A Trifecta of Three Phony “Scandals”

This is a letter I just received. The Republicans are going to gin up another fake impeachment proceeding, along with another Congressional investigation. We are back in the Clinton years, when US democracy dove to the stinkingist fascist and totalitarian depths in its history with endless investigations of one phony scandal after another.

Finally, they impeached Clinton on totally ridiculous grounds (Clinton beat the impeachment handily at a trial). There is one place you see the sort of sick, twisted, corrupt politics crap, and that’s in the 3rd World. The Turd World. The Republican Party has turned America into a gigantic Turd World country.

In the Turd World, there are constant fake investigations of fake scandals, and Presidents are always being impeached on phony political grounds. In addition, Presidents are assaulted, placed under arrest, tortured and even murdered on a regular basis, generally in the context of a military coup. This is particularly prevalent in the Sewer of the World, Latin America. This nonsense has gone on in most Latin American shitholes, including Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador, Guyana, Colombia, Brazil, Peru and Chile.

All of these coups and assassinations have been done by the Latin American rightwing, which is an objectively fascist rightwing movement and always has been. Whenever any populist or progressive government comes in, the rightwing in that Latin American country tries to oust them via assassination, coup or a fake impeachment. The US has supported 100% of these radically antidemocratic and fascist incidents in Latin America. There has never been a single fascist coup in Latin America that did not have the 100% backing of the United Snakes.

In the rest of the world, it is as bad or worse. In Pakistan, presidential candidates are murdered on a regular basis.In the rest of the Turd World, opposition candidates are often jailed or worse. This is what is happening in Turkey at the moment, and it was going on earlier in Iran. Opposition party candidates are murdered on a regular basis in the Philippines.

Scandal hearings should be reserved for the worst of the worst. Iran-Contra and the S & L Crisis are good examples. If you recall, the Democrats did not turn either of those hearings into impeachment proceedings. Impeachment should only be for the worst of crimes. A good example was President Nixon, who would have been impeached had he not resigned, for bugging the headquarters of the Democratic Party during the 1972 campaign. I can hardly think of a single impeachable case since 1972. This is just dirty politics and nothing else, and it is sleazy as Hell.

Every Administration will have scandals of various types. It is inevitable under our money infested system where both parties are tied to big money and corporate rule. In almost all cases, these scandals are run of the mill things that any Administration goes through. However, whenever a Democratic President is in office, any of the usual scandals that any Administration deals with will have huge hearings in Congress, threats of impeachment and special prosecutors.

Objective evidence shows that there were far more scandals and there was far more corruption under Bush and Reagan than under Clinton or Obama. But no matter how corrupt or scandal ridden a Republican is, the spineless Democrats will never do anything about it. Not a single hearing, no special prosecutor, no impeachment proceedings. On the other hand, the far fewer scandals under a Democrat will be turned into a Ringling Brothers affair that dominates the idiotic headlines for months to years.

Nothing Obama has done warrants impeachment or even a hearing.

The Benghazi Consulate was a CIA office – 80% of the personnel there were CIA officers. The Islamists knew that, and that is why it was attacked. The CIA failed to provide enough security for the consulate, and they relied too much on unproven Libyan security.

The call for backup amounted to a call for “4 men” to arrive. Do you think 4 armed US forces would have turned the situation around? There was a call to bring in a helicopter gunship to fire missiles or machine gun fire or a jet to bomb the area. However, the area is surrounded by civilians, and in the initial attack, no one really had any idea what was going on.

There was an order given to stand down and not send in air power until more could be learned about the confused situation. The forces on the ground evacuated the Americans from the consulate to a safe house, but the Islamists were waiting at the safe house for them.

In a hazy situation were no one knew what was going on, it would have been madness to drop bombs or shoot missiles at the heavily inhabited area at the consulate, the safe house and the area in between. The forces at the consulate fought very well. Although 4 Americans were killed, 32 were rescued. In addition, ~100 Islamist attackers were killed.

          Benghazi #killed

Americans 4
Islamists 100

This was a battle in a war we are fighting with Al Qaeda and allied Islamists. By any standard metric, we won this battle. It is beyond me why this is some sort of a scandal. We fight battles all the time in the war with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamists. Some we win, some we lose. Sometimes our men are killed or wounded. Should there be hearings, special prosecutors or impeachment proceedings every time an American is killed by the enemy overseas? What kind of insanity is that?

The IRS scandal is a joke. As a result of Citizens United, many political outfits such as Karl Rove’s Crossroads set themselves up as tax exempt social welfare organizations that do not engage in political work. Obviously, this is a lie. This was mostly done on the Right, as word went out via Karl Rove to the rightwing grassroots to claim social welfare status to pay no taxes.

Approximately 250-300 groups with “tea party” in their name engaged in this crime by lying and calling themselves social welfare organizations. The IRS identified all of these groups engaged in this fraud and crime and sent them letters demanding to see their paperwork.

Since a vast amount of “tea party” groups were engaging in this sort of crime, lower level IRS officials in Indianapolis targeted every group with “tea party” in their name and sent them these letters demanding that they prove they were a political group or a social welfare group. Unfortunately, a number of liberal organizations also committed these crimes and called themselves social welfare groups to claim tax exempt status. All of these liberal groups were also targeted by the IRS and they received letters demanding to see their paperwork.

The IRS was completely correct to do what they did. There was no scandal, not even the whiff of one. When 300 groups with tea party in their name are engaging in crime, it looks like smoke. Where there is smoke, there is fire. That massive crime spree by tea party groups was enough to put every group with tea party in their name under suspicion.

It is right and proper for the IRS to determine if any political group of any stripe of committing crime by falsely representing themselves. In addition, liberal groups committing these crimes were also questioned. When you commit crimes, you may get called in for questioning by authorities. This is the job of the authorities. If you abuse tax laws and cheat on your taxes, expect a call from the IRS. This was no political prosecution. The local Indianapolis office was 100% correct in what they did.

Obama caved in spinelessly as usual, firing the IRS Director for the crime of enforcing tax law and fighting tax criminals and massive tax fraud and evasion. A cop was fired for enforcing the law because the Republican criminals and their friends demanded he be fired.

I do not know enough about the targeting of AP reporters’ phone records. This is not a prosecution of the media. Instead, they were trying to find out who was leaking to the AP about the CIA’s secret wars overseas. So this is part of Obama’s war on whistleblowers.

The war on whistleblowers went completely wild under Ronald Reagan, who attacked whistleblowers more than any previous president. It has continued to this day. It was particularly nasty under George Bush and included the outrageous outing of active CIA agents for political purposes. Republican and Democratic Administrations both have gone after whistleblowers in a vicious way.

Republicans screaming about this were utterly silent when George Bush and Ronald Reagan waged all out war against whistleblowers. In addition, Republicans have, up until this point, backed all of Obama’s anti-whistleblower activities.

In fact, they have accused him of being soft of whistleblowers – see the Bradley Manning case, where Republicans have called for Manning to be executed – and the Wikileaks case, where the Republicans have called for Julian Assange to be arrested, sent to the US, tried and executed for treason. They have also called for Assange to be assassinated by a US hit squad. So you see, even if Obama wages a war on whistleblowers, the Republicans support it and even double down on it.

Impeach the President. Seriously?

That’s where the Republicans are going. Rep. Jason Chaffetz could barely keep from giggling at the possibility on CNN yesterday. Even Wolf Blitzer looked a little uncomfortable.

Of course, they want a special prosecutor.

Scott Walker spent his day telling everyone from the La Crosse Tribune to middle-school tour groups that we must appoint a special prosecutor. Guess who’s running for president?

Anyone old enough to remember the nineties knows this can turn ugly fast.

Meanwhile, back in reality, there’s a real scandal taking place: Tens of thousands of kids have been kicked out of preschool. Teachers are being laid off. Meals on Wheels for housebound seniors have been cut.

While GOP consultants across the DC area put Ken Starr back on speed dial, millions of people are suffering from the sequester. The young, the poor and the elderly. Every day, it will get worse.

Real Revolution Versus Fake Revolution

The Syrian Revolution as fake revolution.

I honestly do not think much of this Syrian revolution. Almost all of the revolutionaries are Sunni Muslim Arabs. Few to none of them are Shia, Alawite or Druze Arabs. There are almost no Christians in the ranks. And there are few to no Kurds in the ranks. In fact, the revolutionaries are hostile to all of these groups last time I checked. That’s why those other groups are not signing up. There have been many attacks on Syrian Christians, Shia and Alawites by the revolutionaries. Many from these groups have been kidnapped, beaten, tortured and murdered.

In a city of 50,000, all of the Christians were ethnically cleansed from the city. They received a “leave or die” order from the rebels. Many Syrian churches have been blown up or damaged by the rebels. The Druze are not signing up for the fight, and the Sunni Muslim rebels may not like the Druze very much. No doubt they see them as some sort of heretics or possibly even infidels.

The Syrian Kurds do not like the regime very much, as the regime has not been too kind to them to put it mildly. However, the regime made some huge concessions to the Kurds in recent days, and the regime has now vacated the Kurdish area and the Kurds are more or less in control of their own part of Syria. Why the regime vacated the area, I am not sure, but the Kurds are hostile to the rebels and maybe the regime just felt that the area was not worth fighting for.

A political party which is frankly the Syrian arm of the Turkish PKK has now taken over that part of Syria. The result is that Turkey has threatened to attack and occupy that part of Syria as it is serving as some sort of a PKK base. These threats have not been carried out. The Kurdish government in Iraq has refused to support their brethren in Syria as they are seen as too close to the PKK, and the Iraqi Kurds want to distance themselves from the PKK. The best description of the Syrian Kurds at this point would be to say that they are hostile to both the regime and the rebels. The rebels do not like the Kurds because the Sunni Arab rebels are Arab nationalists and see the Kurds as secessionists.

The revolution has a strongly Islamist character and has had it from the very start. Al Qaeda type groups now form a large part of the rebels. Al Qaeda types from Iraq and hardline Islamists from around the Arab world are going to Syria to fight in the “jihad.” It’s a jihad because they are fighting against the Alawi, who are seen as heretics by many Sunni Muslims. The fight is being manipulated from abroad. The rebels get much of their money and arms from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The Gulf Arabs hate the Syrian regime because it is made up of Alawites, who they see as heretics.

