The political desperadoes and ignoramuses, who say they would “Rather be Dead than Red”, should be told that no one will stop them from committing suicide, but they have no right to provoke a third world war.’ — Morris Kominsky, 1970

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Cake day: ago 27, 2019

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I would informally summarise the Empire of Japan as Asia’s equivalent to the Third Reich. Now, naturally there are some limitations to that analogy, but as a starting point it works well.


I laughed harder at this than I should have.


Thank you for sharing this! It helps with my research on the Axis.

Unfortunately, I suspect that a great deal of Westerners are likely to dismiss this important news out of hand because the archaeologists are Chinese. I remember reading a year or two ago about somebody discovering a mass grave of hundreds of Soviets and Redditors were writing it off as ‘Russian propaganda’.


Currently preparing a post concerning Eritrea under Fascism, a subject of which I suspect we know very little.

I plan on using this as the title picture, as I think that it sums up the situation rather nicely.




After I wrote that, I learned about forced laughter and that became my coping mechanism.

I’m serious. Your body can’t tell if you are laughing intentionally or naturally, and if you prolong your fake laughter it soon evolves to become natural and almost uncontrollable. Even if you force yourself to laugh it still releases dopamine and after a while it can diminish the effects of an unpleasant memory.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11898980

https://web.archive.org/web/20210329201907/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/laughter-yoga-montreal-1.5966556

I wish that somebody had told me this earlier, because it’s relatively easy and it makes more sense than useless advice like ‘just get over it’.


Under PRC law, religion is free. However, in 1954, the State Council established a Religious Affairs Bureau; this set up the Chinese Islamic Association, with which all mosques and other religious places must register. Islam continued to be openly practiced in Xinjiang and even the Sufi orders “experienced an explosion of popularity” in the early 1950s. The authorities left the Islamic clergy and education in place, while expanding the comprehensive secular education their political predecessors had instituted.

At the same time, however, the CCP took several measures that undermined the extensive social control and political and economic influence of the Islamic clergy. These measures included land reform, which abolished Islamic taxes and eliminated rents from land, and the substitution of PRC secular law for Islamic law everywhere.

In the late 1950s, PRC policy became considerably more radical. The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) saw the fiercest persecution of religion in modern Xinjiang (as well as Chinese) history. Mao Zedong and his followers appeared determined to uproot all traditional thought and culture, which included religion and anything to do with it, especially the influence of its clergy.

As a monotheistic religion with a socially highly influential clergy, Islam was a prime target of their attacks. The Islamic Association discontinued operations, but revived after Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978.

(Source. Judging from this text, it looks like the Chinese Communists were far more concerned with organized religion than religion per se.)

I know that this is a brief overview and it raises its own questions, but I hope that it helps anyway.


>Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said a “large portion” of Discovery+ and HBO Max’s 4 million overlapping subscribers are expected to drop the service a few months after the Max launch. I suspect that the real reason that [they’re renaming HBO Max to just ‘Max’](https://insidethemagic.net/?p=530362) is to mitigate any damage to HBO’s public image should they decide to cancel it, which looks like a valid possibility now. (I find it pretty unlikely that the renaming is going to increase this service’s appeal, unless marketers really are ***that*** out of touch with [reality](https://wp.me/pc8uak-1lCxqD).)
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Nothing special, I’m afraid; it’s from my latecoming respect for Bolshevism despite still being anarchist. Most people would insist that it’s either one or the other, making me a black sheep. Coincidentally, though:

Garcia Oliver supported the idea of a paramilitary organization as the only way to stand up to counter-revolutionary attacks, which gave him the label of anarcho-bolshevik and caused problems for him in the F.A.I.



>Ka Jasper was a civilian, youth and farmer organizer – not a soldier of the New People’s Army – slain by [neo]fascists. To justify their crime, the [neo]fascists placed a .45 calibre pistol on the right hand of Ka Jasper and mindlessly opened-fire for almost 10 minutes which inflicted great trauma and fear to the people. The hands of the [neo]fascist régime of Marcos, Jr. and the reactionary army is stained with blood from killing Ka Jasper and many other victims murdered under the US-Marcos, Jr. régime. They must be held accountable for the crimes against the people.
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Every single statement in this image is false.

Even the one about Cuba not bombing countries. They bomb the U.S. on a daily basis.

Source: I’m Cuban. That automatically makes it true. (Oh, and it’s really nice here in Miami, by the way.)

Go to Cuba and see how much you like it.


>The absence of growth, the threat of recession, etc., appear even bleaker if we understand that the tremors that shake finance anticipate the threat of an economic earthquake of unprecedented proportions. In other words, the recurrent financial crises are a sign of an economic crisis that is dragging on and on, accumulating an unprecedented explosive potential — not only on the strict economic plane, but also in the political sphere. > >Hence the growing threats of war between the great powers fighting for world primacy indicate that economic disputes no longer fit within the limits of business competition, but rather overflow into the terrain of political and military confrontation.
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>You may find yourself wondering why politicians aren’t doing anything about climate change. Why are they keeping us distracted with culture wars, instead of focusing on the impending catastrophe? Is it simply greed and [ignorance]? While that may be a big part of it, the real answer is that they aren’t just unwilling to do anything; they are incapable of it. > >Under capitalism a tendency exists for the rate of profit to fall. In order to counteract this, capitalism necessitates infinite growth; it must always expand into new markets, extract every possible resource at an ever-quickening pace and drive down wages. If a capitalist economy is not growing, it is dying. World leaders know that if they were to get serious about climate change, it would impact their capitalist economies.
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it’s a fucked up thing to say but I wonder about chemical castration sometimes.

