 1400-1650 CE
    • China withdraws from the world, leaving a vacuum filled by Europeans 1434 CE
    • Guttenberg invents the movable metal-type printing press 1455 CE
    • Bartolomeu Diaz is the first to reach the Cape of Good Hope 1487-88 CE
    • European Age of Discovery and the emergence of early Western globalization Post 1492 CE
    • The Spanish plunder the gold and silver bullion of Indigenous Turtle Islanders post 1492 CE
    • Da Gama makes its first contact with “primitives” and isolate Indigenous people 1498 CE
    • The Europeans defeat the Asians and monopolize world trade 1498-1800 CE
    • European military revolution 1550-1660 CE
    • First industrial miracle happens in Britain 1700-1850 CE
    • British industrialization is the triumph of domestic or self-generated change 1700-1850 CE
    • Commodore Perry opens up isolated Tokugawa Japan 1853 CE
    • Meiji Japan industrializes by copying the West 1853 CE
    • Britain reverses its trade deficit with China in the 1820s CE
    • Opium wars and unequal treaties force open and rescue China’s “backward” economy 1839-1858 CE

    Stopping Eurocentric thinking in its tracks
    You might not suspect that European goods were considered inferior both in terms of quality and price by Easterners. Public health and clean water were more advanced in China than in Europe. By 1800, as much as 22% of the Japanese population were living in towns, a figure that exceeds Europe. Even as late as 1850, the Japanese standard of living was higher than that of the British. In conclusion,  Europe invented very little for themselves. The only genuine innovations that they made before the 18th century were the Archimedean screw, the crankshaft or camshaft and alcoholic distillation process.

    Countering the Eurocentric Myth of the Pristine West
    John M. Hobsons claims in his book The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation are:

    • The West and the East have been fundamentally and consistently interlinked through globalization ever since 500 CE.
    • The East was more advanced than the West between 500-1800 CE. It wasn’t until 1800 that the West first caught up with and then surpassed China.
    • The East and South were not only not passive bystanders, but in the overwhelming number of cases, they were the initiator of technological, economic and even cultural change.
    • The West did initiate new inventions and ways of life but only beginning in the 19th century.
    • It was also in the 19th century that the West began its denial of Eastern and Southern influence.
    • This denial of pioneering role of  Western leadership in world history requires a revisionist history of virtually the whole world of the last 1500 years.

    Eurocentric Propaganda Maps
    Eurocentrism has multiple sides to its denial, neglect and outright lying about its place in world history. One piece of black propaganda can be seen is in the ways its maps are constructed. Hobson points out that on the realistic map, the actual landmass of the southern hemisphere is exactly twice that of the Northern hemisphere. And yet in the Mercator map the landmass of the North occupiers 2/3 of the landmass. Secondly, while Scandinavia is about a third of the size of India, they are accorded the same amount of space on a map. Lastly, Greenland appears almost twice the size of China even though the latter is almost four times the size of Greenland.

    Placement of National and Regional Formations in World History Textbooks
    I remember my textbooks on world history. While they might start with Africa and Asia, the chapters were relatively short. But as soon as we got to Europe there are long chapters on technology, economics, politics and philosophy. It might not be until the end of the book than the rest of the world is reintroduced again. It’s as if there was no interaction going on between the West and the rest of the world between the time of the Greeks and the 20th century.

    Orientalist and Patriarchal Construction of the West vs the East
    The West is presented as a dynamic, ingenious, proactive, rational, scientific disciplined, ordered, self-controlled, sensible, mind-oriented, scientific, paternal, independent, functional, free, democratic, tolerant, honest, civilized morally and economically progressive (capitalist), parsimonious, and individualistic.

    On the other hand, the East (China, India and the Middle East) and the South (mostly Africa) is conceived of as unchanging, imitative, ignorant, passive, irrational superstitiously ritualistic, lazy, chaotic, erratic, spontaneous, emotional, body-oriented, exotic, alluring and childlike. Furthermore they are dependent, dysfunctional, enslaved, despotic, and intolerant. They are presented as corrupt, barbaric, savages, who are morally regressive economically stagnant, indolent, cruel and collectivist. Ten Western social scientists from the 19th century down to the present have accepted these dualistic stereotypes. It is out of these extremely unjust characterizations that the myth of the pristine Western development was born.

    Hobson writes that there is no dualist more extreme in categorizing the East and West than Max Weber. See Table 1 below.

    Table 1  Max Weber’s Orientalist View of the East and the West

    Occident Modernity Orient tradition
    Rational public law Ad hoc private law
    Double entry bookkeeping Lack of rational accounting
    Free and independent cities Political/Administrative camps
    Independent urban bourgeoise State controlled merchants
    Rational bureaucracy Patrimonial despotic state
    Rational science Mysticism
    Protestant ethics and the emergence of the rational individual Repressive religions and the predominance of the collective
    Basic institutional constitutions of the West are fragmented civilizations with balance of social power between all groups and institutions Basic institutional constitution of the East is a unified civilization with no social balance between groups and institutions
    Multi-state system of nation-states Single state system – empires
    Separation of the public and private Fusion of public and private


    The Western Falsification of the World Before 1500 CE

    Furthermore, standard picture of the world before 1500 is presented by Eurocentrism as:

    • the world mired in stagnant tradition;
    • a fragmented world divided between insulated and backward regional and; civilizations governed by a despotic states, mainly of the East.

    This concept was consciously reconstructed by Eurocentric intellectuals in the 19th century so that first Venice and later Portugal, Spain, The Netherlands and Britain were represented as the leading global powers in the post 1000 period. Please see Table 2 for Hobson’s rebuttals

    Table 2 The Status of World Civilizations before 1500

    Eurocentric Myths Hobson’s Rebuttals
    Major regional civilizations were insulated from each other Persians, Arabs, Africans Jews, Indians and Chinese created and maintained a global economy
    Political costs were too high to allow global trade Globalization in the East was a midwife if not the mother of the Medieval and Modern West
    There was an absence of capitalist institutions
    credit, money changes, banks, contract laws    		 There was plenty of commercial activity among Muslims and Chinese before 1500
    Transport technologies were too crude to be effective Use of camels 300-500 was more cost effective than horses
    Trade in the East was only in luxury goods Mass consumer products in China and the Middle East. Africans imported beads cowries, copper and copper goods, grain, fruits and raisons, wheat and later on, textiles which were mass-based goods, not luxuries
    Global flows were too slow to be of consequence Transcontinental trade pioneered by Islamic merchants reached from China to the Mediterranean
    Global processes were not robust enough to have a major reorganizational impact The rise of Tang China (618-907), the Islamic empire (661-1258) and North Africa 909-1171) were plenty robust
    There was no iron production in the world prior to the British Muslims dominate the Europeans in iron production and in steel production until the 18th century. China as well

    The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization
    Middle Ages and the Islamic state
    We are now in a position to compare the Western claims of civilization and what happened when the East and South are given their due. First, much greater than the victory of Charles Martel, between 751-1453 there was the Arab victory in the Battle of Talas which established Islamic domination in West Central Asia. In addition, the Ottoman Turks took over Constantinople in 1453. Nine hundred years before the Europeans developed an agricultural revolution, the Chinese pioneered many technologies that enabled the European agricultural revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries.

    There was no comparison between the primitive and hopeless agriculture of Europe before the 18th century and the advanced agriculture of China after the 4th century BCE (57)

    Technology of the agricultural revolution

    The basic technological ingredients of the medieval agricultural revolution were:

    • watermills;
    • windmills;
    • heavy moldboard plough which created drainage furrows;
    • new animal harnesses; and
    • iron horseshoes.