Turkey has also helped the rebels a lot for reasons that are not clear. However, they are Sunni Islamists who have an Alawi type group in their country that they don’t treat very well. Turkey is also trying to be seen as the light among Sunni Muslims and is attempting to gain points with them that way. The United Snakes is also involved because Syria is one of the pillars of the resistance front against the Zionist regime in Israel. Syria and Iran along with Hezbollah and Hamas make up the resistance front at the moment, although the Egyptian regime may be leaning in that direction. Lebanon is also a sworn enemy of Israel, but they are usually not thought of as part of the resistance front.

Iran is listed because they support Hezbollah and Hamas with arms. The Syrian regime helps ferret those arms from Iran to Hezbollah and also gives Hezbollah a lot of arms of its own. In addition, Syria is still a sworn enemy of Israel because Israel occupies Syrian land in the Golan Heights. It’s also said that Syria supports Hamas, but all they do is give refuge to their leaders. Qatar also gives refuge to Hamas leaders and no one talks about that.

Israel also continues to occupy Lebanese territory in the Shebaa Farms and makes all sorts of phony excuses as to why they can’t give it back. One of the excuses is that the land is really Syrian, but Syria says that even if that is true, they don’t want the land, and Lebanon can have it. Israel is such a disgusting country! This occupation is the stated reason for Hezbollah continuing existence. I really don’t see why Israel doesn’t give the land back to Lebanon to get rid of Hezbollah. I don’t get it.

It is true that another issue is three Lebanese villages that Israel conquered in 1948. Israel invaded far south Lebanon during this war and conquered three villages. They ordered all of the Shia Muslims out at gunpoint, and they went to Lebanon as refugees. I am not sure of their status now. The towns are now 100% full of Israeli Jews. Lebanon says she wants those towns back.

If the Syrian regime can be removed, one leg of the Syria – Iran – Hezbollah axis can be eliminated. The new regime will be Sunni Muslim and will be hostile to both Iran and Hezbollah since Iran and Hezbollah have both helped the regime during the war. They would have been hostile to them anyway though because Sunni Muslims in that region are notorious Shia-haters and both the Syrian and Iranian regimes are Shia.

With the new regime in power, Iran would no longer be able to supply Hezbollah via Syria. She might be able to supply them directly, but that might be pretty difficult. Iran would then be even more isolated in the region. Without the support of its main patron, Hezbollah may wither on the vine. Hezbollah has currently moved into Syria to protect some Syrian Shia villages on the border. The Syrian rebels have ordered the Shia residents and Hezbollah both to evacuate these villages. They refused to leave, and there has been some heavy fighting in the area lately. There have been many reports that Iran has advisers in Syria helping the regime. The reports have been hard to validate, but they are probably true.

So the whole reason for the US supporting Syria is part and parcel of US support for the Zionist regime in Israel. It’s just more “USraeli” foreign policy (the two countries can be seen as one merged entity that I call “USreal”).

Prostitution in the Muslim World: A Survey

North Africa (includes Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Egypt): I am not aware of much open prostitution in any of these countries. There is definitely prostitution in Egypt (both male and female – male being much more common!) but I do not think that the female prostitution in places like Cairo is so open. In the rest of the lands, I am not aware of much prostitution at all.

Sahel: I don’t know much about these countries, and I’m not aware of much prostitution there.

Eritrea and Ethiopia: There is some prostitution here, but it is not that open. But these land are 50-50 Muslim-Christian.

Palestine, Jordan, Iraq: Little open prostitution. There was little prostitution under Saddam either. There was a case where Uday had ~300 prostitutes murdered. There is a lot of honor killing in these places too, and that tends to discourage prostitution to say the least.

Syria: There has traditionally been some prostitution in Syria in nightclubs. In recent years, many Iraqi women are working there. But Syria is a very secular society. There is some honor killing here though.

Lebanon: For sure there is prostitution in Lebanon, but how open it is is not known. Lebanon has a huge Christian population that liberalizes things.

Turkey: Apparently there is prostitution in Turkey, but how open it is, I have no idea. Turkey also has  legal pornography and it’s supposedly even on TV late at night. But Turkey is a very secular European type society.

Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Azerbaijan: Prostitution levels and openness are not known, but these are pretty open, Europeanized, secular Muslim societies, and Azerbaijan is Shia.

Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain: My understanding is that prostitution is nearly nonexistent in all of these places, but I stand to be corrected. Anyway, it is certainly not open. There is a lot of honor killing in Yemen.

UAE: There is quite a bit of prostitution in Dubai anyway, but the girls are almost all foreigners, often Europeans or Russians.

Iran: Discussed earlier. There is quite a bit of prostitution in the religious city of Qom sanctioned under the temporary marriage gambit. There is also more than you might think in Tehran, especially in the more rundown outskirts.

The mullahs have been mulling over making prostitution legal under the rationalization of temporary marriage on the grounds that the girls need to be in houses in order to be better protected. Women arrested for prostitution are often sent not to jail or prison but to houses run by women for rehabilitation under a compassionate interpretation of Islam sanctioned by the mullahs. Iranian Shiism believes that Islam must be constantly updated with the times, and the mullahs can rationalize all sorts of accretions under this theory.

Afghanistan: There is some prostitution, but it is certainly not open, and it is quite hidden. But I was always surprised at how much there was, and I wondered how Hinduized Afghan Muslims were.

India: Prostitution in the Indian Muslim community is not known, but it may be as prevalent as in Pakistan.

Bangladesh: Prostitution levels are not known, but they may be on the level of Pakistan. Bangladeshi Muslims are heavily Hinduized, maybe worse than Pakistani even.

Thailand: I understand that prostitution is known among Thai Muslims, and it may be as open there as elsewhere in Thailand.

I have seen photos online of Thai Muslim prostitutes in the South. I know a Thai Muslim woman on a social networking site, and her sexual openness stunned me. She has married a variety of sociopathic Muslim males, typically Arabs. If you look at her public photos, she is acting very dirty in many of them, posing very sexually. There are even some nudes and partial nudes of her in there! But she is very much a Muslim, and there are photos of a Muslim man and teenage boy there, one holding what looks like a bomb and the other holding an automatic weapon. The juxtaposition between her dirty pics, her nudes, her murderous looking Arab lovers and the armed Islamist jihadis was something else!

I conclude that Thai Islam has a lot of pre-Islamic accretions in it, and furthermore that Thai Muslims may be a highly sexualized people, like the rest of the country.

Malaysia: Prostitution levels not known, but may be relatively open. I understand that most of the prostitutes are Chinese though, who are not Muslims.

Indonesia: There is a lot of prostitution here, and it appears to be pretty open. But Indonesian Islam is full of a ton of accretions from local and pre-Islamic traditions. In addition, they are an easy going tropical Asian people who tend to have loose and relaxed attitudes about sexual matters.

Yossi Alpher on the Gaza War

I am reprinting this from the Peace Now site. I do support the efforts of Peace Now in Israel, along with similar efforts by J-Street in the US. In fact, I am on the mailing list of both organizations.

I don’t know who Yossi Alpher is, but I assume he is on the Israeli Left and is associated with Peace Now somehow. As you can see, his line is very Israel-centric, however, I think he is basically correct.

Comments are welcome.

Q. Why did Israel choose the current timing to respond with a major military campaign to rocket attacks from Gaza? Had there been a significant increase in those attacks?

A. In recent months Hamas, after long abdicating the rocket firing to Islamic Jihad and various Salafists, again took the lead in attacking Israel. Not just by rockets, but also through attacks on and through the green line fence into Israel. Some 800 rockets were fired at Israel during 2012 prior to the Israeli response. Repeated Israeli warnings and threats directed toward Hamas were ignored. That’s why this campaign is directed specifically at Hamas and its military leadership.

The timing of Israel’s response probably also has something to do with Israeli elections, though no government minister will acknowledge this. The situation in southern Israel was becoming unbearable for one million people, and both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak undoubtedly saw this as a political liability with elections near. Nor could they postpone this until too close to elections, lest that too become a liability.

Another rationale for the timing could be to place the PLO initiative for United Nations General Assembly recognition, scheduled for Nov. 29, in a different perspective. PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is asking the UN for recognition of a state that includes Gaza, yet he obviously does not control Gaza. Gaza is a warlike quasi-state attacking Israeli civilians–the very opposite of the Palestinian Authority under Abbas.

Q. But if Hamas is launching or consenting to the attacks on Israel, why does it not take into consideration that Israel has a much stronger military capacity? Even with new varieties of rockets, Hamas will never match Israel’s capacity to wreak destruction on the Gaza quasi-state.

Of course Hamas knows Israel is stronger. But it also knows that Israel won’t take the one measure that would close Hamas down once and for all: re-conquering the Gaza Strip, thereby angering the entire world and placing nearly two million civilians under direct Israeli rule. Hamas also likes to play the underdog–guerilla or “resistance” style. It has tens of thousands of cheap rockets to attack the Israeli civilian population. And its fighters ostensibly do not fear martyrdom.

But most of all, Hamas feels empowered to challenge Israel by the tacit support of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Hamas–the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood–sees itself, not without reason, as the vanguard of the rise to power of the Brotherhood in the Arab Middle East by democratic vote. Hamas won its vote in early 2006, then took over Gaza by force in mid-2007.

Hamas expects its fellow Brothers, led by Egypt, to support it as it fights “their” war. It has been trying for months to persuade Egypt to recognize Gaza as an independent or quasi-independent Palestinian state and to shower economic and military aid on it. But Egypt–even Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood–is wary of taking on Gaza as a protectorate and, in effect, releasing Israel of its “responsibilities” toward the Palestinians.

In this sense, this little war is very much about Egypt. Israel and the United States are testing whether Egypt under the Brotherhood will behave responsibly and opt for peace and quiet by demanding of Hamas a ceasefire, so the Egyptian leadership can set about collecting the billions of dollars it needs to keep Egypt afloat economically.