The other day I was wishing that I could undergo shock therapy or lobotomy just so that I might stop obsessing over unpleasant memories. I made the mistake of bringing up one of them to my best friend a few days ago and (long story short) he actually made me end up feeling worse. Now I’m hardly talking to anybody and I feel like I don’t want friends anymore.


>Now, out of this war in the past year, Russia has not only survived economically; its currency and its trade with the Global South have been reinforced and are stronger today. However, for the European Union, they’re in a much weaker position. We shouldn’t forget that even though they are U.S. allies, they are also competitors. The euro is now weaker than the dollar. The war has benefited the U.S. and yet has been very harmful for all the EU countries that went along with the war. > >I think countries around the world will draw their [own] conclusions. Do they want to be roped into this? Especially in Asia, who can U.S. [neo]imperialism rope in, in terms of their own sovereignty? Who can resist the U.S. pressure? > >[…] > >U.S. hegemony is declining. It’s a very dangerous juncture, because this is very threatening to U.S. [neo]imperialism, and we have to be prepared for what they will do to try to preserve their role. Our interests are one with the people of the world for peace, for development, for reconciliation and not for corporate profit.
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>Lev Dobriansky, the arguably more important [VOC co-founder](https://vocinfo.substack.com/p/mr-captive-nations-vs-the-cia), was potentially even more entangled with the Moonies. In one collection of his papers I found a program from a 1973 Unification Church banquet in Washington DC that was addressed by Reverend Moon. From 1987-92, Dobriansky served as the president of the Moonie-funded Global Economic Action Institute. > >According to ex-Moonie researcher Ed Coffman, by the 1980s, Dobriansky attended “[International Conferences on the Unity of Sciences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Conference_on_the_Unity_of_Sciences)” and gave lectures at the Unification Theological Seminary in New York. Coffman said that in the 1990s, Lev Dobriansky was a “VIP guest at speeches given by Sun Myung Moon’s wife…and possibly Moon himself.”
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It seems to me that, unfortunately, the war will go on for a long time. Russia is systematically knocking out Western weapons, but new ones are being supplied daily. When Ukraine runs out of manpower to make up for losses at the front, the West will be looking for mercenaries all over the world.

Already American comrades write that poor Americans, who are on unemployment benefits, are being agitated to join the so-called International Legion to defend Ukraine. It seems to me that the war will be fought to the attrition of one side, and at some point, it may come to a nuclear conflict.

(Source.)


The Fascists were very interested in getting a hold of Petsamo nickel, which was why the Soviets wanted to complicate access to it:

The Soviet Union had indicated an interest in the Petsamo area during the negotiations with Finland in the fall of 1939, but primarily on the basis of military considerations. When the Finnish–Soviet “negotiations” were resumed in March 1940, Molotov again told the Finns that Soviet military circles wished to see the area annexed to the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, the Petsamo area stayed with Finland under the terms of the Treaty of Moscow, and there was no hint of any Soviet economic interest in it. The [Fascist] conquest of Norway shortly afterward obviously caused the Soviet leaders to regret their generosity, however.

[The Third Reich’s] interest in Finnish nickel also dated back before the Winter War. The Finnish–German trade agreement of October 1939 envisaged the early exploitation of the nickel resources at Nivala in Qulu province, and the nickel to be extracted was to be sold to [the Third Reich]. In return, the [Fascists] were to deliver, among other items, 134 anti‐aircraft guns, and 50 of these actually reached Finland before the war began.

See here for more.


>A future URC conference is scheduled to occur in London June 21–22, this one between the British and Ukrainian governments. This gathering is expected to serve the same purpose as the other meetings between Western bourgeois representatives and Ukrainian officials. None of these meetings are aimed to help the Ukrainian people or offer a peaceful resolution with Russia. On the contrary those involved in these meetings have no interest in ending the war anytime soon. > >In February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with investors from BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (Ukraine Business News, Feb. 21) Both these investment conglomerates are also major shareholders of Northfolk Southern, which was responsible for the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that same month. > >In the midst of these meetings promoting profiteering, the puppet regime of Ukraine has stepped up its attacks on the Ukrainian working class. One month after the Russian intervention, Ukraine outlawed several left-wing parties, which once provided material and political support to labor unions. In August 2022, Zelensky helped ratify Law 5371, which stripped 70% of Ukrainian workers of their collective bargaining rights. (openDemocracy.net, Aug. 25, 2022)
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I just returned from a lovely event called the Concert of Lights, which featured songs composed by people who were stuck in Axis concentration camps. I was expecting all of the songs to be somber, for obvious reasons, and while some were there were others that felt determined or even joyous. It was a very emotional experience. I also learned that there was at least one occasion where the Fascists intentionally selected 613 prisoners to massacre because 613 is a sacred number to Judaists.

Earlier I briefly continued my research on Fascist police cars.

I know that details like these are unrequired for basic history, but seeing as how horribly “antifascist” anticommunists get that wrong, they almost certainly don’t even know (or care) about these either. That’s another advantage that I have over them.