    Contrary to Eurocentric historians, none of these technological innovations were pioneered by Europeans. Either it was diffused to the West by the East, or Westerners innovated after the Eastern raw materials made them available. For example, Hobson tells us the plough entered Eastern Europe through the East from Siberia in the 9th century. The collar harness was clearly pioneered by the Chinese in the 3rd century CE. The invention of the stirrup really came from India in the late 2nd century and the Chinese bronze and cast-iron stirrup in the 3rd century. Other inventions adapted from China included the rotary winnowing machine and seed drills. Some of the revolutionary rotational crops used by the British in the 18th century were being used by the Chinese some 12 centuries earlier.

    Italian Trade
    Hobson’s central claim is that virtually all the major innovations that lay behind the development of Italian capitalism were derived from the more advanced East, especially the Middle East and China. The Italians might have been pioneers of long-distance trade that established merchant capitalism in Europe, but not on a world scale. The Italians were late arrivals to an Afro-Asian led global economy. The globalization enabled the diffusion of Eastern inventions to enable the development of a backward West. Neither did the European Crusades assert control over the Islamic Middle East. They remained dependent on the Islamic Middle East as well as Egypt. One last point about the Italians. Six-hundred years before the Italian Renaissance of 1400-1650 there was an Eastern and Islamic Renaissance which was the foundation for not only the Western Renaissance, but the scientific revolution of the 17th century.

    Eastern origins of the financial revolution
    Italians did not invent the bills of exchange, credit institutions, insurance and banking. Sumerians and Sassanids were using banks, bills of exchange and checks before the advent of Islam, although it was the Muslims who took these early beginnings the furthest. In the West, single entry bookkeeping was the most widespread use right down to the end of the 19th century. The Italian traders only began to use mathematics to replace the old abacus system once the Pisan merchant Fibonacci relayed eastern knowledge in 1202.

    The Eastern Renaissance
    Arab scholars drew heavily on Persian and Indian as well as Chinese sources on medicine, mathematics philosophy theology, literature, and poetry that lay the foundation for the Italian Renaissance. It’s true that Leonardo Fibonacci, wrote a book rejecting the old abacus system in favor of the new Hindu-Arabic system. However, by the beginning of the 10th century all six of the classical trigonometric functions had been defined and tabulated by Muslim mathematicians. Ibn al-Shatir of the Maragha school develop a series of mathematical models which were almost the same as those developed 150 years later by Copernicus in his heliocentric theory of the heavens.

    The Eastern origins of the navigational revolution
    The foundation of the navigational revolution was the astrolabe and mariners’ compass. The compass could be used even in cloudy weather when the stars were covered. These breakthroughs allowed Europeans to take to the oceans. However, most of them were invented and all were refined in the East. It was the Muslims who undertook all the major innovations.

    Qualification about Italy
    This is not to say that Italy was unimportant to the fortunes of European commerce. However, Venice prevailed over its rival Genoa not because of its so-called ingenuity but because of its lucrative access to the East via Egypt and the Middle East. Italians played a vitally important role in spreading commercialization through Christendom (not the world). According to Hobson, the belief that Italy was important or the development of Europe in the medieval period seems reasonable. But the notion that Italians pioneered these inventions is a myth

    The myth of the European Age of Discovery
    When we examine the so-called European Age of Discovery we find that  that over 1,000 years before Bartolomeu Diaz circled the Cape of Good Hope the Arabs sailed around the Cape and into Europe. The Chinese did so in the 9th century and in the third century the “primitive” Polynesians and Indians sailed to the Cape and the East Coast of Africa.

    Chinese ships were striking in both their size and quantity. In the 8th century some 2,000 ships were working on the Yangtze.  It can be safely said that the Chinese were the greatest sailors in history. For nearly two millennium they had ships and sailing techniques far in advance of the rest of the world that comparisons are embarrassing. (58)

    As for the Portuguese, they borrowed Islamic innovations in mathematics in order to work out latitude, a longitude relying on the Islamic tables developed by an 11th century Muslim astronomer. The European age or the “Vasco da Gama epoch of Asia” turns out to be retrospective Eurocentric wishful thinking

    The myth of Spanish gold ruling the world
    As for the globalization of the economy in the 15th century, one thousand years ago, the Afro-Asian age expanded to a globalized market while not choosing to initiate imperialism. In the late 15th century, the Spanish plundered New World civilizations for their gold and silver. But 40 years before this, the Chinese initiated a silver currency and provided a strong demand for European silver.

    India was not isolated
    It is said that Vasco Da Gama made the first contact with Indian civilization which is presented as isolated. However, John Hobson tells us India was not isolated but had trading contact with the rest of Eurasia. In fact, Indians were economically superior to their Portuguese discoverers. Furthermore, the Chinese, Indian, Islamic and maybe Black African science and technology provided the basis for Portuguese ships and navigation.

    China and the Ming Dynasty

    When we turn to China, we hear the common claim that China withdrew in 1434, inexplicitly renouncing an opportunity to compete with Western imperialism. Supposedly they left a gap which the West filled.  But the truth is China maintained its power as a world trader all the way from 1434 to well into the 19th century (1840). Hobson tells us that:

     The original documents were distorted by the Chinese state in an attempt at being seen as maintaining a Confucius-like isolationist ideal. It was clear that one way or another Chinese merchants continued their extremely lucrative trading with or without official sanctioning. Many European scholars had been therefore easily seduced by the rhetoric of the Chinese state. (63,70)

    One typical myth of Chinese  state was that in true oriental despotic form, they crushed all capitalist activities. The reality is that the system was simply too large and the state too weak to be able to set up a command economy. The second myth is that the Ming state only dealt with luxury commodities. The truth, according to Hobson is that the majority of textiles produced in India were aimed at mass markets.

    Hobson says half the world was in China’s grip. China could have had the greatest colonial power 100 years before the great age of European exploration. They simply were not interested in imperialism (nor are they today). China was the most powerful economy between 1100 to 1800/1840.  Even as late as roughly 1800-1850, Chinese population growth rates increased at a phenomenal rate and would only be matched by Britain after its industrialization.

    China and the printing press
    As for the Gutenberg printing press and the movable mental type printing press, the Chinese had this by 1095. In addition, the Koreans invented the first metal type thirty years before the Guttenberg press. By the end of the 15th century, the Chinese published more books than all the other countries combined. Even as early as 978, one of the Chinese libraries contained 80,000 volumes. It was exceeded by the holdings of some of the major Islamic libraries. It was only in the 19th century that the European printing press became faster than its Asian counterparts.

    Myth of European pioneering of a military revolution
    Before the military revolution, swords, lances, mace and cross-bows were used in warfare. These were replaced by gunpowder, guns and cannons. Much has been made about the European military revolution between 1550 and 1660. But at most, 700 years before this between 850-1290, the Chinese developed all three that underly that military revolution. While the Europeans eventually took these military technologies further, (certainly by the 19th century) the fact remains that without the available advances from the East, there would have been nothing to have been taken further. It was the Jesuits who persuaded Europeans to face the fact that gunpowder, the compass, paper and printing all were invented in China.

    England drug-dealing opium
    Lastly we turn to the relationship between the British and the Chinese. Up until 1820, the Chinese matched the British industrially and it was the British who had a trade deficit. Eurocentric historians congratulate the British in reversing its trade imbalance, not bothering to mention the way they did that was by pushing opium. Even radicals like Marx and Engels looked the other way when the British “opened up” China, rescuing it, according to Marx and Engels, from Oriental despotism. There is a slight problem according to Hobson. Since as far back as 850 China has been open to world trade and achieved great economic progress long before the British had any industrialization of comparative commercial relations.