Hamas is testing to what extent Egypt will back it up with threats against Israel, possibly even by radically downgrading relations with Israel. On Saturday, Egyptian PM Kandil led a delegation into Gaza, where he offered lavish verbal support but promised only medical supplies. He apparently also began discussing a ceasefire.

Q. Indeed, aren’t Egypt and the international community working for a ceasefire?

A. The Egyptians, Turks, Qataris and Hamas met on Cairo in Sunday precisely toward this end. According to some reports, a senior Israeli official was also there. All four of these Muslim actors, it should be noted, represent the vanguard of political Islam in the Middle East.

The Turks and Qataris aren’t Muslim Brothers but are close to the movement, with the Turks casting themselves as a role model for Arab regimes and Qatar using its purse-strings to play an independent role that has lately included a royal visit to Gaza and generous financial aid.

Israel and Egypt are also in close touch with the Obama administration and European leaders regarding a ceasefire. President Obama has reportedly placed heavy pressure on Egypt’s President Morsi to rein in Hamas. France’s foreign minister was in Israel today. And United Nations Secretary General Ban ki-Moon is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Tuesday. All are apparently urging Netanyahu to avoid a ground war in favor of a quick ceasefire.

Q. What positions are Israel and Hamas presenting to all these mediators regarding ceasefire conditions?

A. Broadly speaking, Israel wants a verifiable Hamas commitment to cease all attacks from Gaza–meaning to police other, more extreme organizations’ activities as well as its own–and close down its arms importing and indigenous arms production projects.

Hamas reportedly wants an end to all aspects of the Israeli blockade of the Strip as well as an end to Israeli preventive security measures on the Gaza side of the border fence. Presumably, both Israel and Hamas are making security and other demands on Egypt as well. And each side wants to end up in a situation where it proclaims victory.

Q. Are these demands achievable?

A. Israel is backing up its demands with escalation. Most recently, it expanded its list of targets for air and naval attacks to include Hamas government institutions (after Hamas fired a rocket in the direction of Jerusalem and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh claimed they were aiming for the Knesset) as well as rocket-firing positions and other military institutions placed by Hamas deliberately in the midst of the Gazan civilian population.

By Sunday, Israel was calling up large numbers of reserves and threatening a ground operation.

Hamas was responding with rockets and bravado. Morale appeared to be high in Gaza, uplifted by clips of Tel Avivians running for cover (and reflecting a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes Israel tick; but that’s another story). If matters continue this way, at some point, inevitably, a large number of Gazan civilians could become casualties, thus embarrassing Israel and bringing down upon it heavy regional and international pressure.

Hence it’s almost certain that at the end of the day, one way or another, this will end in yet another limited ceasefire that falls short of both sides’ aspirations.

Q. Some Israelis argue that Hamas military leader Ahmed Jaabari should not have been targeted in Israel’s opening salvo; that he was engaged in an attempt to achieve a long-term ceasefire and was a figure of moderation.

A. Obviously, if you oppose the entire notion of targeted assassination with its heavy moral ramifications, the Hamas military leader should not have been targeted. But a succession of Israeli (and American) governments have adopted this tactic and consider it both effective and acceptable in wartime.

As for Jaabari himself, even as he was ostensibly involved in ceasefire discussions he was sponsoring escalated Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians and building up a murderous arsenal for use against Israeli civilians. In my view, he was fair game and his death a genuine blow to Hamas.

Q. Apropos the likely outcome, how is this operation, dubbed Pillar of Cloud or Pillar of Defense, different in its objectives and its operational profile from the two previous IDF offensives against neighboring non-state actors, the Second Lebanon War in summer 2006 and Cast Lead in 2008-9?

A. Apropos the names of the operation, note that Pillar of Cloud is a murky name reminiscent of the biblical “pillar of fire”, while Pillar of Defense is a more PR-conscious name for use by Israeli public diplomacy. So far, “Pillar” has avoided use of ground forces or artillery, obviously in the hope of reducing highly problematic Palestinian civilian casualties. Air force bombing and rocketing techniques, especially by drones, have been refined admirably toward that same end.

This operation, accordingly, opened with the targeted assassination of a single prominent Hamas military figure, Jaabari, whereas Cast Lead opened with a kind of “shock and awe” approach that featured a controversial attack on a parade of Hamas civilian police.

Both Pillar of Defense and the Second Lebanon War opened with a largely successful attempt by the Israel Air Force to eliminate the enemy’s stores of long-range rockets so as to limit to the greatest extent possible the geographic extent of the enemy’s rocket offensive.

Another difference concerns war aims. Cast Lead of 2008-9 was presented to the Israeli public on several occasions as an attempt to eliminate Hamas rule from Gaza. This corresponded with the declared aim of the economic blockade of Gaza that began in 2007.

Not just the Kadima government of the day harbored these aims; prominent Labor supporters from the political left at one point petitioned Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Barak to go all the way, re-conquer Gaza and reinstall the PLO in power there (at the tip of Israeli bayonets, thereby totally discrediting the PLO) in the hope of facilitating a peace process.

Now, war aims are ostensibly more realistic. Accordingly to Barak, then as now defense minister, the objective this time is to cease rocket fire, eliminate Hamas militants and weaponry, and protect Israeli civilians. In other words, Hamas can remain as long as it stops attacking Israelis. Personally, I doubt that under current circumstances even these objectives can be attained and maintained over any period of time.

On the truly positive side, this operation takes place under the “cover” of the Iron Dome anti-rocket missile system, which has effectively reduced Hamas’ capacity to really hurt the Israeli civilian rear. This gives IDF war planners breathing room, relatively free of public pressure, to try to achieve their objectives. Accordingly, it may be said to actually relieve the IDF of the need to attack aggressively and seek retribution for Israeli losses.

Amir Peretz, who was minister of defense during the Second Lebanon War and bore much of the criticism for that campaign’s seeming failure, deserves great credit for having insisted on developing Iron Dome to protect Israeli civilians from rocket attack despite the opposition of the traditional security community with its emphasis on offense rather than defense.

Peretz, former mayor of Sderot and former head of the Histadrut labor union, showed how a “civilian” defense minister with a strong socioeconomic background can see things differently, to the benefit of the overall war effort. And two American presidents, Bush 43 and Obama, deserve credit for having helped finance the Iron Dome project.

One final and ironic comparison: the Second Lebanon War, waged by Peretz and PM Ehud Olmert, was roundly criticized in Israel for its indecisive outcome, with Hezbollah, Iran, and the Arab public trumpeting claims of victory over Israel. Yet since that war ended more than six years ago, Hezbollah has not lifted a finger to attack Israel–an apparent tribute to the deterrent success of Israel’s war effort.

In contrast, Cast Lead was seen as a triumph that rehabilitated Israel’s deterrent profile. Yet its deterrent effect lasted barely a few months. Of course the two movements, Hezbollah and Hamas, are different entities operating under very different circumstances, particularly with regard to the “Arab spring”: Hezbollah supports Syria in opposing the wave of Sunni Islamist revolution; Hamas is part of that wave.

Q. Apropos Hezbollah and Syria, are they connected to the current Gaza war?

A. Neither Syria nor Hezbollah has in any way intimated they would intervene to support Hamas. Here it’s helpful to recall that Hamas has, in recent months, broken with Syria and Iran and moved into the triumphant Muslim Brotherhood orbit with its fellow Sunnis.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is also firing rockets from Gaza and at times opposes Hamas’ weak attempts to exercise control over it, does retain links to Iran and Syria. But PIJ is not a major factor, and the only relevant question connected with it is whether and when Hamas will behave in Gaza like the sovereign it aspires to be and take control over all aggressors there.

All in all, at the regional level, the current Gaza conflict is about how the emerging Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Gaza, Egypt and North Africa will deal with Israel. At least until now, it is not about Iran and Syria.

Q. Your assessment seems to reflect a sense of pessimism regarding the long-term effect of anything Israel does against Hamas.

A. Neither Israel nor anyone else confronting a non-state actor motivated by an extremist Islamic outlook has found a viable strategy for dealing with it. Look again at Barak’s war objectives (above) and note that they are tactical, not strategic. Israel has to confront the fact that it has no effective strategy for dealing with Hamas: economic blockade has failed; re-occupying the Strip would be hugely counterproductive.

The only strategy Israel has not tried is talking to Hamas, which in any case refuses to talk to Israel and proffers outlandish conditions for agreeing merely to a permanent ceasefire (e.g., return to Israel of five million Palestinian refugees). I don’t know whether such a strategy of engagement, with the aim of long-term coexistence, has any chance of success, but I still feel it is worth a try.

Note, though, that to engage Hamas directly without preconditions means abandoning the “Oslo” conditions agreed with the United States and European Union. It also means, in effect, telling the PLO in the West Bank, Israel’s peace partner, that it is no longer understood to represent Gaza, thereby implying a three-state reality or solution and not a two-state solution.

And as noted, such a gambit could very possibly fail, if only due to Hamas’ out-and-out rejection of all the elements of peaceful recognition and coexistence established by 20 years of the Oslo process.

With the spread of political Islam on Israel’s borders, an attempt at engagement with Hamas may be the best one can hope for by way of a strategy. Obviously, Israel’s political leadership, left as well as right, is not there.

Q. Finally, now that rocket attacks have reached the Tel Aviv area where you live, what are your thoughts?

A. First of all, civilian morale is extremely high. I’ve taken shelter outside my home twice, in each case ending up meeting interesting people for exactly two minutes and going on my way; three grandchildren in Tel Aviv appear to be taking this in stride. But in the Tel Aviv area, the few rocket attacks thus far are more a source of curiosity than anything else.

In the south, the accumulated trauma of, for those closest to Gaza, 12 (!!) years of rocket attacks is something else entirely. Thus not surprisingly, Israelis from the northern Negev attach extremely high hopes to this campaign, egged on by government rhetoric to the effect that this is the war against Hamas to end all attacks forever.

As we’ve seen, that is probably not a realistic aspiration. Already, after over 1,000 targets have been attacked in Gaza, more than 51 Palestinians and three Israelis killed, and at least 270 rockets successfully intercepted, Israelis are inevitably asking where this is going.