>First, there is resistance by developing economic self-sufficiency. North Korea, having survived 70 years of the world’s harshest international sanctions, calls self-reliance “Juche.” > >I was recently in Nicaragua, which is now 90 percent self-sufficient in food. Nicaraguans coped heroically with COVID-19, providing door-to-door health care even as the U.S. blocked their access to vaccines. Education there is free. The Sandinista government has developed essential infrastructure, especially roads, health clinics and schools. > >Nicaragua now ranks among the top five countries in the world in gender parity. Women fill more than half the seats in legislatures – local to national – and in administration, medicine and the rural economy, from bottom to top.
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For a minute I thought about replying to this thread with a joke, but, aside from that possibly being too inappropriate, it would be better if I took this opportunity to mention something that I learned about yesternight: the Ocoee massacre.

https://www.ucf.edu/pegasus/?p=20313

https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=HA0CLxHeH6Y

Has anybody else here heard of this?


I hope that the PRC’s law is at least more rational now. Did any officials comment on the ruling?


I am glad that you asked about this. Anticommunists like sharing these photographs without giving any context.

I don’t speak Chinese, but judging from this (crudely translated) article, Luc Kim Phung (sometimes translated as Liu Jinfeng) suffered the death penalty for committing mariticide. Her husband was very abusive and infanticidal. ‘At the police station, Luc Kim Phung admitted all of [her] actions. In March 1995, Luc Kim Phung was sentenced to death, although the court considered all relevant circumstances, […] because she had a criminal record, there could be no other sentence.



>There is clearly a global move away from dependence on the U.S. dollar, which will benefit the BRICS countries and others. But what does the diminishing hegemony of the U.S. dollar mean for the working class? > >Lessening U.S. hegemony means that countries in the Global South may have the chance to develop their economies without dependence on the U.S. dollar, the IMF and the World Bank, and the inherent debt cycle which that dependence entails. But that does not mean an end to U.S. [neo]imperialism or capitalism as we know it. It is a setback for U.S. [neo]imperialism but not a defeat. > >The end of U.S. hegemony creates conditions for the global working class to break with [neo]imperialism and for the working class to rise up and carry out its historic rôle. > >However, defeating U.S. [neo]imperialism and capitalism will take serious, revolutionary intervention by the global working class.
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Unfortunately, many of the anarchists that I’ve encountered online do seem to be under the vague impression that the dictatorship of the proletariat is some sort of personal choice, rather than a historical inevitability. They don’t seem to understand that you first have to abolish the conditions that make it so probable (notably capitalists’ political power) before you can convince others that it’s unnecessary. Arguing with or outright pestering communists isn’t gonna cut it.

I don’t see its prevention as a particularly worthwhile goal anyway. I’m so tired of the status quo that I would have eagerly settled for the Paris Commune. Like the Bolivarian Republic, there’s little to do about it other than working however you can to continue raising your people’s living standards; attacking it would only alienate the lower‐class people who do support it.

P.S. the Paris Commune suppressed ‘freedom of speech’ too, just like the monstrous Mao “Che” Stalin did back in 1917.


It’s okay. If you don’t like working for businesses, just work so hard that you can supply all of your needs and utilities (food, potable water, running water, shelter, healthcare, furniture, electricity, clothing, education, telecommunications) yourself.

I think that most people will agree with me when I say that that is a perfectly reasonable suggestion.


>“On the same day that the Springer boss’s statement was published, the German government authorized Poland to deliver Soviet fighter jets from GDR stocks to Ukraine. This is malicious in several respects: It is a blow to those East Germans who oppose arms deliveries. It is at the same time a departure by the present Federal Republic [of Germany] from the common formula of the GDR and the FRG that war must never again be allowed to emanate from German soil.” (junge Welt, April 17) I wonder if the bipeds who make fun of anticapitalists for using shitty telephones will care about this. (Here’s a shocker for novice socialists: they won’t.)
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Can I just say that I’m tired of anti-tobacco groups reminding us that tobacco is unhealthy
A few hours ago I took a survey asking me to look at some anti‐tobacco warnings and then estimating how many tobacco smokers vs. non‐smokers will suffer the risks. I don’t think that grown‐ups take up smoking simply because they’re unaware of just how awful it is for them. I think that they usually turn to smoking because it’s a crude coping mechanism and they don’t love living. Think about it: if life sucks anyway, how much difference would avoiding an unhealthy habit like smoking make? Reducing tobacco consumption is a fine goal, but anti‐tobacco groups (or at least the ones that I’ve seen) go about it completely the wrong way. I think that raising living standards, or maybe even just messages with more positivity and empathy, would have a more substantial effect than giant warnings and photos of hideously deformed organs.
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Joseph Stalin, the man singlehandedly responsible for wiping out 94 million straight white capitalist men (which is the politically correct way of saying ‘innocent people’).

P.S. I survived communism, so please don’t disagree with me.


If the Chinese government should be fully responsible for starving millions, then it would be no less logical to give it credit for saving millions, too:

During the Difficult Three Year Period the state also expended large amounts of money and materials carrying out famine relief in the heavily stricken areas. Spending on relief funds was increased, the basic food supply for disaster victims was guaranteed, large teams of medical care workers were sent to provide medical aid in the disaster-stricken areas, and so forth. With mobilization and direction from the CPC and the state, the entire nation fought together against droughts, floods, locust plagues and other natural disasters, using a variety of production and self-rescue activities.

(Source.)


See here.

Honestly…I’ve been trying to mentally prepare myself in the event that somebody bans me for writing that reply.


