..what the us, russia, china, europe have in common is they are driven by capitalism.
..argue all you want about the differences between them but the underlying factor is capitalism. which is common to all of them.
Struggles in passing
Fri, 2022-01-14 09:32
#52
Fri, 2022-01-14 11:40
#53
Disgusting, but it is the fault of specific capitalists not capitalism in general.
"an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state."
Grand majority of people want the option of opening up a business or selling their labour. You lose them when you attack 100% of capitalism.
Fri, 2022-01-14 11:57
#54
..no capitalism works like a machine. a machine out of control. a ceo can't make it different or that person is out. a president can't make it different or that person is out. it's now, today, out of control.
Fri, 2022-01-14 12:02
#55
..pondering you continually equate capitalism with commerce. they are 2 distinct entities. not one.
Fri, 2022-01-14 12:34
#56
..capitalism is a system of control. not commerce.
Fri, 2022-01-14 14:16
#57
..the only manufactured aspect is the involvement of russia. there was no coup.
A country that is one of the largest land masses in the world with only 21 million people. It is where the BRI was announced and Kazakhstan is China's main gas and oil supplier. Strange how the "protests" arose in the oil fields and freedom fighters, only looking for democracy, nearly took over all the critical infrastructure in the country. If they had succeeded they would have been able to cripple China's power supply as the winter Olympics started. I love how serendipitous it is that these human rights activists target the very things that could hurt America's sworn enemy the most. In Kazakhstan the regime change actors didn't even have to build a refinery to steal oil efficiently, like they have just done in Syria.
I found the facts in this video extremely helpful in understanding the geopolitical context of the coup d' etat attempt. Some may say that a foreign country pumping a million dollars a year into a small country for "human rights" propaganda is not interference it is merely promoting democracy. I would disagree vehemently. The political debate would be very different and far more potentially productive for the people if the agenda was not being driven by the NED and other 5Eyes agencies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw5nFSFrNzc
I am very grateful that babble has progressed and the moderators are not enforcing the same rules as they did with the Arab Spring, when saying the obvious that this was a US backed coup would get you banned for denying the agency of the Egyptian people.
Fri, 2022-01-14 16:19
#58
Solidarity with the uprising in Kazakhstan
..this piece that i posted earlier originally came from here. they must be in the clutches of western propaganda. not true leftists.
About
RISE is an Ecosocialist organisation fighting for a society free of exploitation, oppression, and environmental degradation.
The four letters of RISE give a glimpse into the socialist politics we stand for: Revolutionary, Internationalist, Socialist, Environmentalist.
Fri, 2022-01-14 18:59
#59
Never a shortage of 'progressive' support for western regime-change ops.
Sat, 2022-01-15 15:18
#60
CSTO has been doing drills for this kind of scenario for years. The oil workers are demanding that the oil fields be nationalized and given to them. Hell I would have loved to have taken those kinds of demands to a bargaining table in Canada. The only way to make those kinds of demand is with an armed insurrection because normally UK and Chinese bankers, let alone US hedge funds, don't like the properties they invested in being confiscated.
This is like disaster capitalism. The disasters are exploited when they happen, see Naomi Klein. The legitimate protests against gas hikes and the ongoing labour activism served as the vehicle for the US regime change scenario to be played out.
While Western liberals see a peaceful protest the CSTO governments see the start of a Syrian or Libyan style destruction. How are the oil workers in Libya or in Syria doing. Are they treated well by the paramilitaries that are running the fields?
Support the call from oil workers for nationalisation of the oil wealth and major industries under NATO control in occupied Libya and Syria with the workers’ taking control.
Support the building of an independent trade union movement and socialist movement in Canada.
The CSTO response shows they saw it coming. But then the US Embassy "warned" about protests disrupting the country before they happened because they were announced by the NED backed opposition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E5184wLEm0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF9lNfd7WEM
Sat, 2022-01-15 15:28
#61
..i suspect this revolt by working people will not end well for them. russia won't let that happen. but it still needs to play out. those folks have very few options faced with many many more years living under such repressive regime.
Sat, 2022-01-15 15:33
#62
Public Meeting- Solidarity with the Kazakhstan Uprising
Zoom meeting, Saturday, January 22nd, 10am PT / 6pm UTC / 19h CET
Ainur Kurmanov, Socialist Movement Kazakhstan – with a report, Q&A and discussion.
This meeting is organized by AntiCapitalist Resistance (England and Wales), Lernen im Kampf (Germany), RISE (Ireland), Reform & Revolution caucus in DSA (USA)
Sign up at → tinyurl.com/uprising2022
Sat, 2022-01-15 15:41
#63
..my browser security wouldn't allow me to go to the uprising link so i used a different browser and got through. i'm signed up for the webinair.