Arabs Brought Farming to Europe

In the year 7,500, farming began in Germany. Recent DNA studies show that the farming began because migrants from the Golden Crescent (basically Iraqis) moved west through Turkey and SE Europe and the Carpathians to Germany, bringing farming with them. The superior advanced Arabs taught the inferior backwards Nordics how to grow food. They also left traces of their genes in Germany and along the route back to Turkey.

This was the beginning of the West, and the stimulation came from the Middle East.

In addition, I know that going back to around 12,000 YBP, Europeans resembled modern day Arabs both phentoypically and genetically. So if you go back far enough, Euros were just a bunch of Arabs. Or alternately, Arabs were the first Europeans. I told some Arabs that, and they said, “Of course we were. We all know that.”

Tell that to a White nationalist and watch him go ballistic!

Pepperoncini on Islam

This is a critique of Islam that was written by Pepperoncini, a commenter on the site. I agree with his critique of Islam to a large degree. It is simply correct.

The problem with the solution as he sees it of Islam being taken over by a secular Ataturk type figure is that this has been tried many times before. To this very day, there are many such experiments going on. They always or almost always fail.

They failed in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and the Palestinian territories, and are failing at the moment in Syria, the Southern Philippines, Thailand and Nigeria. They failed in 1979 in Iran, in 1989 in Afghanistan and are failing at the moment in the Caucasus, especially in Chechnya. Even in Turkey, where Ataturk set the standard for secular Islam, it is failing as Turkey becomes an increasingly Islamic state.

Secular Islam results in purist Islamist revolutionaries either armed or not who reliably seek to overthrow the non-Islamic secular regime in favor of a more Islamic and purified one. This typical trend has been going on since the beginning of Islam and there doesn’t seem to be any reason to think it is slowing down or losing steam. Muslim countries are becoming increasingly Islamic, not more and more secular, in our modern era.

Of course Islam seeks to dominate everywhere it goes. This is the nature of Islam as perhaps the most supremacist religion of them all. This is no great shakes where Muslims are a tiny minority, but countries with large non-Muslim minorities should be suspicious of their Muslim minorities at least enough to realize that they have a supremacist mindset.

The Arabic chauvinism of Arabs and of Islam itself has long been noted, especially by South Asian Muslims who claim they are given short shrift by Arab Muslims. For a long time, the Koran was not even translated in non-Arabic religions – it could only be read in Arabic. Indonesian Muslims have had similar complaints.

Arab Muslims’ racist attitudes towards Black African Muslims is one of the main reasons why Islam is losing 3-4 million followers a year in sub-Saharan Africa – Arabs won’t invest in mosques and proselytizing in the region, so the religion dies.

One example of the Arabization of non-Arab Muslims can be seen in the Pashtuns, many of whose customs were regarded in the earliest ethnographies as “Arabized.” In particular, honor killings and the idea that the tribe or nation’s esteem and honor revolves around women upholding a chaste sexual ideal was an idea imported from the Arabs. Extreme hospitality may have been one too.

Of course Islam is patriarchal. It is perhaps one of the most patriarchal religions of them all.

However, it is not true that women are treated worse under Islam than anywhere else. Women are treated by far the worst in South Asia under regimes whose religions vary from Hinduism to Islam.

In South Asia, it doesn’t seem to matter to a woman if she lives under a Muslim or Hindu religion – she is treated equally bad under one as the other. This must be seen as a South Asian cultural regionalism that transcends even major religions. The South Asian region has simply inherited a common culture which treats women the worst on Earth.

It may well be the case that this culture has its roots in Hinduism. If it does, this implies that Hinduism is the most misogynist religion and culture on Earth. Is this true? I am not aware of the misogynist nature of Hinduism or Hindu culture, but apparently it exists.

It is certainly the case that the pre-Islamic cultures of converted Muslim countries have been ignored and given short shrift. Worse than that, the era preceding Islam is referred to a Jahiliyya or the Age or Ignorance. Hence it is treated as if it did not even exist. It was this mindset that was beyond that destruction of the Buddhas by the Taliban.

A modernized Islam is not going to happen. Islam is uncompromising and intolerant of other cultures. It seeks domination over all and has never changed in this outlook whereas Christianity in the West became tolerant of others.

The world as we know it will end before Islam becomes tolerant because to do so is to discard core Islamic beliefs of the innate inferiority of other cultures and disregard the inherent rightness and supremacy of Islam.

Unless you envision a secular pan-Islamic power elite that adheres to a secular form of government like the one Ataturk instilled in Turkey, I very much doubt Islam is going to become tolerant in the near future. The problem is an openly and meaningfully secular government is the antithesis of Islam because you would have to divorce Sharia law from Islam to achieve this.

Islam is very attractive to patriarchies and base male instinct because it empowers the males. So how confident are you that Muslim society will move away from this base instinct to an enlightened one adopted in the West?

Some say Islam is not a bad thing. Islam is a bad thing for the non-Muslims who do not want their society to regress to some anti-humanitarian tribal patriarchal past.

The most aggressive and expansionist cultures are patriarchies. Islam is Arab culture forced onto non-Arabs, so of course it is a bad thing for non-Arabs when Muslim men (and women) are the vanguard of Arab cultural hegemony.

Islam does control the media, judiciary, law and damn near everything in many countries of the world. The majority of these places have non-Islamic heritage, and were it not for Arabs imposing their culture (Islam is Arab culture) on the people they conquered, these societies would have kept their pre-Islamic beliefs.

Islamic nations are pushing towards international blasphemy laws and want to curtail criticism of Islam. The Saudis fund and export their virulent religious ideology.

Muslims aren’t a race but certain nationalities are not going to be Muslims (Japanese, Swedes, English, Papuans, Kiwis etc..) while others are (Saudis, Pakistanis, Indonesians etc..). It is racial in nature because it demands the worship of a specific ethnic group and elevates the language of a specific ethnic group as God’s language.

Add to that the fact that Arabic was used to erase the identity of non-Arabs. There have been Berber riots in North Africa against Arabic domination.

Islam is still Arab culture, how can it be not when Arabians invented it?

Lets see now:

Allah is the name for god used by desert tribes in Arabia. Muhammad is an Arabian name and figure. The Quran was written by Arabians in Arabic. Mecca is in Saudi Arabia, an Arab state, and all able bodied and financially able Muslims are required to perform at least one pilgrimage to it. Muslims, be they Arab or non Arabs, bend over and pray to an Arab and in the direction of Mecca, an Arab city.

Western colonialism went with the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other, and Arab imperialists from the Peninsula went with the sword in one hand and the Quran in the other.

Islam seeks to dominate the world through conversion, petrodollars that bribe and fund Islamic goals and demographics.

Graph Proves Americans Are Some of the Stupidest People on Earth

Click to enlarge. Of advanced industrialized countries, Americans are some of the stupidest people of all, as shown by this graph on belief in evolution.

This shocking poll shows that even among White people, Americans are surprisingly fucktarded. The only people dumber than Moronicans on the chart were Turks, which shouldn’t be surprising. Turkish hostility to evolution may derive from their Islamic religion.

I believe that Islam is formally opposed to evolution, but most Muslims are probably so uneducated that they aren’t even aware of the question enough to debate the subject in the first place. Cyprus is also very low on the scale, probably because of all of the dumb Turks squatting there.

Obviously, the reason that Moronicans are the dumbest Whites of all is because they are so conservative and also because they are so religious. Moronicans are more religious than any other group on the chart except maybe Turks. They are also much more rightwing than any other group on the chart except maybe Turks.

Turks are just as rightwing and religious as Americans, and possibly even more so. And the chart shows that Turks are actually quite a bit stupider than Moronicans, as if that were even possible. As you can see, the more conservative and/or religious a nation gets, the stupider and more fucktarded it becomes.

Both conservatism and religion are opposed to reason and science. This is why they so often go together. We discussed conservative hostility to science in another post. Conservatives only support that science that supports their rightwing dogma. If science doesn’t back up their rightwing crap, then the science is simply wrong.

There is also a lot of data out there that shows that conservatism is opposed to reason itself, possibly by its very nature. I will get into that in another post.

“Libya – Setback for Anti-Imperialist Struggle,” by Peter Tobin

Peter Tobin is a sometime contributor to this site. Unlike me, Peter is a real Communist through and through. Right now, he is in Nepal working with the Maoists there, spending much of his time at party headquarters. There is a lot going on there right now, but I have not been writing about it much.

Unlike Peter, I’m just a socialist. As Communists are part of the wide spectrum of the Left, we more or less support them, but we also support the rest of the Left too, all the way to social democracy and even US-style liberalism. I figure we are all one big happy family.

LIBYA – SETBACK FOR ANTI-IMPERIALIST STRUGGLE

Gaddafi, lynched like Saddam Hussein, whatever his twists and turns of the last ten years, redeemed himself at the end, by dying fighting imperialism. The record shows that over the 42 years of his regime, he used Libya’s oil wealth against Western Imperialism, led by the US and its local military outpost – the white Zionist colony, Israel.

He utilized ‘terrorist’ methods that Arab militants found was the only military avenue of resistance open to them, a position that no Communist would criticize; it is for oppressed people to choose their way of struggle, according to their circumstances.

Therefore Gaddafi’s Libya bank-rolled many Palestinian resistance groups, and for decades was the most militant Arab leader on the Palestinian question, among Saudi Arabian lip-servers, Jordanian vacillators, or outright Egyptian traitors like Sadat and Mubarak after him.
He also came to see the African dimension, and uniquely for an Arab leader substantially funded the Organization of African Unity (OAU); an act of solidarity with the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa, a recognition that their sufferings under Western imperialism were no different from those of the Arab masses – genocide, dispossession, theft of natural resources and brutal colonial or neo-colonial rule.

Gaddafi was also a strong financial and political supporter of the African National Congress (ANC) when the West labeled it a ‘Communist terror’ group. The fact that the first person Mandela visited outside South Africa was Gaddafi shows the depth of his, and the ANC’s, gratitude. He will be mourned there as a mark of their continuing respect.

ROMANTIC & RUTHLESS NATIONALIST

Gaddafi’s attempt, as a devout Muslim, to counter the cultural imperialism of the West led to a radical interpretation of the Koran, which saw the ‘Ummah” (the body of the striving faithful) as the Arab masses desiring/requiring socialism. Hence the ‘Jamayriah,’ proposed in the ‘Green Book’ – an Islamist parody, a riposte and rival to Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’ and ‘Red Revolution.’