    Respect for China until the 19th century
    Many Enlightenment thinkers positively associated with China and its ideas including Montaigne, Leibniz, Voltaire, Wolf, Quesnay, Hume and Adam Smith. Voltaire’s book in 1756 has been described as the perfect compendium of all the positive feeling of the time in Europe about the Far East. Martin Bernal reminds us that no European of the 18th century (before 1780) could claim that Europe had created itself.

    Britain as a late developer of the industrial revolution
    For Eurocentric historians, the British genius was responsible for the industrial revolution unaided by anyone else, non-Europeans especially. But almost 2,000 years earlier, the Chinese had developed industry.

    The first cast-iron object dated from 513 BCE. Steel was being produced by the 2nd century BCE. China produced 13,500 tons of iron in 806, some 90,400 tons by 1064 and as many as 125,000 by 1078. Even as late as 1788 Britain was producing only 76,000. Chinese iron was not confined to weapons and decorative art but to tools and production. All this was made possible by the breakthroughs in smelting… and the use of blast furnaces. It was the assimilation of what the Chinese had built that made possible  the industrial revolution in Britain. Further, the industrialization process was made possible not by some independent British know-how but through the exploitation of multiple African resources. (51-53)

    The steam engine, pride of the British industrial revolution, was antedated by the Chinese as early as 1313 CE. The cotton industry, Hobson says, was the pacemaker of British industrialization. But here too, the cotton industry first found its home in both China and India centuries earlier.

    Japan industrialized before England
    When we turn to Japan, we find that Eurocentric historians agree that the Meiji empire underwent a powerful industrialization process, but they imagine that the process happened late, after 1853. Furthermore, it was only through Commodore Perry “opening up” the isolated Tokugawa Japan that industrialization began. But little did they know that Tokugawa Japan was tied to the global economy ever since 1603! Independent Tokugawa development provided a starting point for the subsequent Meiji industrialization. In other words, Japan was an early developer of industry, even before the industrial revolution in Britain.

    English Racist Identity in Justifying Imperialism

    In my article The Myopia of Anglo-American Rulers I went into great detail about the Eurocentrism, paternalism and racism that is involved in Western international relations theory. This described how Westerners convinced themselves of their superiority over the East and South. I will just briefly add George Fredrickson’s two kinds of racism, implicit and explicit in the eightieth and 19th centuries. Implicit racism occurs in the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. Its foundation was cultural, institutional and environmental. People were not conscious of practicing it and their way of expressing imperialism was to imagine they were on a civilizing mission. They had a “Peter Pan” theory of East as childlike, alluring and exotic.

    In Britain after 1840 there was a new kind of racism which Fredrickson called explicit. Here the criteria for this “scientific” racism was genetic or physical characteristics of the Easterners and Southern civilizations. This racism was overt and conscious, and the superiority of the West was understood as permanent. Their ways of justifying imperialism were a mixture of optimism and pessimism. It was optimistic in its Social Darwinist mentality of subjugation at the hands of the superior British. However, it was also pessimistic because the English feared contact with other races might contaminate the Westerners.

    Evolution of Western Identity 500 CE to 1900 CE
    Westerners also divided societies into civilized (British, Germany) barbaric (China, India, Japan) and  savage (Africa). Each type had a skin color, temperament, religion, climatic character, type of government, self, manner of thinking, ontogenesis, social and political legitimizing and social pathology.

    Table 3  The Construction and Consequences of Western Identity

    Time period Western Identity Eastern and Southern Projections Western Appropriation Strategies
    500-1453 Constructed as Christendom Hostile and evil threat
    Islamic Middle East and Persia    		 Attacking Islam through the first round of the Crusades
    1453- 1780 Increasingly as the
    advanced West    		 Ottoman Turk as hostile and barbaric threat Attacking Islam through the second Crusades initiated by da Gama, Columbus
    Africans and indigenous Americans considered as pagans or savages ripe for exploitation and repression Appropriating bullion and circulating through global silver recycling process
    Slave trading and commodification of labor
    1780- 1900 Superior and carrier of advanced civilization Either inferior or evil savages or barbarians Slave trading in Britain and US
    Appropriation of Asian and African land, labor and markets through formal and informal imperialism

    How Than Did Contingency Enable The Rise of the Oriental West?
    The prominent anti-Eurocentric scholars Kenneth Pomeranz and James Blaut emphasize contingency (the fortuitous accident) as the critical factor in the rise of the West. The West was lucky that:

    • The more powerful Eastern societies did not seek to colonize Europe.
    • The Mongols turned to China – not Europe.
    • Mongols delivered both goods and Eastern resources.
    • The Muslims were not interested in conquering Western Europe.
    • The Spanish stumbled on the Americas where gold and silver lay in abundance.
    • The Native Americans had inadequate immune systems.
    • African slaves had adequate immune systems.
    • The East Indian company happened to be in India at a time when the Mughal polity began to disintegrate of its own accord

    Conclusion
    I began this article by situating it within two previous articles I wrote showing how narrow International Relations Theory is cross-culturally in the exclusion of the Eastern and Southern civilizations from its theoretical understanding of world events. Embedded in this theory was Eurocentrism, paternalism, racism and imperialism. In this article, thanks to John M. Hobson’s book Eastern Origins of Western Civilization I show how in 19 areas of its history Western claims to superiority and leadership in relationship to science, technology, world trade, military weaponry, industry the West was dependent on the East from the 5th to the 19th centuries. It only clearly took the lead around 1840.

    So how did the West first deny its dependency and then insist on its superiority over the civilizations it once depended on? I begin by pointing out how on a microlevel its propaganda can be experienced in the areas of map-making and textbook construction. I name Max Weber as the historian with the most extreme hostility to the East and South in his study of Eastern and Western civilizations. I identify eight European myths about the status of world civilizations at the dawn of the modern West, 1500 CE. I then comb through the West’s dependency on Islamic, Chinese, Indian and African civilizations from 500 to 1900 BCE. I close my article by showing the extent to which the West did become more powerful was based on luck more than skill.

    So what does this have to do with the world today? It has been clear to me through my study of political economists and world historians that the West has been in decline since the mid 1970s and as China, Russia and Iran are rising along with BRICS. My article attempts to show that the rise of the West has not been a glorious 500 year trek, beginning with the Renaissance or two thousand year triumph beginning with Greeks. It has been a short 130-year history which is ending. The rise of the East and the South has roughly a 1,300 year history with the wind at its back and is returning to its long historical prominence today.

    The post Ungrateful Lying Upstarts first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Bringing Reality to the Palestinian Struggle

    The world ponders at the destruction that Israel has inflicted upon the Middle East and North Africa and questions why the United States serves as a surrogate force that assists Israel in accomplishing its purposes. How did a relatively few Zionists deceive an unknowing world to trust its cause and actions were legitimate, convince the United States government to aid and abet in the genocide of the Palestinian people, and achieve decisive power? If there were an obvious answer, and the answer predicted the future, then alerted governments would take remedial action. This has not happened. Approaches to ascertain the cause of the genocide of the Palestinian people and finding the solution to prevent it warrant scrutiny.