Sat, 2022-01-15 15:52
#64
CSTO's Mission Accomplished in Kazakhstan
https://www.indianpunchline.com/cstos-mission-accomplished-in-kazakhstan/
"The situation in Kazakhstan has been fully stabilised in a matter of a week. The withdrawal of the CSTO troops that began on Thursday will be completed by January 19.
The culmination of the CSTO mission comes as a big rebuff to the US propagandists, especially the hyperbolic secretary of state Antony Blinken. The display of Russian political will to use military force to help its allies in distress carries a big message all across the Central Asian region and the Caspian and Caucasus. Azerbaijan and Turkey have been left to draw appropriate conclusions from the fact that the Armenian leadership moved in lockstep with the Kremlin when the crunch time came.
Without a doubt, the searing experience of the last ten days have contributed to the further strengthening of the Russian-Kazakh alliance. Moscow is backing Tokayev's leadership. This has massive geopolitical ramifications. It is virtually impossible now for the Five Eyes to get a base anywhere in Central Asia to destabilise China or Russia.
The Kazakh officials have pointed fingers at 'a single source' abroad for having masterminded the regime change project in their country.
If the strategy of the 'single source' was to create a fait accompli for Russia along its 7600-km open southern border at a juncture when the Kremlin is faced with a growing security challenge from NATO and the US, on the western border, things have worked out differently. Moscow has shown its military capability to mobilise, deploy and operate on multiple fronts at very short notice..."
President Tokayev's tasks to new Govt of Kazakhstan
Sat, 2022-01-15 16:13
#65
Two people who have actual experience in the region do not think US interference was a major feature of the current unrest--so far--though as the second article makes clear the pattern of US interference and subversion makes it a likely target for US operations:
What Kazakhstan Isn’t
January 7, 2022 in Uncategorized by craig | View Comments
....
"The lack of intellectual flexibility among western commentators entrapped in the confines of their own culture wars is a well-established feature of modern political society. Distorting a picture into this frame is not so easily detectable where the public have no idea what the picture normally looks like, as with Kazakhstan.
....
Kazakhstan is an authoritarian dictatorship with extreme divisions in wealth and power between the ruling class – often still the old Soviet nomenklatura and their families – and everybody else. No political opposition is permitted. Infamously, after a massacre of striking miners, Tony Blair contacted former dictator Nazarbayev offering his PR services to help limit political fallout. This resulted in a $4 million per year contract for Blair to assist Kazakhstan’s PR, a contract on which BBC favourites Jonathon Powell and Alastair Campbell both worked.
One result of the Blairite media management for Kazakhstan was that the Guardian, publishing US leaked diplomatic cables in cooperation with Wikileaks, refused to publish US Embassy reports on corruption in Kazakhstan.
The Kazakh dictatorship is also a favourite destination of troughing royals Prince Andrew and Prince Michael of Kent.
I always viewed President Nazarbayev as the smartest of the Central Asian dictators. He allowed much greater individual economic freedom than in neighbouring Uzbekistan; Kazakhs could build up enterprises without the fear of having them confiscated at whim by the ruling family, and the collective farm land was given to native farmers and production diversified. Nazarbayev in foreign affairs skilfully balanced between Russia, the West and China, never definitively tilting in one direction. Ethnic Russian technocrats and academics were not driven from the country. Gazprom was not permitted to obtain dominant economic control...."
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/01/what-kazakhstan-isnt/
US Must Stay Out of Kazakhstan’s Troubles
January 12, 2022
....
"The most important underlying reason for the unrest however is entirely clear. It lies in the gross mismatch between Kazakhstan’s huge revenues from energy exports (more than $30 billion in 2021), the vast wealth of its elites and the poverty of the mass of its population, with an average household income last year of only $3,200. As a Kazakh trades unionist told The New York Times:
"
“Kazakhstan is a rich country, but these resources do not work in the interests of the people, they work in the interests of the elites. There is a huge stratification of society.”
Regional factors also played a part: the hugely expensive move of the capital from the biggest city, Alma Aty, to a new capital, Astana, then renamed — to add insult to injury as far as Alma Aty is concerned — Nur-Sultan after Nazarbayev. The failure to distribute the benefits of energy revenues to the western region of Menghystau where most of the oil and gas is produced is also a factor. The government decision (now suspended) to lift the cap on domestic fuel prices was only the last straw for many ordinary Kazakhs...."
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/01/12/us-must-stay-out-of-kazakhstans-tr...
Sat, 2022-01-15 16:58
#66
Craig Murray's article is a good read but I think he knows less about the CIA than he does about Kazakhstan. Here is a link to the NED website that lists all the US interference in the local politics. If I actually thought that the National Endowment for Democracy and the various Human Rights groups funded by the US were promoting democracy and freedom I would support them. Someone like Craig would read the list of groups and see great things for the country not a well honed regime change network. I think the regime needs changing but if the people leading the attack have been paid for years to propagandize for the US then I do not see it being in the best interests of the people of the country. This kind of state sponsored action shows a blatant disregard and contempt for the UN Charter.