He furthermore thought, until the millennium, at least, that he could build ‘Green socialism in one country,’ staving off imperialist designs on Libya’s oil wealth and the deadly enmity of all the pro-Western Arab regimes, led by Wahhabi Saudi Arabia. His state tried to mobilize the masses through popular devolving committees. However, he had no formal role within the power structure, acting as a last ‘adviser/guru’ issues and policy.

RESISTANCE HOME & ABROAD

Libyan society, with a population of around 4 million, has not moved very far beyond four major ethnic groups into a cohesive voluntary civil society. It never was a nation, but always a collection of disputatious tribes, unified by Islam, if little else.

Hence, it was easily overcome by the modern industrial Italian state, looking for its ‘place in the sun,’ building an overseas empire with a series of incursions into Libya and subsequently Abyssinia, and in the former achieving imperial status in 1934. (Like clan Ireland fell to Strongbow & Henry II in 1169/71, and Native Americans fell to the white European colonizers on the North-American continent.)

The urban centres, mainly Benghazi and Tripoli, have a substantial free-market private sector with bourgeois and petit-bourgeois strata swollen by subsidies from oil revenues, and a largely Western educated, professional, media and technological elite, many of whom are culturally and ideologically hegemonized by bourgeois ideas, mores, and values.

This class has been prominent in all imperialist backed populist movements of the last few years – Ukraine, Lebanon, Iran, Burma, to list a few. They hang their hats on the ‘Human Rights’ and ‘Democracy’ banners against media demonised, ‘authentic’ villains , straight from Holly/Bollywood central casting.

Well – Gaddafi, in this gallery of Western ‘baddies’ was the baddest of them all! When Bin Laden was still wondering which of his father’s wives was his mother, Muhammar was Number One hate figure in Western media circles.

ECCENTRICITIES & ENTHUSIASMS

Take his relations with UK governments; he became convinced in the 1980′s that the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) was fighting a struggle of national liberation against British imperialism in the six counties of Ulster, one that reignited in 1969. I don’t intend to go into the pros and cons of this issue here, but the result was Libya that provided the PIRA with guns and most importantly, the new advanced Czech, plastic dynamite – Semtex.

This was a key factor in keeping the war going for another decade. PIRA did not bomb the million Protestants, loyal to Britain, into a republic, but they did bomb them to the negotiating table, as was graphically demonstrated by the effect of the campaign launched against the British homeland; the biggest attack devastating the entire square mile of London’s financial centre and seriously shaking the morale of the British Establishment.

Adams and Morrison would not be sitting on the Northern Ireland Executive were it not for his decisive, practical assistance, and the Provisional Sein Fein, both political and military wings, are also in his debt and owe his family condolences.

Another example – a tiny Trotskyite sect – the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) convinced Gaddafi that it was the authentic voice of the British Revolution, and seizure of state power was certain within a few years. All that was needed was a propaganda machine to convey ‘Bolshevik-Leninist-Trotskyist truth’ to the awaiting proletarian masses, eager to get on with the revolution by sweeping away their existing ‘reformist,’ ‘Stalinist’ leadership!

Gaddafi gave these buffoons millions, enabling them to produce a glossy daily newspaper, Newsline, something the entire British left wing movement, vastly outnumbering this semi-religious playgroup, could only match with the CPGB’s revisionist, economist, humanist, peacenik, plodding ‘Morning Star’, itself topped up by Moscow money in all events.

I cite these to show the weakness of charismatic leader systems – individuals who can act impulsively, emotionally, quixotically, often misguidedly and with impunity.

BONAPARTISM IN ARAB SOCIETIES

Certainly the cult of personality plays a progressive role in certain situations, the cult around Gaddafi, that caused him to become such a hate-figure in Western ruling, and thence through to popular circles, was because he stood up to the Americans/Zionists in Palestine, their stooges in the Arab League, and the West via OPEC to secure better prices for oil producers.

When you are so reviled by the Evil Empires of the West, then you must be doing something right?

But the truth is that the steam ran out of his ‘Green Revolution’ years ago, a national identity was never truly forged, with rural remaining tribal, and urban compromised by the developed world’s bourgeois culture – ‘psychologically colonized’ – as Franz Fanon, the formidable Algerian Marxist, put it, an ideological comprador class.

This class encompasses those successfully duped into believing that Western bourgeois democracy and capitalism express universal human values, demonstrating such a circle of perfection, as to constitute, in the words of the right-wing American ideologue, Fukuyama, parodying Hegel, the ‘end of history’.

Whereas Communists argue that Western, specifically Anglo-Saxon, global command, is a purely transitory, historical contingency, a stage like feudalism to be transcended, as Mao said, in the dialectical ‘action and reaction’ that has marked human society from pre-history.

Make no mistake, from General Ataturk, (four years after he kicked the bejasus out of the British ANZAC Dardanelles invasion) and the Young Turk movement, establishing modern, secular Turkey in 1919 out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, to the Baathist secular socialist message of Aflaq in Syria, to the great Colonel Nasser, and also to the comparatively long-lived Baathist-type regimes of Syria, Algeria and Iraq – all were genuine anti-imperialists, who achieved much for their societies.

Syria is ‘last man standing’ and the next immediate target for the imperialists and Zionists. Where it not for these regimes, the Palestinian cause would have been completely lost, and Lebanon would have been Balkanized. That is why they have incurred the enmity of the American-led West; it is simply a question of settling geopolitical accounts hiding behind the flag of ‘Human Rights’ – ‘Liberty’ – ‘Freedom’ and ‘democracy’.

But, as with charismatic systems, military ones, however progressive, have limitations, as there is ultimately no authority, institutional or popular, to which they are answerable. The reason it occurred in the Arab world was because the army was the only modern institution in society, equipped, not only with access to superior killing equipment, but with modern linguistic, cultural and political influences.

From Lenin’s support for Ataturk, against the imperialist 1919 Versailles carve-up of the Middle East, Communists have supported these progressive anti-imperialist struggles, while recognizing the limitations outlined above, and their often explicit anti-Communism. The fact is these regimes have faded and crumbled, under the pressure from growing Western economic and military post-1945 superiority.

They have, and are, being picked off one-by-one. Gaddafi is just the latest, demonstrating that these forces can no longer carry forward the struggle against imperialism – the dog has barked, but the caravan has moved on. In this century, only revolutionary Communism can successfully challenge imperialism, because it is the only polity and ideology that recognizes the primacy of the people and unleashes their historical potential.

Like Baathism, of which he is a Islamist mutation, the road ran out for Gaddafi; his desperate attempts to make peace with Western imperialists, get rid of his ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction,’ accept responsibility for Lockerbie, etc and avoid Saddam’s fate, have come to naught.

That’s the flexibility of the bourgeois democratic system – one day Tony Blair will come and hug you, another day one of his replacements will come and kill you (and your children – for good measure).

His Libya, like Saddam’s Iraq, was trashed and bombed, only the lies and the military modalities were different – against the former – to save the world from ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction” and latter – to save civilians from being massacred by a ‘evil regime’, in the hands of a certifiable ‘lunatic.’ The euphemism ‘humanitarian mission’ covers military aggression and invasion.

Both were lies based on the strategy of ‘Liberal Interventionism,’ another euphemism, propounded following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, that abandoned the prohibition enacted in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years War in Europe against invading countries whose regimes you do not approve in order to replace them with more amenable ones.

The UN mandate to ‘protect civilians’ by enforcing a ‘no-fly zone’ did not sanction regime change, arming opposition forces, giving those forces close air support or assassinating the Head of State. NATO’s decisive intervention even exceeded the bounds of trans-national bourgeois jurisprudence with, among others, Gareth Evans, the co-chair of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty condemning the aggression, stating it was not allowed for under the explicit legal terms of the mandate.

This time also, America agreed the job be sub-let out to its junior partners-in-crime; principally Britain and France. The Secret Services of all NATO states were active in promoting the civil war, by arming and financially supporting a plethora of tribal, Islamic and comprador opposition groups who have they have shown themselves to be such an undisciplined, murderous Quisling rabble that they would not have succeeded without the sustained brutal NATO air assault.

Even so, we will see if Libyan patriots take Colonel Muhammar Gaddafi’s death as the end of hostilities? We will see if Gaddfiism has left any deep roots in Libyan society, or whether, like his ashes, it is blown away into the desert sands. He is probably the last effective member of a tough breed of nationalist Arab Bonapartist leaders who made history in the 20th century. The specific circumstances under which this genus flourished no longer apply, because imperialism is extinguishing its conditions of existence.

Successful Arab resistance, however, does continue, as Hamas and Hezbollah have shown, and while they are nominally Muslim organizations, albeit of Sunni and Shiite dispensations respectively, they are nonetheless closer to being genuine mass movements drawn from their peoples, and they are giving the Zionist/fascist US/Israeli expansionists a military run for their money.

WAR CRIMES FOR OIL

Like Iraq, this is about oil; it is about securing a crucial natural resource, which enables a decadent, gluttonous, wasteful consumer-capitalist, commodity-obsessed, Western society to continue dancing on the edge of a volcano at the expense of the rest of the World.

To a secondary extent, it is about the constant need, in an economy with a huge military-industrial complex, to test rapidly evolving military equipment on a real enemy – the more defenceless the better. War is continuous under imperialism, and the US leads the way as chief warmonger. Now it is even a great video game for the militarily-minded armchair warrior retard.

The French philosopher Baudrillard said of the 1990 attack on Iraq, it was: “a virtual reality war” designed for a society, with a popular culture saturated by violent imagery and corrupted by generations of imperial slavery, genocide and brutality against the peoples outside the ‘First-World’ heartlands, and with the technological capacity to participate and gloat in the death and suffering of peoples in far-away lands, without in any way suffering retribution, or even the threat of it. (Drones watching Drones?)