I had a conversation with somebody on Reddit who seriously though that the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia would never have happened if only they knew about Marx’s comments on Slavs.

Anticommunists can’t understand how anybody can compartmentalize theories and theorists. Marx’s opinions on Slavs are about as relevant to scientific socialists as Einstein’s opinions on Asians are relevant to physicists.


They’ll probably refer to the DPRK and specifically the Kims as ‘evidence’ for their accusation.


I’m glad that you read them! Although there are plenty of books that I’d like to share, I understand that not everybody has the time to go through thousands of pages of history either, so usually I focus on snippets, articles or theses for my posts as those are easier to fit into people’s schedules.

That being said, I can relate to wanting to die and being unable to focus on studies, it has been similar for me over the last months…

If it makes you feel any better, there is a 2% chance that the ghosts of Fascists are exacting their petty revenge on us by repeatedly messing with our brain chemistry. (The 98% chance, on the other hand, is that the real explanation is something far more mundane and less exciting.)

Seriously though, I hope that you feel better soon. Thanks for your feedback!


I am already taking antidepressants, but I’ll be sure to mention this to my psychiatrist the next time that I see him. My family suspects that the main problem is that I’m not taking my medications in a timely manner, and that’s because I oversleep regularly.


I appreciate your concern, but it is pretty unlikely that I’ll try anything dangerous on myself. I actually stopped seeing a therapist a few months ago (it no longer felt necessary), but if my friends or family beg me to visit one then I’ll definitely reconsider it.


I am actually in a goodish mood now, and I don’t have any plans to try something lethal. In fact, now that I think about it, my dream can be interpreted in such a way as to discourage me from reattempting: despite all my effort I didn’t accomplish anything other than make about a dozen shallow flesh wounds.

You raise a good point about physical activity. I’ll be having more promenades this month, especially since the temperature is so tolerable now.


Responses like yours are exactly what I’m looking for; they help think about this situation in a different way and see it from another perspective. I appreciate it.


I had never heard of that concept before. Thank you for introducing me to it, and I appreciate your wishes.


Thank you for your feedback! It helps me think about the situation differently.

Regarding the posts you say are not getting visibility, can you tell me which communities you post them in?

I haven’t griped about that in a while, but most of them go in /c/capitalismindecay, sometimes /c/mediacriticism, /c/us_news, or a few others. I wouldn’t say that the inattention breaks my heart, only that sometimes it’s mildly disappointing. Inattention only really upsets me when it’s while I’m repeatedly dealing with somebody difficult, and that hasn’t happened in a long time.





No… but I contemplate it almost every week.


Anticommunists would likely argue that the Chinese military incursion into Tibet in the early 1950s constituted a war, but I am unaware of any states recognising it as such. The centrist John Powers’s History as Propaganda notes that ‘though Chinese troops had entered Tibet numerous times at the behest of Tibetan governments prior to the 1950s, [some see] no contradiction in denying China a right to send in its military while arguing that Britain’s military incursion was legitimate.

P.S. If you want to go through the candidates, you can skim here. Note, though, that not all of these conflicts would legally qualify as wars, and the PRC’s responsibility for any, like the Sino-Indian War, is quite arguable.