I think more countries are going to take the Chinese route and ban all foreign "NGO"'s, if they are actually government funded, like the NED and the groups it funds. They are engaged in political and "movement" building in countries around the globe and passing laws that say working with foreign NGO's that are banned is illegal is a good defense against foreign interference.
Sat, 2022-01-15 22:03
#67
..pondering you continually equate capitalism with commerce. they are 2 distinct entities. not one.
I do because that is what the dictionary defines it as.
google noun
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
If I want to own a business and hire workers, it is capitalism not just commerce.
That the academic left may have some more sophisticated interpretation most people just go by the dictionary meaning.
Sat, 2022-01-15 22:14
#68
Is China a capitalist country because its trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit?
Sun, 2022-01-16 09:27
#69
..pondering you continually equate capitalism with commerce. they are 2 distinct entities. not one.
I do because that is what the dictionary defines it as.
google noun
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.If I want to own a business and hire workers, it is capitalism not just commerce.
That the academic left may have some more sophisticated interpretation most people just go by the dictionary meaning.
..you have a point pondering. the dictionary doesn't talk about capitalism controlling governments though. through a system of global agreements and other wise. ie free trade. the largest delegation to the last climate talks was oil and gas. over 500 people i read somewhere.
Sun, 2022-01-16 17:03
#70
..a good read
quote:
Traditions of Workers’ Struggle. Spontaneous Strike
The form of protest initially was a classic “proletarian” strike. On the night of 3 to 4 January, a wildcat strike began at the Tengiz Oil enterprises. Soon the strike spread to neighboring regions. Today, the strike movement has two main focus points – Zhanaozen and Aktau.
As conspiracy theorists write today, the unrest in Kazakhstan was carefully prepared in the West, as evidenced by the careful organization and coordination of the protesters. In Kurmanov’s words:
This is not a Maidan, although many political analysts are trying to present it this way. Where did such amazing self-organization come from? This is the experience and tradition of the workers. Strikes have been shaking the Mangistau region since 2008, and the strike movement began back in the 2000s. Even without any input from the Communist Party or other leftist groups, there were constant demands to nationalize the oil companies. The workers simply saw with their own eyes what privatization and foreign capitalist takeover was leading to. In the course of these earlier demonstrations, they gained enormous experience in struggle and solidarity. The very life in the wilderness made people stick together. It was against this background that the working class and the rest of the population came together. The protests of the workers in Zhanoazen and Aktau then set the tone for other regions of the country. Yurts and tents, which protesters began to put up in the main squares of the cities, were not at all taken from the “Euromaidan” experience: they stood in the Mangastau Region during the local strikes last year. The population itself brought water and food for the protesters.
Sun, 2022-01-16 17:20
#71
..from above
quote:
Back in 2017, a monument was erected in Kyzyl-Orda to Mustafa Chokai, the inspirer of the Turkestan legion of the Wehrmacht. Today, the state is radically revising history. The process has especially intensified after Nursultan Nazarbayev’s visit to the USA a few years ago. The pan-Turkic movement is also becoming more and more active. More recently, i[on the initiative of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Union of Turkic States was established in Istanbul on Nov. 12, 2021. Kazakhstan’s elite keeps its main assets in the West. That’s why the imperialistic states are absolutely not interested in the downfall of the present regime; it is already completely on their side.
Sun, 2022-01-16 17:25
#72
..and this
quote:
You can’t reduce everything to conspiracy theories. You shouldn’t idealize the current protest movement either. Yes, it is a grassroots social movement, with a pioneering role for workers, supported by the unemployed and other social groups. But there are very different forces at work in it, especially as workers do not have their own party, class trade unions, a clear program that fully meets their interests. The existing left-wing groups in Kazakhstan are more like circles and cannot seriously influence the course of events. Oligarchic and outside forces will try to appropriate and or at least use this movement for their own purposes. If it wins, the redistribution of property and open confrontation between various groups of the bourgeoisie, a “war of all against all,” will begin. But, in any case, the workers will be able to win certain freedoms and get new opportunities, including the creation of their own parties and independent trade unions, which will facilitate their struggle for their rights in the future.
Sun, 2022-01-16 17:31
#73
..finally
quote:
Kazakhstan’s armed forces try to confront the protesters
P.S. After the article was published, it became known that in Almaty and some other cities there are heavy clashes, the protestors have seized many key infrastructure buildings in Almaty and other cities. Under pressure from the protests, President Tokayev made unprecedented social concessions – he promised state regulation of gas, gasoline and socially important goods, a moratorium on raising utility bills, subsidized rents for housing for the poor, and the creation of a public fund to support health care and children. Protesters also demanded a return to the 1993 Constitution and a government made up of people outside the system. And they still demand lower food prices and a reduction of the retirement age to 58-60, higher wages, pensions, child benefits, and so on.