The German Communist playwright Brecht in ‘The Three Penny Opera,’ has a policeman and a criminal reminisce about the great times they had serving in the British Army on the Indian sub-continent:

(German)                          (Eng. trans.)
“und es begegnete,                “and when they met
Inhnen ‘ne neue Rasse             a new race
‘ne braune oder blasé,            a brown, or a white one
Dann machen sie vielleicht        They’d probably make
Daraus ihr Beefsteak Tartar       Mincemeat outta them.”

NATO’s war crime against the Libyan people, however dressed up in modern ‘PR-speak,’ is another blood-soaked imperial adventure, driven by greed and treachery, where the flags of the NATO aggressors against the Libyan people are better described as butchers’ aprons, and the so-called ‘liberators’ of Libya are no more than imperialist running dogs, (with the exception among anti-Gaddafi forces being the Jihadists who have their own anti-Western combined Anti-Arab secularist/heretic agenda.)

Finally, Gaddafi’s brutal termination shows again that the default position against Western gangster imperialism, however and wherever it is manifest, is People’s War. Between the international proletariat and the bourgeoisie there can be stalemate, realignment, defeat or victory– but never compromise or agreement.

1) I have not discussed the events in Libya in relation to its distinct Maghreb identity within the Arab nation, comprising the states across North Africa; Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia. Even here, Gaddaffi’s Islamic faith make him stand out among the leaders who emerged in the anti-colonial struggles of mid-century. Ben Barka, Ben Bella, Bourguiba &c. were all secular cosmopolitan civilian politicians. The best authority on this is the Marxist-Leninist political economist Samir Amin.

2) There is no reference on the Libyan civil war in relation to the ‘Arab Spring’, because I do not think there is homogeneity among the recent regional upsurges. In this light, I think the Libyan situation is uniquely important (even from its next-door neighbor, Tunisia), as it closes a chapter on an historical period of resistance to imperialist hegemony in the Middle East. Communists can draw precise lessons from it.

Does Multilingualism Equal Separatism?

Repost from the old site.

Sorry for the long post, readers, but I have been working on this piece off and on for months now. It’s not something I just banged out. For one thing, this is the only list that I know of on the Net that lists all of the countries of the world and shows how many languages are spoken there in an easy to access format. Not even Wikipedia has that (yet).

Whether or not states have the right to secede is an interesting question. The libertarian Volokh Conspiracy takes that on in this nice set of posts. We will not deal with that here; instead, we will take on the idea that linguistic diversity automatically leads to secession.

There is a notion floating around among fetishists of the state that there can be no linguistic diversity within the nation, as it will lead to inevitable separatism. In this post, I shall disprove that with empirical data. First, we will list the states in the world, along with how many languages are spoken in that state.

States with a significant separatist movement are noted with an asterisk. As you can see if you look down the list, there does not seem to be much of a link between multilingualism and separatism. There does seem to be a trend in that direction in Europe, though.

Afterward, I will discuss the nature of the separatist conflicts in many of these states to try to see if there is any language connection. In most cases, there is little or nothing there.

I fully expect the myth of multilingualism = separatism to persist after the publication of this post, unfortunately.

St Helena                        1
British Indian Ocean Territories 1
Pitcairn Island                  1
Estonia                          1
Maldives                         1
North Korea                      1
South Korea                      1
Cayman Islands                   1
Bermuda                          1
Belarus                          1
Martinique                       2
St Lucia                         2
St Vincent & the Grenadines      2
Barbados                         2
Virgin Islands                   2
British Virgin Islands           2
Gibraltar                        2
Antigua and Barbuda              2
Saint Kitts and Nevis            2
Montserrat                       2
Anguilla                         2
Marshall Islands                 2
Cuba                             2
Turks and Caicos                 2
Guam                             2
Tokelau                          2
Samoa                            2
American Samoa                   2
Niue                             2
Jamaica                          2
Cape Verde Islands               2
Icelandic                        2
Maltese                          2
Maltese                          2
Vatican State                    2
Haiti                            2
Kiribati                         2
Tuvalu                           2
Bahamas                          2
Puerto Rico                      2
Kyrgyzstan                       3
Rwanda                           3
Nauru                            3
Turkmenistan                     3
Luxembourg                       3
Monaco                           3
Burundi                          3
Seychelles                       3
Grenada                          3
Bahrain                          3
Tonga                            3
Qatar                            3
Kuwait                           3
Dominica                         3
Liechtenstein                    3
Andorra                          3
Reunion                          3
Dominican Republic               3
Netherlands Antilles             4
Northern Mariana Islands         4
Palestinian West Bank & Gaza     4
Palau                            4
Mayotte                          4
Cyprus*                          4
Bosnia and Herzegovina*          4
Slovenia and Herzegovina*        4
Swaziland                        4
Sao Tome and Principe            4
Guadalupe                        4
Saudi Arabia                     5
Cook Islands                     5
Latvia                           5
Lesotho                          5
Djibouti                         5
Ireland                          5
Moldova                          5
Armenia                          6
Mauritius                        6
Lebanon                          6
Mauritania                       6
Croatia                          6
Kazakhstan                       7
Kazakhstan                       7
Albania                          7
Portugal                         7
Uzbekistan                       7
Sri Lanka*                       7
United Arab Emirates             7
Comoros                          7
Belize                           8
Tunisia                          8
Denmark                          8
Yemen                            8
Morocco*                         9
Austria                          9
Jordan                           9
Macedonia                        9
Tajikistan                       9
French Polynesia                 9
Gambia                           9
Belgium                          9
Libya                            9
Fiji                             10
Slovakia                         10
Ukraine                          10
Egypt                            11
Bulgaria                         11
Norway                           11
Poland                           11
Serbia and Montenegro            11
Eritrea                          12
Georgia*                         12
Finland*                         12
Switzerland*                     12
Hungary*                         12
United Kingdom*                  12
Mongolia                         13
Spain                            13
Somalia*                         13
Oman                             13
Madagascar                       13
Malawi                           14
Equatorial Guinea                14
Mali                             14
Azerbaijan                       14
Japan                            15
Syria*                           15
Romania*                         15
Sweden*                          15
Netherlands*                     15
Greece                           16
Brunei                           17
Algeria                          18
Micronesia                       18
East Timor                       19
Zimbabwe                         19
Niger                            21
Singapore                        21
Cambodia                         21
Iraq*                            21
Guinea-Bissau                    21
Taiwan                           22
Bhutan                           24
Sierra Leone                     24
South Africa                     24
Germany                          28
Namibia                          28
Botswana                         28
France                           29
Liberia                          30
Israel                           33
Italy                            33
Guinea                           34
Turkey*                          34
Senegal                          36
Bangladesh                       39
New Caledonia                    39
Togo                             39
Angola*                          41
Gabon                            41
Zambia                           41
Mozambique                       43
Uganda                           43
Afghanistan                      47
Guatemala                        54
Benin                            54
Kenya                            61
Congo                            62
Burkina Faso                     68
Central African Republic         69
Solomon Islands                  70
Thailand*                        74
Iran*                            77
Cote D'Ivoire                    78
Ghana                            79
Laos                             82
Ethiopia*                        84
Canada*                          85
Russia*                          101
Vietnam                          102
Myanmar*                         108
Vanuatu                          109
Nepal                            126
Tanzania                         128
Chad                             132
Sudan*                           134
Malaysia                         140
United States*                   162
Philippines*                     171
Pakistan*                        171
Democratic Republic of Congo     214
Australia                        227
China*                           235
Cameroon*                        279
Mexico                           291
India*                           415
Nigeria                          510
Indonesia*                       737
Papua New Guinea*                820

*Starred states have a separatist problem, but most are not about language. Most date back to the very formation of an often-illegitimate state.

Canada definitely has a conflict that is rooted in language, but it is also rooted in differential histories as English and French colonies. The Quebec nightmare is always brought up by state fetishists, ethnic nationalists and other racists and nationalists who hate minorities as the inevitable result of any situation whereby a state has more than one language within its borders.

This post is designed to give the lie to this view.

Cyprus’ problem has to do with two nations, Greeks and Turks, who hate each other. The history for this lies in centuries of conflict between Christianity and Islam, culminating in the genocide of 350,000 Greeks in Turkey from 1916-1923.

Morocco’s conflict has nothing to do with language. Spanish Sahara was a Spanish colony in Africa. After the Spanish left in the early 1950′s, Morocco invaded the country and colonized it, claiming in some irredentist way that the land had always been a part of Morocco. The residents beg to differ and say that they are a separate state.

An idiotic conflict ensued in which Morocco the colonizer has been elevated to one of the most sanctioned nations of all by the UN. Yes, Israel is not the only one; there are other international scofflaws out there. In this conflict, as might be expected, US imperialism has supported Moroccan colonialism.

This Moroccan colonialism has now become settler-colonialism, as colonialism often does. You average Moroccan goes livid if you mention their colony. He hates Israel, but Morocco is nothing but an Arab Muslim Israel. If men had a dollar for every drop of hypocrisy, we would be a world of millionaires.

There are numerous separatist conflicts in Somalia. As Somalians have refused to perform their adult responsibilities and form a state, numerous parts of this exercise in anarchism in praxis (Why are the anarchists not cheering this on?) are walking away from the burning house. Who could blame them?

These splits seem to have little to do with language. One, Somaliland, was a former British colony and has a different culture than the rest of Somalia. Somaliland is now de facto independent, as Somalia, being a glorious exercise in anarchism, of course lacks an army to enforce its borders, or to do anything.

Jubaland has also split, but this has nothing to do with language. Instead, this may be rooted in a 36-year period in which it was a British colony. Soon after this period, they had their own postage stamps as an Italian colony.

There is at least one serious separatist conflict in Ethiopia in the Ogaden region, which is mostly populated by ethnic Somalis. Apparently this region used to be part of Somaliland, and Ethiopia probably has little claim to the region. This conflict has little do with language and more to do with conflicts rooted in colonialism and the illegitimate borders of states.

There is also a conflict in the Oromo region of Ethiopia that is not going very far lately. These people have been fighting colonialism since Ethiopia was a colony and since then have been fighting against independent Ethiopia, something they never went along with. Language has a role here, but the colonization of a people by various imperial states plays a larger one.

There was a war in Southern Sudan that has now ended with the possibility that the area may secede.