The Human Mind as “New Domain of War”: NATO Plans for Cognitive Warfare
:::spoiler [Excerpt] >The panel’s focus was guided by a 2020 NATO-sponsored study titled “Cognitive Warfare” and authored by François du Cluzel, who manages the NATO Innovation Hub and was one of the event’s featured speakers. According to du Cluzel’s [report](https://www.projectcensored.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Cognitive-a-6th-Domain-of-Operations.pdf), the objectives of cognitive warfare are “to make everyone a weapon” and “to harm societies,” rather than simply targeting an enemy’s armed forces. Furthermore, cognitive warfare is “potentially endless since there can be no peace treaty or [surrender](https://www.projectcensored.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Cognitive-a-6th-Domain-of-Operations.pdf) for this type of conflict.” For these reasons, “the human mind is now being [considered](https://www.projectcensored.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Cognitive-a-6th-Domain-of-Operations.pdf) as a new domain of war.” Du Cluzel emphasized that militaries “must work more closely with academia to weaponize social sciences and human sciences and help the alliance develop its cognitive warfare capacities,” the Grayzone reported. The Grayzone’s article also noted that NATO’s desire to develop means of cognitive warfare came “at a time when member states’ military campaigns are targeting domestic populations on an unprecedented level.” > >Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the establishment press in the United States has published or broadcast hundreds of reports focused on NATO and the many contentious aspects of its role in that conflict. Many of these reports include explanations of NATO’s goals, organization, and history. However, as of this book’s publication, not one major US news outlet appears to have reported on NATO’s efforts to develop its member nations’ capacity for cognitive warfare, including the 2020 NATO study and the October 2021 NAOC panel. Hmm… well, the Grayzone reported this story, which automatically makes it invalid, and therefore we neither need to worry about this at all nor request any peer review. I’m sure that it’s nothing. :::
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:::spoiler [Excerpt] >The [New People’s Army] has fought indefatigably over the past 54 years. Although it has grown by leaps and bounds, the balance of forces remains overwhelmingly in favor of the enemy. During this stage of the people’s war, it must continue to establish, expand and consolidate its guerrilla fronts, build guerrilla platoons and companies, combined with even greater numbers of people’s militia units and supported by tens of thousands of village self-defense corps. The task is to wage extensive and intensive guerrilla warfare on the basis of an ever widening and deepening mass base. > >[…] > >The Second Great Rectification Movement (1992-1998) was launched by the 10th plenum of the Central Committee to rectify the errors of military adventurism and urban insurrectionism and reaffirm the Party’s basic principles, its correct analysis of the semi-colonial and semi-feudal character of Philippine society, its program for a people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war and its anti-revisionist stand. It raised the theoretical knowledge and grasp of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism through a study movement and campaign to sum-up experiences and clarify the comprehensive revolutionary tasks. Brilliant victories were achieved in the ideological, political and organizational fields which allowed the Party and all revolutionary forces to strengthen steadily, solidly and in all-rounded way. > >[…] > >The Party leadership has issued the call to sum-up experiences of the past five and 25 years in order to draw important lessons in carrying forward the people’s democratic revolution through protracted people’s war. Cadres of the Party and NPA Red fighters are earnestly studying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, basic documents of the Party including Our Urgent Tasks, Specific Characteristics of Our People’s War, Rectify Errors and Rebuild the Party, Reaffirm Our Basic Principles and Rectify Errors and others, in order to identify the ideological, political and organizational root causes of some problems in a number of regions. :::
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>Nearly 60 percent of South Koreans said they are against a move to resolve a wartime labor row between the country and Japan that would see **Seoul** compensate former Korean laborers, a public opinion poll found. > >The result by Gallup Korea reflects public antagonism toward the resolution, **which would not require direct payments from Japanese companies, regarding ~~alleged~~ forced labor during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.** > >The survey found 59 percent of respondents are opposed to the plan as they believe it provides no apology or reparations from Japan, while 35 percent said the solution will help bilateral relations and national interest. > >The South Korean government announced last week its decision to compensate wartime laborers under [the Empire of] Japan's 1910–1945 colonization through a government foundation with donations from South Korean companies. > >**The move came after two Japanese firms — Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd and Nippon Steel Corp — were ordered in separate rulings by South Korea's Supreme Court in 2018 to pay damages to former Korean laborers and their relatives over alleged forced labor during World War II.** > >The two Japanese companies have refused to comply with the South Korean top court rulings, as the Japanese government has maintained that all issues stemming from its colonization of the Korean Peninsula were settled under a bilateral agreement signed in 1965. (Emphasis added.) :::spoiler [Additional information] >About half of respondents in their 60s and 70s expressed support. But only around 20% of those in their 30s and 40s — a demographic that takes a less favorable view of the Yoon administration — responded positively. > >Compensating wartime laborers has long been a source of friction between South Korea and Japan. Lawsuits brought by former laborers against big Japanese industrial groups played a rôle in the fraying of bilateral ties over the past few years. > >The Japanese government maintains [that] all such claims were resolved by a 1965 treaty between the two countries. > >Asked about relations between Seoul and Tokyo, 31% of respondents said ties should be improved as quickly as possible, while 64% said there is no hurry to do so unless Japan changes its attitude. > >A senior official from South Korea's Foreign Ministry told reporters Friday that Seoul did not envision the accused companies participating in the plan in the short term. The government is not closing the door on the possibility of contributions from Japanese businesses, however, and hopes they will do so in the long term, the official said. > >The American Chamber of Commerce in Korea has welcomed the effort to improve South Korea-Japan relations and said it will donate to the foundation. U.S. President Joe Biden also welcomed the compensation initiative. ([Source.](https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Japan-South-Korea-rift/Wartime-labor-proposal-opposed-by-59-of-South-Koreans-poll)) :::