Liberal opposition activists hastened to declare that it is they who coordinate the movement.
By the evening of January 5, it was reported that Nursultan Nazarbayev was no longer the chairman of the SB. President Tokayev took his place and stated his intention to act “as tough as possible. At the same time, it was promised that “consistent political reforms” would soon be carried out.
..it was then that russia came to the rescue.
Sun, 2022-01-16 21:17
#74
Kazakhstan Chaos an Opportunity But for Who?
https://journal-neo.org/2022/01/14/kazakhstan-chaos-an-opportunity-but-f...
"...The question remains - is this a long-term success for CSTO and Kazakhstan in particular? Or will the US light other fires forcing Russian forces and their allies to overstretch across the region while continuing to destabilize Ukraine, Syria, and undermine Russia's Chinese allies to the East?
The US involvement through supposed 'nongovernmental organizations', (NGOs) funded by the NED in Kazakhstan, may also help raise global awareness regarding the threats these networks pose..."
Mon, 2022-01-17 14:28
#75
It is fascinating to think that the US spends so much money in propaganda and in building networks in the country and apparently the local worker activists are more influential on the ground. However I think that it is not one or the other but a matrix of many forces at play including both the US regime change franchise in the country and an independent workers uprising. I do have many questions that I have about all the stories.
I believe some the protestors were heavily armed and they didn't carry umbrellas. If one accepts that they were heavily armed it begs the question who is providing them the weapons. Also the role of the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) movement and its associate, the unregistered Koshe (Street) party in the above scenario that claims it was a classic proletarian revolt needs to be explained to me better. Hell the US Embassy sent out notices that the DVK had called for protests prior to the protests starting. Must we assume that those groups are not really very effective and had only a very minor role in the uprising?
Then there is the claim that thousands of foreign fighters were neutralized who had nothing to do with the protests except using them as timing for their own coup attempt. That is what CSTO claimed when it sent troops into the country. So far that part appears to not have been well verified.
Then there is this largely unreported part of the story that I wonder about. Kazakhstan has been trying to reintegrate jihadists who fought in Syria in the US backed militias.
https://internationalaffairsreview.com/2020/06/20/repatriating-foreign-f...
The scenarios are not endless but they are definitely complex.
Mon, 2022-01-17 16:01
#76
Kazakhstan: an eyewitness to the uprising in Almaty
This text was written by Aidar Ergali on Thursday 6 January in Almaty. It has been circulating on Russian-language social media (e.g. here and here) and was translated into English yesterday. Please copy and paste, please circulate
THIS WILL BE A LONG READ, BUT PLEASE READ IT
This is what happened yesterday [Wednesday 5 January] in Almaty’s main square. Please tell the whole world what has been happening in KAZAKHSTAN.
Brothers and sisters!
The traitor [president] Tokayev has brought armies into the country, and as of yesterday we are under the Russian occupation. Don’t believe the foul propaganda Tokayev spouts, his voice breaking with fear.
The provocateurs and marauders had been brought in by the government, in order to discredit the protest movement, and to drown it in blood. The people who had come out into the streets of our cities are not extremists and marauders, not terrorists, as the government claims. These are the people of Kazakhstan, robbed and driven to fury by a gang of cowardly traitors and scoundrels.
quote:
The fault for everything happening in our country now lies with the government. With Nazarbayev and his clique. While suppressing their own people, the authorities have lost the time to negotiate. The time for negotiations has now passed. Specifically, it passed yesterday, when the people took to the streets en masse for a PEACEFUL rally, in support of our brothers in western Kazakhstan. If the people had not come out as one across the country, they would long ago have drowned the Zhanaozen strikers in blood, just as it happened ten years ago. Because the same cannibals and butchers are still in power. Our lives are not worth a penny to them. That time we permitted that slaughter to happen, through our inaction and cowardice.
On 4 January, instead of starting an open dialogue with the people, the government set up cordons, and its guard dogs, the karabets [armed security forces], were let loose on peaceful protesters.
These cowardly creatures, only fit for pushing around old ladies and children, came up against the most powerful resistance and were completely smashed. And it is not for nothing that this happened in the street that bears the name of the legendary Kazakh hero, Baurzhan Momshula. I did not take part in these clashes, I only heard about it the next day from someone who did, but you could judge the scale of the conflict from the large numbers of riot shields, helmets, batons and bulletproof vests worn the following day by the protesters, that had been discarded by our “valiant” guardians of law and order. Not hundreds of them, but thousands. And that equipment seized from them included weapons and light and noise grenades.
I can’t tell you everything that happened yesterday across the whole city with any chronological order, but I can tell you what I saw. Yesterday, 5 January, my friend and I drove down Sain Road towards Momshula street in order to see what was happening with our own eyes. It was impossible to get past Tole Bi Street.