    Zionism succeeded as a concept and failed as a mission. Starting with spurious premises, Zionism fulfilled promises to its followers, enabled some Jews to obtain a better life, and added little to what the established Jewish community had already achieved and was continuing to achieve. It traded destruction, oppression, and decades of suffering of the Palestinian community for a contrived state, an ideal nation where Jews could easily integrate and be safe from persecution and physical danger. The latter has not happened. The narrative consisted of unproven and fantastic propositions that scattered Jewish communities throughout the world, who spoke different languages, had different histories, ate different foods, and practiced different customs, constituted a nation. Although a limited number of Jews lived, visited, or had any interest in the area for 2000 years, this nation had a national home in Palestine. The latter concept succeeded from another preposterous supposition ─ 19th century Jews, separated by 100 generations, were descendants of Hebrew tribes that wandered the area, and their wanderings, which left no significant footprints on the soil, were mesmerizing connections, beckoning Jews to return. The preposterous narrative remains relatively unchallenged in a preposterous world.

    Palestinians watched helplessly as Zionists seized their lands and kept them in submission. Caught between “heads I lose,” and ”tails you win” choices, the Palestinians had no choice but to participate in meetings of  “peace proposals” that offered establishment of two states, while knowing  that the Israeli government never intended to fulfill a “two state agreement.” If the PLO refused to continue with the farce, it faced accusations of sabotaging peace; going along with the farce meant diverting from countering Israel’s aggressions that prevented peace. This had become obvious during the 1980s, when Palestinians in the West Bank were hopeful, willing to cooperate with Israeli authorities, and eager to pave a path to self-governance. During that decade, Jewish terrorists planted bombs in the cars of elected Mayors Karim Khalaf of Ramallah and Bassam Shakaa of Nablus. Khalaf lost a foot and Shakaalost both of his legs. A third bomb planted in the car of Ibrahim Tawil, elected Mayor of El Bireh, was discovered before detonation. Between 1980 and 1984, Jewish terrorists killed 23 and injured 191 Palestinians in 354 attacks. The terrorist attacks on Palestinians motivated Hamas, a charity organization, to rebrand itself into an organization fighting for Palestinian rights. As usual, the Zionists used the charges against them for their benefit; the terrorist Israelis who murdered Palestinians provoked Hamas to retaliate and Hamas became known as a terrorist organization murdering innocent Israelis.

    Not until recent years, after several Israeli invasions brought death and destruction to the Gazans, not until illegal settlers stole land, proliferated throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem, and casually murdered Palestinians, and not until the 2023 invasion of Gaza has the world’s populace realized the extent of Israel’s murderous rampages and intent to commit genocide of the Palestinian people. Not until contemporary times has the extent of a worldwide propaganda machine that obscured the truth of the Zionist endeavor been completely recognized. There is no Israeli state, no Israeli people, no Israeli government with which to deliberate and arbitrate. They refuse all entreaties and, by doing that, deny their existence. Three salient characteristics describe the Zionism that led to the establishment of Israel:

    (1)   The Zionist adventure is best characterized as an enterprise, which became criminal in its manifestation. An enterprising band of discontented and idealistic Jewish outliers organized themselves as a business enterprise. Their Histadrut, the General Organization of Workers in Israel, became one of the most powerful institutions in the British mandate and turned into a state sponsored enterprise. As an enterprise, the marauding Zionists resembled the Puritans; their sponsors, Jewish entrepreneurs throughout the world, duplicated the Massachusetts Bay Company, financiers of the Puritan voyage.

    A small congregation of Puritans refused to reconcile their independent organization with the established Church of England. Desiring to preserve their identity and feeling constantly persecuted, they sought new places to live their unique social and communal life. In the year 1621, they concluded Europe would never accept them and sought an opportunity in America. The Massachusetts Bay Company sponsored the Puritan settlements and constructed the Massachusetts Bay Colony, whose fatal encounter with the local native population set the stage for the settlement of the entire coast-to-coast American territory and the decimation of the native peoples.

    The Zionist experience is not being detoured and, because the result may be the same ─ decimation of the native population ─ it is important that the crisis be accurately characterized. Israel is a criminal state that willfully murders Palestinians, steals their lands, ethnically cleanses them, buries their villages under rubble, and destroys their history and heritage.

    One word summarizes the taking of another person’s property, livelihood, and dignity – theft! In this case, there is a specific type of theft, Raubwirtschaft, German for “plunder economy.” In Raubwirtschaft, the state economy is partially based on robbery, looting and plundering conquered territories. States that engage in Raubwirtschaft are in continuous warfare with their neighbors and usurp the resources of their conquered subjects, while claiming security objectives and defensive actions against defenseless people.

    (2) Israel is a mirror image of the Nazi state.
    Comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany result from its constant wars and policies that insinuate Israel as a repressive and militaristic nation.

    • Virulent nationalism ─ Israel, similar to Nazi Germany, combines a virulent nationalism with militarism.
    • Irredentism ─ Annexation of territories administered by another state on the grounds of common ethnicity or prior historical possession, drove the Third Reich. Israel’s irredentism regains mythical lands and joins a single folk in these lands.
    • Military adventures ─ The Third Reich fought continuous wars for about eight years. Israel has been fighting continuously for 75 years. The former explained their military thrusts as revenging a “stab in the back” loss in World War I. Israel explains its battles by warranted reprisals, defensive, and security measures.
    • Using overwhelming military force to subdue powerless antagonists ─ The Nazis and its Panzer troops went full attack against all opponents, regardless of their strengths. Israel uses a strategy that minimizes its casualties, and despite its claim of being a humane army, has always attacked with pulverizing force, with kill ratios of tens to one and having civilians constitute a large proportion of casualties
    • Racist laws ─ The Nazis had their Nuremberg laws. In Israel, a Jew cannot marry a non-Jew within the boundaries of Israel, similar to a Nuremberg Law that prohibited marriage between Jews and other Germans. The Nakba Law, states that “groups or institutions that mourn Israel’s Independence or deny the state’s Jewish and democratic nature” can be denied state funds. The Citizenship Law allows the state to revoke citizenship and imprison anyone convicted of acting against “the sovereignty of the state.” Few Palestinian Israelis can rent housing or buy property in West Jerusalem. Immigrant Jews are able to acquire property and not allowed to sell the property to Arab citizens. Few, if any Arabs, have been able to purchase government sponsored housing and obtain mortgages. A separation of ethnicities results in the separation of their activities, recreation centers, schools, and education.
    • Severe repression in occupied territories ─ Israel duplicates Nazi repression of conquered people, and construction of ghettoes to house them. Repression of Palestinians under occupation includes confiscation of Palestinian lands for military use, destruction of wells, olive trees and agriculture, raids on villages, obtrusive checkpoints, mass arrests of opposition, and denial of highway use. Walls separate Palestinian communities and families and farmers from livestock and fields, choke the Palestinian economy, and obstruct daily exchanges between people.
    • Killing of opposition and punitive measures after an attack ─ The Nazis used punitive measures and collective punishment to terrorize its captive peoples and crushed resistance. Israel has done the same. The Nazis had Lidice, a village destroyed after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi leader in Bohemia and Moravia. In 1953, in retaliation for a Palestinian guerrilla incursion into Israel that killed several Israeli civilians, the Israeli military raided the West Bank village of Qibya, killed 67 Palestinians and destroyed 56 houses. Palestine has been victim to tens of Lidicies ─ destruction of areas and houses due to accusations of being the homes of suicide bombers.
    • Ethnic cleansing ─ The Nazis planned to move populations in Eastern European nations and repopulate the areas with Germans. After the 1948 and 1967 wars, Israel destroyed 412 Palestinian villages and eventually created 1.2 million refugees who were not permitted to return to their homes. Palestinian bank accounts, land, homes, and industries were confiscated. Incursions have destroyed patrimony, archives, and cultural identity of the Palestinians. Israel military seized the Palestinian archives in Beirut during the war in Lebanon and, under international pressure, eventually returned them.
    • Propaganda ─ Due to its international reach, the Israel propaganda machine exceeds that of the Nazis, churning out each day books, films, plays, music, and articles that extend memories of the Holocaust, references to anti-Semitism, and the greatness of little Israel who needs support as it fights against the world’s evils. An army of several hundreds of thousands of Israeli supporters include planted “emigrants” to the United States and Germany, who invade civic life and institutions throughout the western word, lobby support for Israel, criticize opponents, spread false charges of anti-Semitism, and convince the world of Israel’s cause.
    • Genocide ─ The Nazis are identified with a genocide of European Jews. Israel’s policies are paving a route to destruction of the Palestinian people. Hopelessness, despair, immobility, lack of redress for the loss of their lands, economic insecurity, and constant attacks against their persona and livelihood drive the Palestinians to a difficult existence. Israel’s occupying force shows no care for the rights of the occupied people and no desire to address the fatal issues concerning them; even reinforcing the misery.