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>As Workers World Party’s First Secretary Larry Holmes wrote in October 2022, “This is no normal economic downturn. However long and drawn out this economic crisis is and whatever events push it forward, it’s the development that many Marxists (as well as bankers and billionaires who are willing to utter words of truth) consider to be the biggest global capitalist economic crisis in history. The capitalist crisis that is under way is unique in that it is symptomatic of a dying system entering its end-stage.”
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>[President Joe Biden, said at a press briefing last year: “If Russia invades [Ukraine] . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” When asked by a reporter how he would do that, Biden said: “I promise you; we will be able to do that.”](https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=OS4O8rGRLf8)
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George S. Patton was a scumbag
>Patton seems to respond to a combative press conference that took place just two weeks prior in which Patton was blamed for the appalling living conditions at many camps for Displaced Persons, many of whom were Jews. > >As a result of this press conference, General Eisenhower reportedly ordered Patton to improve [the camps under his area of command](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/317643) and to attend a Yom Kippur service. > >The letter, all but confirming the poor conditions of the Displaced Persons camps, reads: “So far as the Jews are concerned, they do not want to be placed in comfortable buildings. They actually prefer to live as many to a room as possible. They have no conception of sanitation, hygiene or decency and are, as you know, the same sub-human types that we saw in the internment camps." > >The letter also refers to the people of the Soviet Union as “the degenerate descendants of Genghis Khan” and says the envy, hatred, malice, and uncharitableness in Europe "passes beyond belief."
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:::spoiler Transcript >According to Mises (1951 [1922], 87, 104, n1), ‘Waking and dreaming, man’s wishes turn upon sex.’ His fiancée (1976, 28, 23) recalled: > >Sometimes I did not see him for weeks. But I knew very well that he was in town. At least twice daily the telephone rang, and when I answered there was silence at the other end of the line — not a word was spoken. I knew it was Lu … I was so tormented, so torn to pieces that the children must have felt it. > >**Mises also gratified himself by feeling Margit’s six‐year‐old daughter: ‘I wanted to touch Gitta’s hair and think of you.’** (Emphasis added.) ::: \ ([Source.](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=64DED654DFB1FE6B9B370196DE915C51))
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>The layoffs disproportionately impact Black and Brown tech workers, especially workers from other countries. The job losses jeopardize the immigration status of many families who depend upon visas as a condition to reside in the U.S. As pointed out in a Feb. 2 Workers World article, “A sign of capitalist decline: Pink slips hit tech workers hard,” many tech workers have H-1B visas. Laid-off H-1B holders need to find an H-1B sponsoring job within 60 days of losing the job they had or face deportation if they don’t leave the U.S. within 10 days of losing their H-1B status.
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>NATO expanded from 19 members in 1999 to 30 in 2022, including countries that were part of the Soviet Union and most of the countries that had been allied with the Soviet Union before 1991. NATO held provocative military exercises that moved ever closer to the Russian borders, while the U.S. started deploying potential first-strike nuclear weapons in Europe. > >Faced with what was arguably an existential threat, the Moscow government opened its military intervention in Ukraine a year ago. Washington immediately began waging a proxy war against Russia, arming Ukraine and using its population as cannon fodder, pressuring its NATO allies to spend more money on weapons and to arm Kiev’s troops with weapons available in the allies’ stockpiles. > >Last March, the U.S. sabotaged tentative moves toward Ukrainian-Russian negotiations, while demanding Europe break its mutually beneficial trade ties with Russia. > >U.S. political and military leaders have said openly that their goal was to extend the war to weaken Russia. Imperialist politicians and media demonized Russian President Vladimir Putin, just as they did to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi and Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic — before invading and destroying their countries. > >As renowned journalist Seymour Hersh recently revealed, U.S. forces even carried out an act of terror by bombing the Russian-owned Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. (https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream) This act prevented German leaders — had any been considering the possibility — from reestablishing Germany’s trade with Russia for its gas and oil. (https://www.workers.org/2022/10/66955)
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These are (presumably) Poland’s ‘national heroes’
>Other testimonies not only expressed fear but recorded stories of Home Army violent crimes against the Jews. One of these was the account of Karolina Kremer given in December 1945. […] In the spring of 1944, Kremer recounted narrowly escaping death by a man she described as a Home Army fighter. “AK bandits tracked us like wild animals,” she testified, continuing in the following manner: > >>I came across a wall of AK people. [The leader] asked me to come closer to him. He came up behind me with a rifle. “Now you’re a dirty Jewess who has [fallen] into my hands. From my hands you will surely not escape.” I started to cry horribly, pleading with him to spare my life. I knelt down and started kissing his legs in hopes that he would spare such a young person. “No one will help you. Your dead body will be lying here,” he said, showing me the place. I started screaming at the top of my lungs, got up and ran into the nearby shrubs. He shot at me several times unsuccessfully. I was terrified but ran further and vanished into the forest. > > […] > >The story of Henryk Herstein, born 1921 in Kraków, was similar. Henryk and his brother escaped from the Płaszów ghetto outside Kraków in April 1942. They traveled some 23 miles north to Walbrom where his brother, using false papers, joined the Home Army partisans. The brother told the author the story that one of the partisans confessed that he had taken part in the killing of Jews. I couldn’t read past this point.
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I’m so tired of ‘revolution is bad’ storylines