The street was blocked by cars and demonstrators. Everywhere it was strewn with discarded riot shields, armour, scraps of police uniform and various rubbish. We found a secure spot in the district to park the car and walked the rest of Tole Bi Street. Everyone was walking towards the city centre, the street was blocked at its west end by cars, some improvised barricades and, in many places, even by pulled-up rails.
Eventually, closer to the city centre, small dispersed groups of demonstrators became a huge, countless and endless flood that was constantly chanting “shal ket” (“old man, be gone”) and singing the national anthem.
Along the way we saw the smashed-up offices of the ruling party, Nur Otan. We saw burning police stations and police cars. We saw rioters smashing up the offices of the state prosecutor, the lapdogs of this rotten regime that have been helping for so many years to humiliate the Kazakh people, driving it deeper and deeper into slavery. All while calling all this lawlessness “upholding the law”. And what did you expect, Tokayev and Nazarbayev? That you could beat people into a pulp, and herd them in riot vans like sheep forever?
No, Kazakhs are a nation, which lives in its own land, bequeathed to them by their fathers, and which is capable of standing up for itself.
We saw ordinary folk, elderly grannies carried water and pastries in their string bags and distributed them among the passers-by with their bata [blessing]. I remember a beautiful scene when on the first floor balcony in Seifullin Street there stood a middle-aged woman, shouting and gesticulating to the people. Her face literally glowed with joy and she was sobbing. She did not understand the Kazakh language, but when people started shouting to her in Russian, “Grandma, throw us down some water”, she hurried at once and lowered several five-litre bottles of water into the street, and the crowd broke into applause.....
Mon, 2022-01-17 16:08
#77
The soldiers turned out to be quite simply, children. Conscripts or trainees, I don’t know. But they looked 17 or 18. Those bastards sent teenagers to defend their regime and then left them there to their fate. Stripped to their underwear, barefoot in the snow, badly beaten, confused and utterly despondent. This was a heartbreaking sight. The protesters who had defended them had pulled them out of a fight, and were trying to wrap them up in coats. Then they were evacuated by that guy from the green. Where these soldiers had come from, I have no idea. Possibly from the army truck captured earlier in Furmanov Street.
I had seen a column of four of these trucks that were trying to get through Furmanov under a hail of rocks and sticks. When I say a “hail of rocks”, I mean it was literally hailing rocks. The protesters owe thanks to Baibek [leader of the ruling Nur Otan party Bayurjan Baibek] for such a haul of quality ammunition for the proletariat. With this vehicle, that the protesters had managed to capture, they later rammed the fence around the presidential residence.
Mon, 2022-01-17 16:15
#78
..more
quote:
When the attack subsided, we moved onto a nearby green, but judging by it all, the storming of the compound had only begun, because more and more people crowded around it, determined. Later, the presidential palace fell, and the soldiers got evacuated somewhere. The building itself was torched.
I’ll say straight away that if you think these guys [who attacked the palace] were trained paramilitaries, you couldn’t be more wrong. These were ordinary blokes, proper brave lads with balls, not armchair experts. They went there to say “no” to the Nazarbayev regime, but it was the authorities themselves that had angered these people, having opened fire. There was a feeling that these guys would stick it out to the end. They were not hired provocateurs, because provocateurs NEVER risk getting shot at. Nobody there knew each other, the folk were united by their will for freedom and their hatred of the regime.
If any of those guys read these words, please know — we are brothers. I knew for certain that had anything happened to me, they would have pulled me out at any cost. And you know what, no matter what anyone calls them, no matter how they get smeared, I swear, from this day I will be proud of my people, to the end of my days. And all my words and gripes with Kazakhs as a nation, all my doubts about the future of our people, I take them all back. We are a nation, and we are a nation with a strong character.
Mon, 2022-01-17 16:39
#79
..10 years ago
Kazakhstan, ten years after the Zhanaozen massacre: oil workers’ fight to organise goes on
Ten years after police massacred striking oil workers at Zhanaozen, Kazakhstan, human rights organisations and trades unionists are demanding an international inquiry into the killings.
Even now, the number of victims is unknown. State officials admit that 16 were killed and 64 injured on 16 December 2011 – but campaigners say there were dozens, perhaps hundreds, more.
The initial killings, by police who fired into a peaceful, unarmed crowd, were followed by a three-day reign of terror in Zhanaozen, in the oil-rich Mangistau province in western Kazakhstan, and nearby villages.
The torture and sexual violence used against detainees should also be investigated by an independent international commission, campaigners say.
Although a handful of police officers were tried for “exceeding their powers”, and a detention centre boss briefly jailed, the Kazakh government has refused to say who ordered the shootings.
The Zhanaozen shootings ended an eight-month strike by the town’s oil workers, one of the largest industrial actions ever in the post-Soviet countries.
Oil workers and their families had demanded better pay and conditions, and the right to organise independent trade unions, at Ozenmunaigaz, a production subsidiary of the national oil company Kazmunaigaz, and contracting firms.....