There is a genocidal conflict in Darfur that the world is ignoring because it involves Arabs killing Blacks as they have always done in this part of the world, and the world only gets upset when Jews kill Muslims, not when Muslims kill Muslims.

This conflict has to do with the Sudanese Arabs treating the Darfurians with utter contempt – they regard them as slaves, as they have always been to these racist Arabs.

The conflict in Southern Sudan involved a region in rebellion in which many languages were spoken. The South Sudanese are also niggers to the racist Arabs, plus they are Christian and animist infidels to be converted by the sword by Sudanese Arab Muslims. Every time a non-Muslim area has tried to split off from or acted uppity with a Muslim state they were part of, the Muslims have responded with a jihad against and genocide of the infidels.

This conflict has nothing to do with language; instead it is a war of Arab Muslim religious fanatics against Christian and animist infidels.

There is a separatist movement in the South Cameroons in the nation of Cameroon in Africa. This conflict is rooted in colonialism. During the colonial era, South Cameroons was a de facto separate state. Many different languages are spoken here, as is the case in Cameroon itself. They may have a separate culture too, but this is just another case of separatism rooted in colonialism. The movement seems to be unarmed.

There is a separatist conflict in Angola in a region called Cabinda, which was always a separate Portuguese colony from Angola.

As this area holds 60% of Angola’s oil, it’s doubtful that Angola will let it go, although almost all of Angola’s oil wealth is being stolen anyway by US transnationals and a tiny elite while 90% of the country starves, has no medicine and lives unemployed amid shacks along former roads now barely passable.

The Cabindans do claim to have a separate culture, but language does not seem to be playing much role here – instead, oil and colonialism are.

Syria does have a Kurdish separatist movement, as does Iran, Iraq, and Turkey – every state that has a significant number of Kurds. This conflict goes back to the post-World War 1 breakup of the Ottoman Empire. The Kurds, with thousands of years of history as a people, nominally independent for much of that time, were denied a state and sold out.

The new fake state called Turkey carved up part of Kurdistan, another part was donated to the British colony in Iraq and another to the French colony in Syria, as the Allies carved up the remains of the Empire like hungry guests at a feast.

This conflict is more about colonialism and extreme discrimination than language, though the Kurds do speak their own tongue. There is also a Kurdish separatist conflict in Iran, but I don’t know much about the history of the Iranian Kurds.

There is also an Assyrian separatist movement in Iraq and possibly in Syria. The movement is unarmed. The Assyrians have been horribly persecuted by Arab nationalist racists in the region, in part because they are Christians. They have been targeted by Islamo-Nazis in Iraq during this Iraq War with a ferocity that can only be described as genocidal.

The Kurds have long persecuted the Assyrians in Iraqi Kurdistan. There have been regular homicides of Assyrians in the north, up around the Mosul region. This is just related to the general way that Muslims treat Christian minorities in many Muslim states – they persecute them and even kill them. There is also a lot of land theft going on.

While the Kurdish struggle is worthwhile, it is becoming infected with the usual nationalist evil that afflicts all ethnic nationalism. This results in everyone who is not a Kurdish Sunni Muslim being subjected to varying degrees of persecution, disenfranchisement and discrimination. It’s a nasty part of the world.

In Syria, the Assyrians live up near the Turkish and Iraqi borders. Arab nationalist racists have been stealing their land for decades now and relocating the Assyrians to model villages, where they languish in poverty. Assad’s regime is not so secular and progressive as one might suspect.

There is a separatist conflict in Bougainville in New Guinea. I am sure that many different tongues are spoken on that island, as there are 800 different tongues spoken in Papua New Guinea. The conflict is rooted in the fact that Bougainville is rich in copper, but almost all of this wealth is stolen by Papua New Guinea and US multinationals, so the Bougainville people see little of it. Language has little or nothing to do with it.

There are separatist movements in the Ahwaz and Balochistan regions of Iran, along with the aforementioned Kurdish movement. It is true that different languages are spoken in these regions, but that has little to do with the conflict.

Arabic is spoken in Khuzestan, the land of the Iranian Arabs. This land has been part of Persia for around 2,000 years as the former land of Elam. The Arabs complain that they are treated poorly by the Persians, and that they get little revenue to their region even though they are sitting on a vast puddle of oil and natural gas.

Iran should not be expected to part with this land, as it is the source of much of their oil and gas wealth. Many or most Iranians speak Arabic anyway, so there is not much of a language issue. Further, Arab culture is promoted by the Islamist regime even at the expense of Iranian culture, much to the chagrin of Iranian nationalists.

The Ahwaz have been and are being exploited by viciously racist Arab nationalists in Iraq, and also by US imperialism, and most particularly lately, British imperialism, as the British never seem to have given up the colonial habit. This conflict is not about language at all. Most Ahwaz don’t even want to separate anyway; they just want to be treated like humans by the Iranians.

Many of Iran’s 8% Sunni population lives in Balochistan. The region has maybe 2% of Iran’s population and is utterly neglected by Iran. Sunnis are treated with extreme racist contempt by the Shia Supremacists who run Iran. This conflict has to do with the fight between the Shia and Sunni wings of Islam and little or nothing to do with language.

There is a separatist movement in Iran to split off Iranian Azerbaijan and merge it with Azerbaijan proper. This movement probably has little to do with language and more to do with just irredentism. The movement is not going to go very far because most Iranian Azeris do not support it.

Iranian Azeris actually form a ruling class in Iran and occupy most of the positions of power in the government. They also control a lot of the business sector and seem to have a higher income than other Iranians. This movement has been co-opted by pan-Turkish fascists for opportunistic reasons, but it’s not really going anywhere. The CIA is now cynically trying to stir it up with little success. The movement is peaceful.

There is a Baloch insurgency in Pakistan, but language has little to do with it. These fiercely independent people sit on top of a very rich land which is ruthlessly exploited by Punjabis from the north. They get little or no return from this natural gas wealth. Further, this region never really consented to being included in the Pakistani state that was carved willy-nilly out of India in 1947.

It is true that there are regions in the Caucasus that are rebelling against Russia. Given the brutal and bloody history of Russian imperial colonization of this region and the near-continuous rebellious state of the Muslims resident there, one wants to say they are rebelling against Imperial Russia.

Chechnya is the worst case, but Ingushetia is not much better, and things are bad in Dagestan too. There is also fighting in Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia. These non-Chechen regions are getting increasingly radicalized as consequence of the Chechen War. There has also been a deliberate strategy on the part of the Chechens to expand the conflict over to the other parts of the Caucasus.

Past rebellions were often pan-Caucasian also. Although very different languages are spoken in these areas, different languages are still spoken all across Russia. Language has little to do with these conflicts, as they have more to do with Russian imperialism and colonization of these lands and the near 200-year violent resistance of these fierce Muslim mountain tribes to being colonized by Slavic infidels.

There is not much separatism in the rest of Russia.

Tuva reserves the right to split away, but this is rooted in their prior history as an independent state within the USSR (Tell me how that works?) for two decades until 1944, when Stalin reconquered it as a result of the conflict with the Nazis. The Tuvans accepted peacefully.

Yes, the Tuvans speak a different tongue, but so do all of the Siberian nations, and most of those are still with Russia. Language has little to do with the Tuvan matter.

There is also separatism in the Bashkir Republic and Adygea in Russia. These have not really gone anywhere. Only 21% of the residents of
Adygea speak Circassian, and they see themselves as overrun by Russian-speaking immigrants. This conflict may have something to do with language. The Adygean conflict is also peripherally related the pan-Caucasian struggle above.

In the Bashkir Republic, the problem is more one of a different religion – Islam, as most Bashkirs are Muslim. It is not known to what degree language has played in the struggle, but it may be a factor. The Bashkirs also see themselves as overrun by Russian-speaking immigrants. It is dubious that the Bashkirs will be able to split off, as the result will be a separate nation surrounded on all sides by Russia.

The Adygean, Tuvan and Bashkir struggles are all peaceful.

The conflict in Georgia is complex. A province called Abkhazia has split off and formed their own de facto state, which has been supported with extreme cynicism by up and coming imperialist Russia, the same clown state that just threatened to go to war to defend the territorial integrity of their genocidal Serbian buddies. South Ossetia has also split off and wants to join Russia.

Both of these reasonable acts prompted horrible and insane wars as Georgia sought to preserve its territorial integrity, though it has scarcely been a state since 1990, and neither territory ever consented to being part of Georgia.

The Ossetians and Abkhazians do speak separate languages, and I am not certain why they want to break away, but I do not think that language has much to do with it. All parties to these conflicts are majority Orthodox Christians.

Myanmar is a hotbed of nations in rebellion against the state. Burma was carved out of British East India in 1947. Part of Burma had actually been part of British India itself, while the rest was a separate colony called Burma. No sooner was the ink dry on the declaration of independence than most of these nations in rebellion announced that they were not part of the deal.

Bloody rebellions have gone on ever since, and language has little or nothing to do with any of them. They are situated instead on the illegitimacy of not only the borders of the Burmese state, but of the state itself.

Thailand does have a separatist movement, but it is Islamic. They had a separate state down there until the early 1800′s when they were apparently conquered by Thais. I believe they do speak a different language down there, but it is not much different from Thai, and I don’t think language has anything to do with this conflict.

There is a conflict in the Philippines that is much like the one in Thailand. Muslims in Mindanao have never accepted Christian rule from Manila and are in open arms against the state. Yes, they speak different languages down in Mindanao, but they also speak Tagalog, the language of the land.

This just a war of Muslims seceding because they refuse to be ruled by infidels. Besides, this region has a long history of independence, de facto and otherwise, from the state. The Moro insurgency has little to nothing to do with language.

There are separatist conflicts in Indonesia. The one in Aceh seems to have petered out. Aceh never agreed to join the fake state of Indonesia that was carved out of the Dutch East Indies when the Dutch left in 1949.

West Papua is a colony of Indonesia. It was invaded by Indonesia with the full support of US imperialism in 1965. The Indonesians then commenced to murder 100,000 Papuans over the next 40 years. There are many languages spoken in West Papua, but that has nothing to do with the conflict. West Papuans are a racially distinct people divided into vast numbers of tribes, each with a separate culture.