    (3) Psychologically disturbed ─ Widely known and not widely discussed, are the disturbing comments and activities of Jewish Israelis and Zionist Jews around the world. Rarely censored by the Israeli government and their native countries, they give an impression that Zionist Jews are morally corrupt, psychologically disturbed, and gain pleasure in lying, deceiving, and harming others, even murdering innocents. Zionist Jews elevate themselves to a superior and unique place in the firmament, the chosen people to whom all others must give homage. Claiming to be eternal victims of anti-Semitism, they daily demand restitution and forgiveness for mostly fabricated crimes committed against them.

    Nowhere and never in the civilized world have a preponderance of a nation’s leaders and its citizens expressed hatred and violence against others equivalent to the expressions from Israel’s leaders and citizens. Without shame, without control, and without concern of their malevolent appearance to others, their detestable utterances have become commonplace and are well known.

    • Israeli Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu suggested that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was “one of the possibilities” in the current conflict.
    • Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant referred to Palestinians as “human animals.”
    • Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said: “The Palestinian village of Huwwara should be wiped out. The state needs to do it and not private citizens.”
    • David Ben-Gurion said, “it doesn’t matter what the gentiles say, only what the Jews do.
    • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We will turn Gaza into an island of ruins.”
    • Former Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave orders “to break the bones of Palestinian inciters.”
    • Ariel Kallner, a member of Israel’s parliament, said, “Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ’48. Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join! Their Nakba, because like then in 1948, the alternative is clear.”

    Israel’s citizens reflect an indoctrination of hate and violence that complement their government’s expressions. Maccabi Tel Aviv fans arriving at Ben Gurion airport from Amsterdam sang: “Ole ole, ole ole ole, Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!” An X user commented, “These people are deranged. They have lost all humanity. A culture of murder and theft doesn’t come without cost.”

    A rocket hit the northern Israel home of Safa Awad, a Palestinian Israeli schoolteacher, and killed her. The Middle East Eye reports that a volunteer at Magen David Adom, an Israeli rescue service organization, wrote, in a post that has received more than a thousand likes, that, “There is nothing to feel sorry for. She is a terrorist in every respect. She is not in our favour in any way. May her getting fucked be blessed.”

    Go to Quora, and observe a string of comments by Israeli propagandists who plant  question and then answer it: “Gaza has a fertility rate of 3.38 in 2023. In 2005 its fertility rate was 6.2. Islam at its finest. They breed like cockroaches.”

    Contending  those defending Israel’s genocidal tactics as geopolitical power politics (USA), guilt for the Holocaust (Germany), and as a settler colonial state (Western nations) have legs, but are counterproductive and have not moved nations to contend Israel. Accusing nations of duplicity only makes them defend themselves and reinforce their duplicity. Showing that Israel cannot be defended and is an immoral, social, economic, and military threat to humanity ─ well, who wants to defend a nation of that description?

    Unless others share in the proceeds, a criminal nation has no defenders. What benefit is it for the Western nations to support criminal activities that negatively affects them?

    Western nations and the Soviet Union fought a World War to defeat Nazism and bring order to the world.

    • How can nations allow the transfer of the racist and genocidal doctrines of the German Nazis to a similar regime? Why did we fight the war?
    • How can Germany claim to makes amends for its past Nazi experience and support the transfer of that experience to another nation?
    • How can nations allow Israel serve as a model and catalyst for ultra-reactionary regimes?

    The mentality that perpetrates the genocide and regales in it is unacceptable. Turning protests against genocide into attacks on Jews, and using the anti-Semitism word are delusionary. We need protection against people who exhibit murderous, racist, venomous, and delusionary characteristics and not offerings of invitations for them to manipulate our society.

    The analysis may seem overkill, but for understanding the critical situation, it is necessary to place in proper perspective the nature of the Israeli regime. Treating it as a despotic nation is incomplete. People make a country and the Israeli people and their worldwide supporters are not the empathetic and cordial populace that guarantees healthy living.

    The post Bringing Reality to the Palestinian Struggle first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Haitian telecom authority suspends radio show, citing alleged ‘dissemination of propaganda’

    Miami, November 26, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on CONATEL, Haiti’s telecommunications authority, to end its suspension of a popular evening show on Radio Mega, one of the country’s largest broadcast outlets, amid concerns the penalty was imposed without due process. 

    “Haitian authorities should reverse their suspension of the Radio Mega show ‘Boukante Lapawòl’ (Exchange of Words) and refrain from further interfering with the free flow of information,” said CPJ U.S., Canada and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen in Washington, D.C. “Haitian authorities would do well to focus on restoring order in the country, rather than accusing journalists of spreading propaganda.” 

    The suspension was imposed on November 22 after a wanted Haitian gang leader, Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Cherizier, called into the show the night before to denounce alleged public corruption, claiming that he was offered a large bribe by a member of the ruling Presidential Transition Council to negotiate peace with the gangs. It was the second time in several weeks that Cherizier had called into the show without prior arrangement, said Radio Mega’s owner, veteran journalist Alex Saint-Surin.

    CONATEL cited a 1977 decree in issuing the suspension without giving Radio Mega the opportunity to explain the incident or defend itself legally.  

    “Notorious leaders have benefited greatly from airtime, spreading messages of hatred and terror against society,” CONATEL said in a letter to the station.

    CONATEL did not immediately reply to an inquiry from CPJ, but a government spokesman told CPJ in a WhatsApp message that Radio Mega had lent its airwaves to Cherizier’s “propaganda,” adding that Haiti was “weak state” struggling to defend itself from Viv Ansamn, a heavily armed gang coalition led by Cherizier.

    Cherizier has called on the council to resign and launched a series of deadly attacks in recent days targeting the prime minister’s office and other government buildings. Armed members of Viv Ansamn control large parts of the capital using tactics such as rape, murder, child recruitment and kidnapping to terrorize the population over the last nine months, according to the United Nations.

    The Haitian media support group, SOS Journalistes, rejected CONATEL’s accusations against Radio Mega, saying that “Boukante Lapawòl has never served as a propaganda platform for gangs.” 


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Trust the Science

    As recorded in Hansard, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau, as he did on so many occasions without ever citing the scientific evidence, stated, “We will continue to trust the science.“

    The post Trust the Science first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • North Korea sends military to inspect homes for working propaganda speakers

    The North Korean Army’s main anti-socialism inspection division is going door to door in the northern province of Ryanggang to make sure that hardwired propaganda speakers installed in each home are in working order, residents told Radio Free Asia.