Mon, 2022-01-17 22:06
#80
The Grey Zone: Kazakhstan Coup Fails, US-Russia Talks Go Nowhere: Is War on the Horizon? (and vid)
https://twitter.com/RealPepeEscobar/status/1482431026748182534
"Max Blumenthal and geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar discuss the violent coup attempt in Kazakhstan, and its crucial importance as an ally of Russia and the center of China's Belt & Road Initiative..."
Tue, 2022-01-18 10:20
#81
..ndpp posted another piece earlier by escobar citing a colour revolution kzakhstan. this video is more of the same.
..i have posted from people on the ground that contradict that position. no one though is saying that there were not other agendas at play...but that the russian military is/was there to crush the uprising not protect against a colour revolution.
Tue, 2022-01-18 20:04
#82
So you believe from this continent you can tell which of those two scenarios is right. Fuck you are really good at this. Are you sure that all the US regime change work and the people they employ in the area have had absolutely no success. Hundreds of thousands of dollars gone to waste. Also do you know for sure that there were no foreign fighters transported into the region at the same time as the revolt.
I have no idea what exactly happened, its good to see others are certain in their knowledge from afar.
Tue, 2022-01-18 20:35
#83
..i can see as much as you or ndpp can. you and ndpp's 1st position has been interferrence based on your geopolitical positions and understandings. mine is based on the revolt itself. geopolitics doesn't trump class struggle. and unless you can prove otherwise i see no reason to think it's illegitimate. especially since it is rooted in struggles of the past. and that government is corrupt and brutal.
Tue, 2022-01-18 20:37
#84
..this is not our 1st debate over this kind of issue. hong kong was another place where you and ndpp chose geopolitics over class struggle.
Wed, 2022-01-19 17:29
#85
Hong Kong was not a class struggle. Did you even pay attention to their demands? I saw no demands that I would consider to have arisen from a class analysis. You might as well claim that the Capital Hill riots were part of a class struggle. If you do then frankly we are not talking the same language.
Wed, 2022-01-19 19:04
#86
..this is pretty much how you addressed the analysis re: hong kong.
..from the china 2 thread
quote:
White mans guilt writ large. The IMF has fucked over countries for decades but we are all told to presume that the yellow peril cannot be better and is likely worse. No evidence needed just flat out racism.
All I hear from the privileged white people is that China and nations in Africa should not build infrastructure because it is capitalist and imperialist. Those brown and black and yellow people deserve to be in poverty stricken because the planet can't support them having our lifestyle, so fuck them and the high speed train they rode in on.
In the meantime Canadian whataboutists spend more time vilifying China for partnering with other countries than they do Korea and the US. Foreign money building LNG and Coast pipelines and fracking my province is all right because my country and province would never get screwed over financially or polluted from such great infrastructure projects. But lets all pivot to Asia to stop the yellow peril.
..but if you are serious why don't you address the Au Loong-Yu analysis also in the china 2 thread. he's a hong konger.
Au Loong-Yu is a leading global justice campaigner in Hong Kong. He is currently editor of China Labor Net and also has a column in Inmedia. He is the author of China’s rise: strength and fragility and the forthcoming Hong Kong in revolt: the protest movement and the future of China.
Thu, 2022-01-20 17:00
#87
Sounds like a great resume. Who pays the bills because you cannot get over the age old adage that he who pays the piper calls the tunes.
I look at Hong Kong and imagine that it is Vancouver. Maybe to you it would be acceptable to live somewhere were there were two or three Stanley Cup riots every week as long as the demand was to overthrow our capitalist system and introduce a new form of government. Me I prefer to live in peace and demand that protests be non-violent. The US regime change NGO's are all engaged in breaches of the UN Charter as far as I am concerned and I believe the UN Charter should be respected since it can maintain peace in the globe. I despise US foreign policy because it blatantly insists that it has the moral authority to interfere in other countries affairs. You agree with the US State Department that it should have the right to fund opposition to other governments. On that we disagree completely.
Fri, 2022-01-21 11:30
#88
..rhetorical statements are not a replacement for debate. it is extremely difficult to defend the current china..outside the us vs china context..so you attack fellow travellers. you attack people on babble.
..you need to find a better way of relating to people because angry man politics doesn't cut it.
Fri, 2022-01-21 12:18
#89
You agree with the US State Department that it should have the right to fund opposition to other governments. On that we disagree completely.
He never said that. As far as I can tell you assume anyone supported by the US is automatically in the wrong. People stuck between a rock and a hard place get to pick their own poison. For them, the enemy of their enemy is their friend.
If I am in a burning building and a pedophile runs in to rescue me I am not going to say no. It wouldn't mean I approved of pedophiles.
Regardless of what you think of Canada and even the US we don't get arrested or killed for speaking out against government. Live ammunition is not used against protesters.