Lately I have been watching a friend play *BioShock Infinite*, something to which I paid little attention at the time of its release. At first the setting and the story were attracting me, as they pertain to my field of interest… but later in the story, after acquainting us with an archetypal capitalist, I noticed that the story was getting a little ‘darker’—in a familiar way—and it soon devolved into what I feared: another subplot about how much revolution sucks. I’ve seen it already in *The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles* and *Metro 2033*, so I know how it goes: first the writers lure you in with a display of the prerevolutionary situation, and at first they portray the revolutionaries positively, but as the climax approaches the revolutionaries go around suddenly committing atrocities without any clear rhyme or reason, nothing can be done to prevent it, ordinary people hate it (so the revolutionaries abuse them too), and the lesson is that revolution is no better than the prerevolutionary situation. Why do revolutionaries go through the trouble of making revolution? Not because the material conditions (whatever those are) made revolution inevitable, no. It’s because revolutionaries are stupid and unreasonable. Simple as that. That’s probably also why they commit atrocities, and also why they can’t figure out how to keep their supporters without resorting to coercion or violence. The message, it seems, is an advertisement for conservatism: ‘Yes, we’ll admit that things may be awful now, but no matter how awful they may be, anything else would be worse, so just shut up and do nothing.’ They don’t state it outright—possibly because of how embarrassing it would look—but that is the only conclusion that I can draw. (Otherwise, the only alternatives are either that the writers wanted to subject innocent people to their angsty, immature whining, or they simply wanted to waste their time, both of which would be bafflingly unwise of them.) Is there anything inaccurate about my observation? Because otherwise, I don’t know why these presumed professionals would suddenly subject us to this lazy and shallow writing.
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>These new layoffs in the tech industry are a continuation of major cuts over the last year. According to the tech-job tracker layoffs.fyi, there have been more than 200,000 tech jobs eliminated since the start of 2022. They include 18,000 layoffs at Amazon in recent months and 11,000 at Facebook parent company Meta in November. > >To add insult to injury, many of the Google workers only discovered they were terminated when their key fobs didn’t work after they arrived at work. Google notified the workers through an email, rather than through personal contact. Meanwhile, corporate spokespeople and human resources representatives of the tech giants can be heard condescendingly telling laid-off workers to “build their resumes.” With mass layoffs at such a high rate, it is difficult for the displaced workers to be optimistic about future job opportunities.
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>From 1966-68, John Singlaub commanded the Studies and Observations Group, a top secret “joint unconventional warfare task force” during the Vietnam War, which apparently made him “one of the on-site commanders” of Operation Phoenix, the CIA’s secretive assassination program that murdered thousands of Vietnamese civilians. 20 years later, after the Iran-Contra affair spilled into the open, journalist Peter Tarr reported for the *Los Angeles Times* that he “turned up evidence that the counterinsurgency strategy advocated by Singlaub and other private American citizens on the far right for use in Central America now had taken firm root in the Philippines.”
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>[Marek Jan] Chodakiewicz, who describes himself as "a Christian conservative of Polish ancestry," **has written favorably about Francisco Franco, the late anti-Communist dictator known for his brutal suppression of the Spanish left. He is an admirer of the late shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, an autocratic leader who criticized American Jews for "controlling" U.S. media and finance. He sees gay rights as a threat to society**, has linked President Barack Obama to communists and domestic terrorists, and is a voluble critic of what he sees as Western "political correctness." > >**But it is Poles' killing of Jews during and after the war, and Poland's image as a result, that commands much of Chodakiewicz's attention**… "*The guy is an ideologist of the radical right,*" says Jan T. Gross, a Princeton University history professor and the Polish-born author of two acclaimed books about the Poles' murder of Jews during and after World War II — books that sparked a political firestorm in Poland because they suggested a high level of Catholic anti-Semitism. "I don't have any doubts that he's anti-Semitic." > >University of Toronto Polish history professor Piotr Wróbel is less blunt. Chodakiewicz, he says, "has spent almost 30 years in the states — he would never use a phrase or adjective that would clearly identify him as an anti-Semite." But, he adds, "There is no doubt whatsoever that he doesn't like the Jews." Charming.
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(Spotted [here.](https://teddit.zaggy.nl/ymv80g)) :::spoiler Commentary This is a classic example of what some logicians like to call the Texas sharpshooter fallacy: by relying on a small pool of data, you can ‘prove’ just about anything. While it was natural that Washington would enact some anti‐Axis measures when it officially entered the war in 1941, [these are probably best summarized as ‘too little, too late’.](https://archive.org/stream/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion/page/n95/mode/1up) >Concession Blacklist and Tarrifs [*sic*] against Germany - 1935 This is very misleading, and I wasted a couple dozen minutes of my time trying to research it. This doesn’t refer to a unique law designed to limit trade with the Third Reich specifically, [but rather with **all** of the belligerent powers in Europe, including (until 1939) Britain and France.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Acts_of_the_1930s) They didn’t enact this on grounds of antifascism either, but to avoid involvement in another major war. The Neutrality Act was basically a failure. Not only did corporations like [Chase](https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511618178.012) and Ford repeatedly bypass it with great success, but, [as Gaetano Salvemini noted](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=FE26410B889AF50341ADB0C71D131E0D): >As if Mussolini's mill needed more water to work it, the isolationist Congress of the United States passed a “Neutrality Act” (August 23-24) which made it mandatory for the President until February 29, 1936, in case of war between foreign countries, to place an embargo on the export of arms and munitions to all belligerents without discrimination. It was obvious that the Act could not affect Italy, which manufactured guns and shells but had to import cotton for explosives, steel, and copper for military equipment, coal and oil for her navy. Putting an embargo on arms alone meant leaving Italy undisturbed. While this passage is referring to Fascist Italy, it applies to the Third Reich as well. Now, it may be true that American–German trade (or at least the legal kind) fell by 50% from 1929 to 1939, [but that had more to do with the Great Depression](https://books.google.com/books?id=DDDuCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT245) than moral objections ([which few U.S. businesses had](https://books.google.com/books?id=Ay6XDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA145)) to the German Reich; an overall decrease in trade was already probable, [with some important exceptions](https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=8DFA2535D42F61BE125D008240C04EBB): >And it is important to consider the size of [Yankee] investments in [Fascist] Germany at the time of Pearl Harbor. These amounted to an estimated total of $475 million. Standard Oil of New Jersey had $120 million invested there; General Motors had $35 million; ITT had $30 million; and Ford had $17.5 million. > >[…] > >Why did even the loyal figures of the [Yankee] government allow these transactions to continue after Pearl Harbor? A logical deduction would be that not to have done so would have involved public disclosure: the procedure of legally disconnecting these alliances under the antitrust laws would have resulted in a public scandal that would have drastically affected public morale, caused widespread strikes, and perhaps provoked mutinies in the armed services. Moreover, as some corporate executives were never tired of reminding the government, **their trial and imprisonment would have made it impossible for the corporate boards to help the [Yankee] war effort. Therefore, the government was powerless to intervene.