    The speakers deliver messages from the local government and play propaganda songs, and residents are told that they are critical in emergencies, including during wartime.

    A resident of Ryanggang province, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told RFA that although the speakers were inspected in March by the local post office, this time it is more serious because Unified Command 82 is the inspecting agency.

    Unified Command 82 was established in August 2021, when the army merged several anti-socialism inspection units.

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    The resident explained that since Oct. 11, the government has been broadcasting patriotic war songs, and ordered that residents listen to the daily broadcasts dutifuly.

    “Starting on Oct. 21, Unified Command 82 went around each household in every neighborhood-watch unit to inspect whether there was a cable broadcast speaker and whether the residents were listening to the cable broadcast properly,” he said.

    Two days later, the broadcasts shifted tone, naming citizens who either did not have a speaker installed, or who weren’t actively listening to the propaganda broadcasts when inspectors came around, he said.

    “Houses without speakers are advised to immediately purchase and install speakers through the post office,” said the resident.

    According to the resident, the speakers must be turned on from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. Messages from the local governemnt that are not aired on radio or television come through the hardwired speakers, which are called the “Third Network” in North Korea.

    Based on the Soviet “radiotochka” network that hardwired a speaker in every home to a central broadcast location so that messages could be transmitted without sending them over the air, the broadcasts can include local news and mobilization instructions.

    “This broadcast inspection is the second inspection conducted this year, with the last one in March. the resident said. ”Whenever the political situation becomes tense, the Central Committee inspects cable broadcasting to scare residents.”

    A resident who works in agriculture in the province told RFA that there were many households in rural areas where the Third Network is not working. During the economic collapse and famine of the 1990s, the government ran out of resources to maintain cable connections to each home, and in some cases, the wires were cut by residents who sold them for scrap.

    He said authorities were holding emergency meetings to address the issue. The key issue was funding, so some officials proposed that each house should donate edible ferns and omija, a kind of berry used in tea.

    “If each household offers 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of dried ferns or 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of dried omija, the local governments can [sell them] to purchase broadcasting lines from China to restore cable broadcasting,” he said.

    But other officials thought the scheme was not realistic, considering that the rural residents have enough trouble making ends meet as it is.

    “The meeting did not reach any conclusion and ended with the words, ‘We will severely punish the rural management committee and party secretaries who fail to restore cable broadcasting by the end of November,” the agricultural resident said. “There are threats every year that rural officials will be punished over the restoration of cable broadcasting, but no actual punishment has ever been carried out.”

    Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Moon Sung Whui for RFA Korean.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Cross-Cultural Comparative Politics

    Orientation
    What is politics?

    Nine Questions for Determining What is Politics
    In Part I of my article Seven Theories of Politics I posed ten questions for narrowing down what the range for defining what is politics.

    Temporal reach

    How far back into human history does politics go? Does politics go back to pre-state societies? Or does politics begin with state societies? Is politics possible before there were political parties?

    Cross species scope

    Is politics confined to the human species or does it ooze into the life of other species? If so, which ones? If politics crosses species, is it social species that are political? Is it possible to have animal societies which are social such as lions or wolves, but not political? Does a species need to be social to be political? Is being social a necessary but not sufficient condition for politics? Is being social a necessary and sufficient condition for politics? Or is being social neither a necessary nor sufficient condition? In other words, is it possible for a non-social species to have political relationships?

    How much does evolutionary biology impact politics    ?

    At a macro level, how does natural adaptation impact human politics? In terms of men and women, how much does sexual selection determine politics? At the micro level, how much do genetics and brain chemistry determine the level and the interest and skill in politics? Or is politics primarily a creature of the socio-historical level of reality?

    Spatial reach

    Where does politics take place? Many political scientists limit politics to what is taking place within states. Is that casting the net too narrowly? Can there be politics through discussions in private  space? Is it politics when I get into a discussion about the viability of capitalism while I am at the unemployment line waiting for my check? Are there politics within families? Are there politics between lovers? Or are politics only about public affairs?

    Am I being political if I ask my partner if she wants to go to the movies and propose a movie and she agrees to both proposals, is spontaneous agreement political? Suppose she said she wants to go to a movie but prefers another movie. We debate about it, and one of us persuades the other. Has the discussion become political? Suppose you and I are riding bicycles. We reach a crossroads where we have to decide whether to turn left or right. We each want to go in a different direction. Is the process of deciding this political?

    Political agency

    Who does politics? Is politics done only by politicians? If I argue with my neighbor about police brutality in my neighborhood, are my neighbor and I political beings in this discussion? Do I become political only when I vote on the issue in the next election? Do I become political when I bring police brutality to a town hall meeting next month? Or is the only person who is political the mayor who decides whether or not to make it part of his platform for his campaign next month?

    What is the relationship between politics and power?

    Can you have politics without having power? Can you have power without having politics? If power and politics are related, in what way? Are politics and power interchangeable? Is one a means to another? Is power the means and politics is the end? Is politics the means and power the end?

    Politics, force and coercion

    Let’s go back to this movie issue. Suppose Sandy has been drinking, and in the past she has been bad-tempered to her partner. She starts drinking while they are deciding on a movie. Sandy’s partner starts worrying and gives in to the movie Sandy wants to watch prematurely to avoid the risk of being yelled at. Is that politics?

    This example is a small slice of a larger issue: what is the relationship between politics and force or the threat of force? Is violence an inherent part of politics or is politics what you do to win someone over without being violent?  Some political theorists like Bernard Crick say that politics is the art of compromising when you know you cannot get what you want. Others say that the whole political system is based on violence because the entire class system is based on exploitation and force. All attempts to change things must come up against this militaristic force which protects the rulers. Some say that the only force is political and that the state is the ultimate political actor because it has, in Weber’s words, a monopoly on the means of violence.

    Interdisciplinary span of politics

    How (if at all) is politics related to economics? What is the relationship between technology and politics?  Does the economy dictate politics? Does politics determine economics? Does technology determine politics or does politics determine technology? The same question could be asked about religion or mass media.

    What, if any, is the relationship between theories of politics and political ideologies?

    Is there a relationship between a consistent set of answers to these questions and whether you are a liberal or conservative? How will the answers of social democrats, communists and fascists be different than that of either anarchists on the left or libertarian capitalists on the right?

    As it turns out, the field of cross-cultural politics I will be discussing gives very narrow answers to these questions and therefore leaves a great deal out.

    • Temporal reach – narrow, starts with class societies and leaves out tribal societies
    • Cross-species – narrow, limits it to the human species
    • Is politics biological? Narrow, politics is limited to the social, psychological
    • Spatial reach – narrow, limited to what happens in states
    • Political agency—limited to what politicians do, no one else
    • Relationship between politics and power, wide, used interchangeably
    • How is politics related to force or coercion? Narrow, understates force
    • Interdisciplinary span of politics – narrow, it excludes economics
    • Theories of politics and ideology -narrow, it tries to make politics scientific and above ideology

    In Part II of my article, I identity seven theories of politics:

    Old Institutionalists

    Civil Republicans

    • Weberian political sociologists
    • Marxian political scientists
    • Rational choice theorists
    • Radical feminists
    • Bio-evolutionary

    All the answers comparative politics gives to those questions primarily come from two schools, the old institutionalists and rational choice theorists. They pretty much leave out the other five schools.