Fri, 2022-01-21 15:10
#90
'Make Hong Kong Great Again!'
https://globalnews.ca/video/6240476/make-hong-kong-great-again-protester...
'He who pays the piper calls the tune.'
'Behind them were the anti-China forces in the West.'
Fri, 2022-01-21 16:48
#91
So Pondering during the student protests in Montreal how many buildings were destroyed? How many police officers were set on fire? Did the Montreal students get the result they wanted or did they eventually get coerced with fines and arrests into giving up the fight?
I am tired of Canadians saying that people in Hong Kong should have rights that we in Canada do not enjoy and if the evil CPC doesn't give them these rights then we should sanction them and run war ships up and down their coast.
The deal was One Country Two systems. It seems that most people in the West think that the system referred to is a Western style liberal democracy. In 1996 the British ruled Hong Kong as a colony and always appointed a white man from the British elite to rule as Governor. The demands by the West are for universal suffrage and the right to elect a Governor who can chose an independent foreign policy path. That is not anything at all like the system that the British had in Hong Kong.
We demand that an authoritarian regime provide more rights to its citizens in Hong Kong than we have as Canadians and that Hong Kong residents every had as a colony of Britain for a hundred years. Not even an local governor was allowed the yellow people.
Fri, 2022-01-21 18:13
#92
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/quebec-s-student-tuition-protest-who-real...
Martine Desjardins, the former president of the Féderation Étudiante Universitaire du Québec — the union that represents university students — says there’s no question about it; the students won.
The government changed, a new Parti Québecois government is in power, and the planned 75 per cent tuition hike was shelved. University tuitions fees in Québec are now indexed to the cost of living.
And they are a tiny group in comparsion to the population of the country. The problem is not that people can't rise up it is that the vast majority chooses not to.
I am tired of Canadians saying that people in Hong Kong should have rights that we in Canada do not enjoy and if the evil CPC doesn't give them these rights then we should sanction them and run war ships up and down their coast.
I haven't seen anyone arguing for that here. I think Canada should withdraw. I don't think our presence is helpful. I don't think Canadians want us there.
China has been cracking down on Hong Kong. If you can't admit that you are not arguing in good faith. You are free to be a China cheerleader but you are very obviously heavily biased. So much so that you have ended up making me more suspicious of China than I was before.
Fri, 2022-01-21 20:52
#93
"China has been cracking down on Hong Kong."
I agree that the Hong Kong government is cracking down on people who collaborate with foreign regime change agencies from the 5Eyes. I think that the acts of violence that were committed in the "democracy protests" would earn you jail time in Canada. I know that because we saw the Stanley Cup riots. I do not condone violence and frankly the fact that most progressive people on this board support the destruction of public property as peaceful protest boggles my mind. Especially given the almost unanimous condemnation on this site of the black block for breaking windows in businesses during the Olympic protests in Vancouver.
Did protestors in Montreal destroy metro stations and attack people for speaking the wrong language? I sincerely believe that anywhere in the world people should be able to go about their lives without having to deal with protests that include violent attacks on individuals and public transit. The US regime change groups are violent and nasty groups that in Hong Kong committed extremely violent criminal acts. If you agree with that it is your choice but please spare me the moral superiority routine. I only agree with protests that do not threaten the lives of the people that disagree with the protestors viewpoint.
In BC we have set a new record at Fairy Creek for the number of peaceful protestors arrested on behalf of the US based forestry company that is clear cutting an old growth forest. In the north the RCMP has arrested peaceful indigenous land defenders with military precision. They also arrested and intimated journalists covering the story from a perspective that would likely not be favorable to Canada's para-military force.
Should the Chinese or Russian governments be providing NED and US AID style support to these groups fighting the good fight in Canada?
Sat, 2022-01-22 13:30
#94
..i'm right now listening to the zoom meeting re: kazakhstan. 131 people participating from mostly the eu and na. lots of good info and interpretation provided.
Sat, 2022-01-22 15:15
#95
..meeting just ended. final count 133 attendees. there will be a video as it was taped so i will provide it as soon as i get it.
..i did note a few things that i will share now but will leave it to people to watch and judge for themselves.
1. the companies that were being protected were chevron and exxon mobil. they were supported there by the eu, usa, russia and china.
2. in almaty (described above) there was inability of police and army to deal with protesters.
3. provocateurs came from security branch. they incited violence and looting which provide the reason to call people terrorists. and the justification for shooting them. more than 225 were killed. and many were arrested and tortured.
4. there is a split in the various communist parties. the communist party of russia supported the sending in of the military.
Sun, 2022-01-23 11:19
#96
Nearly 60 per cent of Canadians find it difficult to feed their families, poll finds
A new poll has found that nearly 60 per cent of Canadians are having a hard time providing enough food for their families.
The poll from the Angus Reid Institute, released on Friday, shows that 57 per cent of Canadians reported having a difficult time feeding their family recently, an increase from 36 per cent when the question was last asked in 2019.