** (Emphasis added.) Thus the Neutrality Act’s effects must have been marginal at best. >Cash and Carry - 1939 Yes, the White House created a loophole in its Neutrality Act in order to provide France and the United Kingdom with some ([sorely needed](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291083515)) rearmament. That is true. The complete loss of France and the United Kingdom, however, would have placed them under unstable régimes under attack from partisans, at serious risk for eventual liberation by the U.S.S.R., and finally transformed from anticommunist régimes into people’s republics, as the pattern became in most of Eastern Europe: > [Britain and France did not appease Germany because they expected to be defeated by the Wehrmacht, but because, in the words of France’s right-wing Prime Minister Daladier, another European war would mean the ‘utter destruction of European civilization’, creating a vacuum that could only be filled by ‘Cossack and Mongol hordes’ and their ‘culture’ of Soviet Communism.](https://books.google.com/books?id=-h_Z_KK0MQUC&pg=PT393) So the suddenly increased trading with France and the U.K. had more to do with reinforcing Western capital and less to do with antifascism. Nothing surprising here. > Lend Least Act - 1941 [See here.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/460887/comment/336107) >German Soviet Credit Agreement - 1939 >Ribbenntrop [*sic*] Pact - 1939 >German Soviet Commercial Agreement - 1940 I have already replied to all of these [here.](https://web.archive.org/web/20210921210245/https://leftypedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric:The_Nazis_Were_Leftists#World_War_II) What I find most frustrating about this meme, though, is that it leaves [a **lot**](https://web.archive.org/web/20210921210245/https://leftypedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric:The_Nazis_Were_Leftists#cite_ref-313) unsaid. The U.S. press’s reactions in 1933, the tolerance for the Fascists at Madison Square, the tolerance for them in Hollywood, [the benevolent treatment of Fascist POWs](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/440104), the CIA’s recruitment of Axis personnel and their collaborators? All omitted. Most obviously, [the massive anticommunist invasion of the U.S.S.R.](https://lemmygrad.ml/post/460511) is omitted, as if it were unimportant. While it would be an exaggeration to say that Imperial America and the Third Reich were ever ‘best buds’, they were not natural born enemies either, which is why Western forces invaded the R.S.F.S.R. almost immediately but left both Fascist Italy and the Third Reich in peace as they safely accumulated power in the 1930s—[in many cases with the help of U.S. capitalists](https://web.archive.org/web/20210921210245/https://leftypedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric:The_Nazis_Were_Leftists#cite_ref-81). :::
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Feeling antisocial lately
I’m a twenty‐eight‐year‐old with antidepressants, so I’ll probably get over this before (or at least shortly after) the year ends, but lately I’ve been acting angsty and much more introverted than usual. One of my goals was to post something to capitalismindecay daily, but I’ve been pretty lazy with that and my excuse is that what I’d like to share is likely going to receive fewer than five upvotes (i.e. only a few—if any—people will care), so what’s the point. I may was well keep the knowledge to myself since that way I won’t waste my own time. I haven’t been sharing as much news lately either. That’s just how it’s most obvious, though. In other media I’ve been even less active. I don’t see the point in using Discord, Instagram, Steam, Tumblr, or even emailing people since the response rate has to be lower than 10%, and when they do reply, it’s often along the lines of ‘I’m busy right now’ or ‘nah’. (This is more‐or‐less why I deleted my Twitter account yesteryear, and why I’ve quit so many Discord servers over the years that now I’m down to only two. In fact, I haven’t logged into Discord for about three weeks. I’ll likely log back in, but I don’t know when that’s going to happen.) If I could somehow address every single ‘content creator’ who ever said something like ‘please leave us a comment, we’d love to read it’: fuck you for lying to innocent people, and fuck you for wasting their time. I’ll probably get over this phase once I’m taking my antidepressants more consistently. For now I’m just keeping to myself, mostly. Worst case scenario is that I’ll deliberately misbehave since so few people notice me anyway. It’s usually a nice, consequence‐free way to have a little fun…usually.
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>But in one way Fama was right: the movement in the individual prices of stocks and bonds is “*extremely hard to predict over short horizons.*” And prices do move quickly (and efficiently?) to absorb any ability of investors to take advantage of others and make profit (as long as the market is not rigged, of course!). His Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH) basically asserts, in the words of the economist Burton Malkiel, that “*a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper’s financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by experts.*” > >[…] > >As neoclassical economist John Cochrane put it: “*The central prediction of the EMH is precisely that nobody can tell where markets are going – neither benevolent government bureaucrats nor crafty hedge fund managers, nor ivory tower academics. This is the best tested proposition in all the social sciences*”. > >[…] > >But for society as a whole, the question is whether financial markets are useful and efficient at all. That is a different question and one on which Fama has nothing to say. His EMH implies that if markets are left to themselves and market agents have enough information, then an economy will perform efficiently and without disruption. Well, after the Great Recession, he was asked what went wrong. He replied casually, “***We don’t know what causes recessions. I’m not a macroeconomist, so I don’t feel bad about that! We’ve never known. Debates go on to this day about what caused the Great Depression. Economics is not very good at explaining swings in economic activity***”. > >[…] > >Shiller and Akerlof are supporters of what is fashionably called ‘behavioural economics’ i.e. the changes in a capitalist economy can be best explained by changes in the unpredictable behaviour of consumers and investors. That sets off a chain of connections for the demand for money, in investment decisions and in spending. This is the inherent flaw in a modern economy: uncertainty and psychology. It’s not the drive for profit versus social need, but the psychological perceptions of individuals. Thus the US home price collapse came about because consumers’ ‘animal spirits’ gave way to a bias towards precaution and savings as debt mounted – just like that. (Emphasis added.)
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