They have no connection racially or culturally with the rest of Indonesia and do not wish to be part of the state. They were not a part of the state when it was declared in 1949 and were only incorporated after an Indonesian invasion of their land in 1965. Subsequently, Indonesia has planted lots of settler-colonists in West Papua.

There is also a conflict in the South Moluccas , but it has more to do with religion than anything else, since there is a large number of Christians in this area. The South Moluccans were always reluctant to become a part of the new fake Indonesian state that emerged after independence anyway, and I believe there was some fighting for a while there. The South Moluccan struggle has generally been peaceful ever since.

Indonesia is the Israel of Southeast Asia, a settler-colonial state. The only difference is that the Indonesians are vastly more murderous and cruel than the Israelis.

There are conflicts in Tibet and East Turkestan in China. In the case of Tibet, this is a colony of China that China has no jurisdiction over. The East Turkestan fight is another case of Muslims rebelling against infidel rule. Yes, different languages are spoken here, but this is the case all over China.

Language is involved in the East Turkestan conflict in that Chinese have seriously repressed the Uighur language, but I don’t think it plays much role in Tibet.

There is also a separatist movement in Inner Mongolia in China. I do not think that language has much to do with this, and I believe that China’s claim to Inner Mongolia may be somewhat dubious. This movement is unarmed and not very organized.

There are conflicts all over India, but they don’t have much to do with language.

The Kashmir conflict is not about language but instead is rooted in the nature of the partition of India after the British left in 1947. 90% of Kashmiris wanted to go to Pakistan, but the ruler of Kashmir was a Hindu, and he demanded to stay in India.

The UN quickly ruled that Kashmir had to be granted a vote in its future, but this vote was never allowed by India. As such, India is another world-leading rogue and scofflaw state on a par with Israel and Indonesia. Now the Kashmir mess has been complicated by the larger conflict between India and Pakistan, and until that is all sorted out, there will be no resolution to this mess.

Obviously India has no right whatsoever to rule this area, and the Kashmir cause ought to be taken up by all progressives the same way that the Palestinian one is.

There are many conflicts in the northeast, where most of the people are Asians who are racially, often religiously and certainly culturally distinct from the rest of Indians.

None of these regions agreed to join India when India, the biggest fake state that has ever existed, was carved out of 5,000 separate princely states in 1947. Each of these states had the right to decide its own future to be a part of India or not. As it turned out, India just annexed the vast majority of them and quickly invaded the few that said no.

“Bharat India”, as Indian nationalist fools call it, as a state, is one of the silliest concepts around. India has no jurisdiction over any of those parts of India in separatist rebellion, if you ask me. Language has little to do with these conflicts.

Over 800 languages are spoken in India anyway, each state has its own language, and most regions are not in rebellion over this. Multilingualism with English and Hindi to cement it together has worked just fine in most of India.

Sri Lanka’s conflict does involve language, but more importantly it involves centuries of extreme discrimination by ruling Buddhist Sinhalese against minority Hindu Tamils. Don’t treat your minorities like crap, and maybe they will not take up arms against you.

The rebellion in the Basque country of Spain and France is about language, as is Catalonian nationalism.

IRA Irish nationalism and the Scottish and Welsh independence movements have nothing to do with language, as most of these languages are not in good shape anyway.

The Corsicans are in rebellion against France, and language may play a role. There is an independence movement in Brittany in France also, and language seems to play a role here, or at least the desire to revive the language, which seems to be dying.

There is a possibility that Belgium may split into Flanders and Wallonia, and language does play a huge role in this conflict. One group speaks French and the other Dutch.

There is a movement in Scania, a part of Sweden, to split away from Sweden. Language seems to have nothing to do with it.

There is a Hungarian separatist movement, or actually, a national reunification or pan-Hungarian movement, in Romania. It isn’t going anywhere, and it unlikely to succeed. Hungarians in Romania have not been treated well and are a large segment of the population. This fact probably drives the separatism more than language.

There are many other small conflicts in Europe that I chose not to go into due to limitations on time and the fact that I am getting tired of writing this post! Perhaps I can deal with them at a later time. Language definitely plays a role in almost all of these conflicts. None of them are violent though.

To say that there are separatists in French Polynesia is not correct. This is an anti-colonial movement that deserves the support of anti-colonial activists the world over. The entire world, evidenced by the UN itself, has rejected colonialism. Only France, the UK and the US retain colonies. That right there is notable, as all three are clearly imperialist countries. In this modern age, the value of retaining colonies is dubious.

These days, colonizers pour more money into colonies than they get out of them. France probably keeps Polynesia due to colonial pride and also as a place to test nuclear weapons and maintain military bases. As the era of French imperialism on a grand scale has clearly passed, France needs to renounce its fantasies of being a glorious imperial power along with its anachronistic colonies.

Yes, there is a Mapuche separatist movement in Chile, but it is not going anywhere soon, or ever.

It has little to do with language. The Mapudungan language is not even in very good shape, and the leaders of this movement are a bunch of morons. Microsoft recently unveiled a Mapudungan language version of Microsoft Windows. You would think that the Mapuche would be ecstatic. Not so! They were furious. Why? Oh, I forget. Some Identity Politics madness.

This movement has everything to do with the history of Chile. Like Argentina and Uruguay, Chile was one of the Spanish colonies that was settled en masse late. For centuries, a small colonial bastion battled the brave Mapuche warriors, but were held at bay by this skilled and militaristic tribe.

Finally, in the late 1800′s, a fanatical and genocidal war was waged on the Mapuche in one of those wonderful “national reunification” missions so popular in the 1800′s (recall Italy’s wars of national reunification around this same time). By the 1870′s, the Mapuche were defeated and suffered a devastating loss of life.

Yet all those centuries of only a few Spanish colonists and lots of Indians had made their mark, and at least 70% of Chileans are mestizos, though they are mostly White (about 80% White on average). The Mapuche subsequently made a comeback and today number about 9% of the population.

Because they held out so long and so many of them survived, they are one of the most militant Amerindian groups in the Americas. They are an interesting people, light-skinned and attractive, though a left-wing Chilean I knew used to chortle about how hideously ugly they were.

Hawaiian separatism is another movement that has a lot to do with colonialism and imperialism and little to do with language. The Hawaiian language, despite some notable recent successes, is not in very good shape. The Hawaiian independence movement offers nothing to non-Hawaiians (I guess only native Hawaiians get to be citizens!) and is doomed to fail.

Hawaiians are about 22% of the population, and they are the only ones that support the independence movement. No one else supports it. It’s not going anywhere. The movers and shakers on the island (Non-Hawaiians for the most part!) all think it’s ridiculous.

There are separatists in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, but I doubt that language has much to do with it. Like the myriad other separatist struggles in the NE of India, these people are ethnically Asians and as such are not the same ethnicity as the Caucasians who make up the vast majority of the population of this wreck of a state.

This is another conflict that is rooted in a newly independent fake state. The Chittagong Hill Tracts were incorporated into Bangladesh after its independence from Pakistan in 1971. As a fake new state, the peoples of Bangladesh had a right to be consulted on whether or not they wished to be a part of it. The CHT peoples immediately said that they wanted no part of this new state.

At partition, the population was 98.5% Asian. They were Buddhists, Hindus and animists. Since then, the fascist Bangladesh state has sent Bengali Muslim settler-colonists to the region. The conflict is shot through with racism and religious bigotry, as Muslim Bengalis have rampaged through the region, killing people randomly and destroying stuff as they see fit. Language does not seem to have much to do with this conflict.

I don’t know much about the separatist struggle of the Moi in Vietnam, but I think it is more a movement for autonomy than anything else. The Moi are Montagnards and have probably suffered discrimination at the hands of the state along with the rest of the Montagnards.

Zanzibar separatism in Tanzania seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with language, but has a lot more to do with geography. Zanzibar is a nice island off the coast of Tanzania which probably wants nothing to do with the mess of a Tanzanian state.

The conflict also has a lot to do with race. Most residents of Zanzibar are either Arabs or descendants of unions between Arabs and Africans. In particular, they deny that they are Black Africans. I bet that is the root of the conflict right there.

There were some Talysh separatists in Azerbaijan a while back, but the movement seems to be over. I am not sure what was driving them, but language doesn’t seem to have been a big part of it. Just another case of new members of a fake new state refusing to go along for the ride.

There were some Gagauz separatists in Moldova a while back, but the movement appears to have died down. Language does seem to have played a role here, as the Gagauz speak a Turkic tongue totally unrelated to the Romance-speaking Moldovans.

Realistically, it’s just another case of a fake new state emerging and some members of the new state saying they don’t want to be a part of it, and the leaders of the fake new state suddenly invoking inviolability of borders in a state with no history!

In summary, as we saw above, once we get into Europe, language does play a greater role in separatist conflict, but most of these European conflicts are not violent. In the rest of the world, language plays little to no role in the vast majority of separatist conflicts.

The paranoid and frankly fascist notion voiced by rightwing nationalists the world over that any linguistic diversity in the world within states must be crushed as it will inevitably lead to separatism at best or armed separatism at worst is not supported by the facts.

Video: Muslim Brotherhood Forces Entering Syria from Turkey

This is an exciting video. The first part shows Muslim Brotherhood forces entering Syria en masse from Turkey. This is the guerrilla army that killed 120 Syrian forces in Jisr Al Shoughur on Monday. The last half of the video shows wild scenes shot inside Jisr Al Shoughur on the same day. Buildings in flames, armies of people marching in the street, chanting and waving swords, people pushing people down stairways, just serious chaos. Jisr Al Shoughur was a stronghold of the MB in the 1980′s and borders Turkey.

What is interesting is that it seems that the Turkish government had something to do with this incursion. There are a lot of theories about what is going on. It does seem clear that these MB guys had been hiding out in Turkey, and Turkey gave them the go-ahead to go invade Syria. But why? The leader of Turkey is an Islamist. Is the throwing down with the MB Islamists in Syria. Keep in mind that Turkey is also hosting the Islamist-dominated Syrian opposition. This seems to be a case of Islamist politics trumping regional cooperation, but it’s so hard to figure out.

Pretty wild video!