Inflation plays a role in this figure, the report indicates, as Canadians are dealing with the highest level of inflation in 30 years.....
Mon, 2022-01-24 13:33
#97
“The Janes”: Meet the Women Who Formed a Collective to Provide Safe Abortions Before Roe v. Wade
https://www.democracynow.org/2022/1/24/the_janes_and_abortions_before_roe
As conservative justices on the Supreme Court threaten to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortions nationwide, we speak to the filmmakers and a subject of “The Janes” about life before Roe, when a collective of women in Chicago built an underground service for women seeking an abortion. Heather Booth, who founded the Jane Collective as a college student, speaks about adopting lessons from the civil rights movement and antiwar sentiments of the time. “You have to stand up to illegitimate authority,” says Booth. The directors of the film, Emma Pildes and Tia Lessin, speak about their motivation to encourage others to take action in the face of human rights under threat.
quote:
Before Roe, I was involved in the civil rights movement. I went with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to Mississippi in 1964, when Northern students were recruited to support the courageous struggle for Black people in Mississippi for the right to vote. And I learned three key lessons from that. One is that even in desperate times, that when people come together and organize, we can change this world. In the civil rights movement, we won a Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act. The second lesson I learned is you really have to act on what is morally correct. You need to try and build a beloved community, work with compassion and caring for others. And the third lesson is that sometimes you have to stand up to illegitimate authority.
It’s that background and those lessons that were, I think, operating for me when a friend asked me: Could I find a doctor to perform an abortion for his sister, who was pregnant and nearly suicidal, wasn’t ready to have a child? I found a doctor through the Medical Committee for Human Rights, the medical arm of the civil rights movement, a Dr. T.R.M. Howard, who himself had been a civil rights leader until his name appeared on a Klan death list in Mississippi, and he came to Chicago. I made the connection between my friend and that doctor, really just out of a wish to do a good deed — kind of the Golden Rule: You want to treat others as you might want to be treated. I’ve never faced a situation of needing an abortion myself or wanting it. And I didn’t really think much more about it until someone else called, because word must have spread. I made the connection again. And then someone else called. And so I set up a system and learned much more about what was involved. And after a while, Dr. Howard was no longer available, and I found someone else, whose name was Mike. And the calls kept coming in. More and more people were coming. And I was involved with — I was in grad school at that time. I was working full time. I was about to have my first child, out of a movement marriage that we’ve had for over 50 years.....
Mon, 2022-01-24 16:07
#98
Free Abortion Across Borders
While abortion was being decriminalized in Mexico, advocates north of the border in the US were dealing with devastating setbacks: Texas’s Senate Bill 8, which severely restricts abortion access in the state, and the Supreme Court’s announcement that it would hear arguments on Mississippi’s ban on abortion after fifteen weeks of pregnancy—a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. In this difficult moment, the acompañantes movement in Mexico can teach U.S. activists about grassroots mobilizing where restricted access is the norm. Their flexible and holistic model of abortion care anticipates the limits of state health services and the formal medical establishment. Now is the time to revive cross-border solidarity networks and deepen a transnational reproductive justice movement that centers bodily autonomy and diverse, dignified options for pregnant people.....
https://progressive.international/wire/2022-01-19-free-abortion-across-b...
Mon, 2022-01-24 16:55
#99
My first wife in '72, '73 was one of the activist women who made a difference. We lived in Sudbury and there were no abortion services in Ontario at the time. Buffalo NY did have clinics. My wife would drive women to Buffalo and stay over night with them before driving back home. We used to speculate about how many different laws she was breaking taking someone over an international border to procure an abortion but that never deterred her.
Wed, 2022-01-26 15:27
#100
Should the Chinese or Russian governments be providing NED and US AID style support to these groups fighting the good fight in Canada?
No, and we shouldn't be funding rebels either. That doesn't mean the rebels are wrong for accepting whatever help they can get.
Thu, 2022-01-27 10:37
#101
Texas Students Fire Back After School Board Moves to Ban Books on Social Inequality
High school students in Granbury, Texas, are fighting back against school officials who are pushing to ban hundreds of books dealing with social inequality. This is high school senior Isabella Guzman, who joined fellow students in speaking out at a public meeting earlier this week.
Isabella Guzman: “I am queer, I am Brown, and I’m very proud of that. And I am well aware of the censorship that has happened to my people over the centuries. I am well aware of this, and I think it is horrible. And I don’t think that little children should be shocked or disgusted by our identities. … And I think it’s disgusting that even in 2022 we still have to have these discussions about censorship.”
The crackdown in Texas schools is part of a growing conservative-led trend to censor books on race, colonialism, sexual and gender identity, and other issues in schools and libraries across the U.S. Earlier this month, a Tennessee school board voted to ban “Maus,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust by Art Spiegelman.