    Connection to past articles
    About three years ago I wrote four articles about the ideological nature of political science. One article Anti-Communist Political Science: Propaganda for the Capitalist State was primarily about political science as it is practiced in the United States (not Europe). The second article, Invasion of the Body Snatchers connects political science to neo-classical economics and shows how both support each other while blocking out an integrated approach called political economy. In my third article Dictatorship and Democracy I expose how Mordor political scientists were quite interested in dictatorships both in Europe and even within the United States in the 1930s. On the other hand, their interpretation of democracy was thin and lacked any subsistence. Lastly, my piece Totalitarian Anti-Communism showed the manipulation of the use of the word “Totalitarian” from the 1930s into the late 20th century. However, there is one topic that I did not cover in much detail and that is the subject of comparative politics. I did discuss it a bit in the last part of my first article but not in any depth. I would especially like to write about it now because while the field of comparative politics is not taken seriously outside the United States because its political manipulation is well-known, it still serves as propaganda for war and imperialism within the United States. It is as part of Yankee self-propaganda that discussing the field of comparative politics is still worth an analysis.

    Sources for my criticisms of comparative politics
    Sources for my criticisms of comparative politics are as follows. Ronald Chilcote wrote a very good criticism of comparative politics from a Marxian point of view. He was especially good at exposing the ideological nature in the field. For example he pointed out the connection between the social sciences and the CIA. Ido Oren was also really excellent at showing the connection between modernization theorists and the promotion of US foreign policy. Michael Latham’s book Modernization as Ideology reveals how modernization theory was behind JFK’s international anti-communist program, Alliance for Progress. Lastly, Irene Gendzier’s book Development Against Democracy explains how the word “development” was used by comparative politics involved in foreign policy to railroad countries on the capitalist periphery away from socialist and communist transition programs.

    Where are we going?
    In this article I will show eight foundational problems with comparative politics:

    • Its characterization of capitalist societies as democratic;
    • Its characterization of states as governing rather than ruling;
    • Its relative exclusion of propaganda from political communication in the West;
    • Its ignoring the presence of how capitalism undermines political relations;
    • Its ignoring of the Secret Service and the rest of deep state in political decision-making processes;
    • Its blanket characterization of socialism with authoritarian;
    • Its neglect of anarchism as a legitimate part of socialism;
    • Its treatment of nation-states as autonomous and not determined by alliances and between larger, more powerful states and transnational capitalists.

    Oligarchies vs Democracy

    Those of you who were unlucky enough to take a political science class might have been exposed to a cross-cultural version of the same thing. I refer to the field of comparative politics. The first thing that struck my eye in looking at the table of contents of a college textbook on comparative politics was the different types of rule. According to mainstream theorists, there are only two kinds of rule, democratic and authoritarian. The United States and Western Europe are deemed “democratic” whereas Russia, China and Iran are deemed authoritarian.

    The unpopularity of democracy in the West until the 20th century
    One problem with this formulation is that it fails to address the unpopularity of democracy in Yankee history itself, not only among conservatives but liberals as well all the way to the end of the 19th century. In the 19thcentury when liberalism really took hold as a political ideology, liberals were not interested in democracy, and considered it “mob rule”. Most industrialized countries did not have the right to vote at the end of the 19th century. Back then farmer populist parties and socialist parties took their democracy seriously, bringing economics into it. The result was a “substantive democracy” championed by Charles Merriman and Charles Beard in the 1930s. But the rise of fascism and communism had shaken liberal confidence in the natural sympathy between democracy and capitalism. So in the 1940s Joseph Schumpeter introduced a weakened form of democracy as simply the circulation of elite politicians  that people choose between. The procedural democracy of Robert Dahl of the 1950s involved choosing between these elites through voting. There was nothing about economics.

    In his book Strong Democracy, Benjamin Barber distinguishes “thick democracy” from the “thin democracy” of Dahl. My point is by the standards of thick democracy few if any Western countries are democratic. To call them democratic serves the ideological purposes of cold warriors and their desire to fight communism. Since democracy is a loaded virtue word, and authoritarian is a loaded vice word, a cold war opposition between the two is built into the entire field of comparative politics.

    How many parties make a democracy?
    What is striking is the criteria for what constitutes democracy when it comes to political parties. For comparative politics, a single party rule constitutes authoritarian rule. But the addition of just one more party, as in the American political system, we suddenly then have a democracy. Countries with many parties including most of Europe are also constituted as democracies. Aristotle argued that there were 3 forms of rule – monarchy, oligarchy and democracy. Oligarchy is the rule of the few. Given the actual nature of who controls the elections in the United States, it is most reasonable to say the United States and Western Europe are oligarchies, ruled by the ruling class, the upper class and the upper middle class. Taken together this is about 20% of the population, hardly a democracy. In the United States most of middle class, working class and poor have no representation and yet the country is called democratic.

    One party – authoritarian

    Two parties – democratic

    Many parties – democratic

    In other words, the difference between one and two parties is greater than the difference between two parties and many parties. In fact, the implication of those who defend the two-party system is that having many parties can be confusing and unwieldly. So we wind up with the two parties of the United States as a kind center of stability. This is so despite the fact that for about the last 50 years, forty percent or more people in the United States do not vote. Is this a sign that democracy in the United States doesn’t work? Not at all. Those who don’t vote are dismissed as ignorant, apathetic or pathological in some way. The reason people don’t vote is simply because neither party represents their interest is never present. When voting tallies are presented, the number of people who don’t vote is rarely presented. Voting tallies are presented like 50% vs 49% for the two parties as if that constituted all the people who could have voted. In fact, in the actual tallies the winning party gets 30% of the vote. The loser gets 29%. What is ignored is the highest tally: 40% who don’t vote. This is democracy? What we have here is an oligarchy. But in comparative politics, democracy is not a process that actually exists but a self-congratulating ideology for the ruling capitalist oligarchs who control both parties.

    Governing vs Ruling
    In comparative politics, “governing” is a taken for granted term for Western capitalist societies. “Ruling” is saved for countries suspected of not being democratic, like “authoritarian” countries. I prefer to take the governing word very seriously as it is used in cybernetic systems. Governing in cybernetic systems means steering a system which includes goals, communication within the system, adaptation to the environment, feedback systems which allow for adjustment and few forward system which results in planning. The human heart is a “governor” of the human body. By these standards the only type of society in which there was governing was the egalitarian politics of hunting and gathering societies. Simple horticulture societies in these societies decision-making was collective. They adapted and moved when the ecology dictated a change.

    For the last 5,000 years, complex political systems had rulers. This means that political goals were rarely carried out, communication systems were blocked and muddled by self-interested bureaucracies. Adaptations to the environment were slowed down by the machinations of the short-term thinking of ruling classes. Feedback systems were ignored such as extreme weather and pollution. Feed forward mechanisms were clogged by myopic ruling classes who couldn’t think three months ahead – if that. In Joseph Tainter’s book The Collapse of Complex Societies he describes how inept the ruling classes can be. Calling complex societies “governing” is ridiculous when compared to hunting and gathering societies which prevailed for 90% of human history. We are ruled by oligarchies and this should be reflected in any political field that considers itself scientific.

    The Exclusion of Propaganda from Political Communication in the West
    In part, the reason we have the illusion of democracy and a governing class rather than rulers of an oligarchy is because of Western propaganda. There are many textbooks describing propaganda in the West. If you like videos more than books, check out Adam Curtis’ documentary, The Century of the Self. This video demonstrates how 100 years of psychological propaganda in the person of Edward Bernays and the brainwashing in the work of Ewen Cameron controlled the Mordor public. Despite this, the only mention of propaganda in my comparative politics textbook is when it comes of “authoritarian” regimes. No surprises here.

    Comparative Politics Ignores Capitalism
    Following the tradition of Mordor social sciences, just as political science excludes economics while neoclassical economics ignores politics, comparative politics ignores the economic system of capitalism when it discusses Western politics. They ignore economic exchange and act as if politics was merely system of law, voting, institutional systems of bureaucracies and foreign policies. Without saying so, countries that count as “democratic” have capitalist exchanges. The field of comparative politics theorists act as if there was a natural, unremarkable relationship between capitalism and democracy. But as Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens have described in their book Capitalist Development and Democracy, it was not the capitalist merchants that brought representative democracy to the West, but the working class. Capitalist economic exchanges should be foundational to understanding political systems. Yet in my comparative poetics textbook that I’m reading, “political economy” is buried in the last chapter of the book.

    Two reasons why capitalism should be included in politics
    Capitalism should be foundational to politics because countries that have counted as politically “underdeveloped” have become so because of capitalist imperialism, as Gunder Frank pointed out decades ago. At the same time capitalist societies should be foundational to politics because it was under capitalist crisis that fascism emerged. The political ideology of fascism can never be understood without its roots in capitalism. There has never been fascism in human history before capitalism and there has never been fascism without the presence of capitalism.

    The Deep State and International Pressure Groups are not Included in the Decision-making Processes of Politics

    Supposedly, democratically elected leaders of political parties govern their populations by carrying out “the will of the people”. I am countering this by saying these politicians represent the will of the oligarchs who rule over people. But the oligarchs do not just use political leaders to carry out their will. Besides capitalists that politicians have to answer to, there are agencies such as the FBI, the CIA as well as international pressure groups such as AIPAC, Five Eyes, and NED. None of these groups are mentioned in my comparative politics textbook as involving political decision making. The textbook on Political Psychology in International Relations writes as if political leaders make decisions for their nation by themselves. It is only in “authoritarian” societies that bureaucracies, revolutionary factions and terrorist groups come into play that constrain the decision-making will of the official political leaders.

    Authoritarian Politics is Synonymous With Socialism 

    When it comes to the West the field of comparative politics ignores the fact that its ruling oligarchy is run by capitalism. However, they have no problem declaring that authoritarian politics goes with a socialist “command economy”. Western countries that became socialist, such as Sweden and Norway, are presented as socialist democracies only because the presence of a market or capitalism. This made the naturally socialist authoritarian states more democratic.

    Most military dictatorships are capitalists

    Advocates of comparative politics ignore the fact that military dictatorships are often attempts by capitalists to hold on to power in the face of socialist uprisings. Most dictatorships are not socialist, but capitalist installations. In the case of socialism, the textbook cases that are trotted out are the old Soviet Union, Cuba or China. These countries have oligarchies as well. But whether or not they are more authoritarian than the capitalist West is much more complex than it first appears. Theories of comparative politics play down or ignore the relentless international class war any socialist system has to endure on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis at the hands of the heads of state in the West along with their capitalist rulers. Capitalists in the West act as if the whole world is their private property. They treat any elected national leader (even if not a socialist) who has the nerve to set their own agenda for international trade as an enemy. All socialist leaders have to treat most any oppositional party in their country as potentially a tool of international capital. The extent to which socialist countries are authoritarian has a great deal to do with the pressure they experience from international capital.

    What about “totalitarian”? 

    Fortunately, this Cold War vice word is now internationally  discredited. However, the use of the term totalitarian to characterize socialist or communist countries, leaves out at least the following. If we grant that Sweden and Norway were once socialist, there has never been a socialist country with an advanced technology, communication systems, or advanced science. These societies have never had the ability to control the messages sent out to the population so that people were all thinking the same thing at the same time due to centralized control of propaganda. It is only advanced capitalist countries that have the capacity to do this. For example, Mordor’s media has roughly five corporations that all send out the same propaganda message in the case of Israel. People are severely punished by the police for supporting the Palestinians. All third parties in Mordor are blacked out. They cannot get into the “debates”. My point is that because of its control over mass media, capitalist control of the state is much closer to real totalitarianism than anything Stalin or Orwell ever dreamed up. The Soviet Union and China are poor countries. Their communist parties have no centralized control over their entire nation state. Peasants in both countries made up their own mind as to what was happening. Only in Mordor do you hear the same anti-working-class slogans against health care, or “welfare queens” from New York to San Francisco, from Houston Texas to Missoula in Montana. This is the power political propaganda holds to be internalized by people who imagine they are making up their own minds.

    Comparative Politics Ignores Anarchism as Part of Socialism
    The claim that all socialism is authoritarian ignores the 180-year history of the anarchist movement and its leaders from Proudhon to Bakunin to Malatesta, Kropotkin, to Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman to Durruti. Anarchism was no intellectual movement. It was followed by thousands of people who fought in and out of labor unions and in the Russian and Spanish revolutions. This negligence on the part of comparative political theorists is ironic given that anarchism at its best is the purist form of democracy – direct democracy. If comparative political theorists understood the scale that the anarchists organized during the Spanish revolution of 1936-1939, they would be ashamed to think that what goes on in Western societies has anything to do with democracy, at least comparatively speaking.

    Comparative Politics Ignores the International Pressures Within Larger States or Alliances Between other States

    Comparative politics acts as if political decisions begin and end at national borders and with only official political leaders. But today’s nation-states have formed alliances with other nation-states. They have agreements about where they or won’t all act together. In the West we have the alliance of United States, England and Israel. None of those countries enacts a political decision by themselves. The same is true with China, Russia and Iran. Nation-states are interdependent, not independent actors.

    Conclusion

    I began this article with nine foundational questions of what politics is. I described how narrowly the field of comparative politics is in answering these questions. Then I identified seven theories of politics and showed how each of the seven theories of politics answers these nine questions differently. As it turned out, the field of political science uses only two of the seven theories: old institutionalism as rational choice theory.

    Then I embedded within this article other articles I had written about how anticommunist domestic political science and neoclassical economics are in their studies and how international political science (comparative politics) is in carrying on that tradition. After that I named eight areas in which comparative politics are weak, including:

    • Its propagandistic use of the word “democracy”. I claim that no state society on this planet is democratic. They are oligarchies.
    • Its propagandistic use of the world governance. I identify with a cybernetic definition of governance, using the heart as an example. With this as criteria, no state system in the world governs a society. They all rule, not govern.
    • Comparative politics over-emphasizes the use of propaganda in “authoritarian” societies while barely even mentioning propaganda in capitalist ruling  oligarchies.
    • Comparative politics does not successfully integrate capitalism into the comparative systems it analyzes . One textbook tacks it on as a last chapter.
    • Comparative politics ignores the power of the institutions of the deep state and transnational capitalists in determining the decision-making capacities of politicians.
    • Its treatment of the term “authoritarian” is more or less synonymous with socialism. It plays down the existence of socialism in Scandinavian countries and communal councils in Venezuela.
    • Lastly, the use of the term “totalitarian” to depict Soviet Union, China and Cuba is completely false. In the case of the Soviet Union and China they were too poor to have a centralized state that could reach down to every peasant village and bombard them with propaganda. The foundation for this totalitarian state is a centralized media apparatus, mass transportation, a country that was electrified. Paradoxically it is Mordor’s control over its mass media where we see the closest approximation to totalitarianism.
    The post Cross-Cultural Comparative Politics first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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