Blaming Socialism for Venezuela's Problems is for Simpletons

Venezuelan media Telesur has been scrubbed from Facebook and Search Engines along with conspiracy theorist douchebag Alex Jones (who still has first amendment rights). The left will only realise what censorship means when it is aimed at them and it didn't take that long in Venezuela.

While I no longer identify with any (left/right) ideology that doesn't tackle which private interests print money and lend to government while charging interest (through taxation), I cannot in good conscience listen to the the capitalist vultures blaming socialism for all of Venezuela's ills.

I have long nuanced positions on public vs private money implementation/investment, and each case is contextual.  I have however been forced to recognise the final outcome of letting groupthink permit a ruling elite to spend the proletariat's money for them.

That has resulted in the genocide of hundreds of millions in China and the USSR and indeed around the world.

Only an unconscionable person would sweep that under the carpet.

Wall St Connections to the Bolshevik Revolution

Tom Secker undermines Professor Antony Sutton's claim that Wall St. funded the Bolshevik revolution. I think it's an analysis that is welcome but it doesn't really take into account that we are often referring to Zionist banking bloodlines when we discuss the sponsorship of centuries of war, carnage and toxic ideologies including Communism, Nazism and Zionism.

I don't think Tom's got the bottle to go down that route but if he has I recommend In the Shadow of Hermes as a starting point on Zionist Masonic Bolshevism.

Update: Tom deleted his analysis as you can see above.

The Lost World of Communism (Liebe Mami & Pluralismus)

The mundane is so much more interesting in communist East Germany. It isn't trying hard to be something it isn't (unofficially) and it didn't need to make excuses. The Iron Curtain is a reminder for me of the larger game whereby communism was just a social experiment bankrolled by Wall Street and private banking interests. You can verify this for yourself by watching or reading anything Professor Antony Sutton ever said or wrote.

Good Night & Good Luck - Atavistic McCarthyism

I just finished watching this and though it was made over five years ago, the principles of editorial freedom and corporate influence are even more important today. It's my pessimistic view that we will see some root and branch censoring of the internet in the near future as in terms of freedom and volume of quality content, the last five years have been the most golden media years of my life, easily boosting my pedestrian IQ by 10 points and allowing me to punch above my weight on a broader platform of topics and at much greater depth.

Aside from my mutual fascination and disgust with Senator McCarthy in the States during this ugly period of U.S. history that is now invoking some kind of atavistic behaviour I was touched to identify something in CBS that connects me to them historically than prior to this film. 


Good Night & Good Luck is a great movie in terms of black and white elegance and sparing performances released in black and white but produced on colour film stock through a grey scale set and later colour corrected to black and white in post production so that the original McCarthy footage opened up a world of bigotry and congressional hearing ugliness that till now I wasn't fully acquainted with.

Community

This is such an overdue response to a post I wrote over here to Andy from New Zealand but it's an important topic on what we mean by community on the net. Here's some of what I think for what it's worth. I want to get into the video responses a lot more so do add me on seesmic if you wish. 

Also I've added intense debate to my tumblr blog and you can get stuck in there because I'm using that as a social media sandbox more and will eventually strip this down to the minimum for faster loading and do that redesign it's badly in need of. 

Human is the new black but what colour is that for my blog? I need to know. ;)

The Masses Are Debating With The Intellectuals Online

This lecturer is a rock star. Amazing.

 

Internet star and Beijing history teacher Yuan Tengfei talks about freedom of speech, with a clarity and frankness rarely seen in China. Just Brilliant. English subtitles by Chris Wip.

From Danwei.org

798

I paid a visit to the 798 'Art District' of Beijing on Friday for the 'Affordable Art Beijing' exhibition run by Tamsin Roberts of Red T Art.

The last time I was last in the area, it was for the Yen Countdown on New Years Eve. This time had a chance to walk about in the daylight and get a feel for the Bauhaus architecture and general post war 50's East German industrial influence.

Its pretty neat, in that way that only proper industry can do and the industrial estates of Basingstoke fail at miserably don't you think? Anyway here's some art.

I just liked the comical feel to these. We've been having a discussion on Facebook about art which could go on forever but I think good art should just send people up a bit as much as possible.


This one though in the green was just the right amount of sinister and beauty I like. I was really disappointed not to bag, it as it had been bought by the time I arrived, although I may be able to see the artist at his studio at some point.


I really loved this fading and aging Commie girl complete with pigtails from whatever revolution was being espoused at the time. She's just the wrong side of 50 and a little too old to be putting it about. Its the breasts and neckline that give it away. Brilliant.


Like most of the paintings this was part of a set and the eyes were amazing. Magnetic, hypnotic a little bit attractive, a little bit scary and very sexual.

Beijing Artists

I took a walk around my new neighbourhood last night. I usually ignore the punters out here or anyone trying to sell me anything. But as the guy had a studio art shop I thought I'd take a sniff around and came across a canvas that I liked a lot. I even gave it a name: "Pop Communism". It was painted by a professor that I hope to get some more details of shortly. Here it is.

Across the universe

everyone is not someone
someone is not a group
the group is not the crowd
the crowd is not you
you are the universe


Richard Buchanan - Tuesday 6th November 2007

Mao - The Unknown Story

Ricksoloway

I'm reading Mao: The unknown story, by Jung Chang who wrote the first book that ignited my fascination with Chinese history, Wild Swans.

A few years ago sitting in a painfully and aesthically hip bar in Shanghai's Xintiandi district (real gold leaf walls, solid coloured glass bar, candles and Buddhas on postmodern plinths) with an extremely bright, hard working and well educated Coca-Cola native-Chinese client in Shanghai, we serendipitously stumbled across a mutual realisation that we both harboured a dirty political hypothesis.

Not only were we both big political history fans but as the banter ranged over Mao Tse Tung's rapacious reading habits and Tsing Tao beers, we concurred that there might also be some credence in the idea that in the big scheme of things, maybe the Cultural Revolution and The Great Leap Forward were statistically a reasonable thing to pursue. That is in an armchair-General, moral relativism course of discourse. Post Yugoslavia break up, and the Balkan states subsequent internecine warfare it's arguable that losing tens of millions here and there to hold a country as huge as China together is an ugly but a priori, reasonable price to pay. I still suspect it might be in a desperate kind of way for the Shan, Karin, Mon, Kachin and other ethnic groups of Burma; you know save a million lives here and ignore a million rapes there - who knows anyway?

Prior to starting this book I had already concluded that Mao's power had ebbed significantly during the cultural revolution with one of those political fratricides that takes almost everyone out, and isn't unique to communism, although it was certainly most visible say in the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror (that's proper terror, not the overblown petrol bombs that delayed a few punters bound for the Balearic isles this weekend) in Tuol Sleng. If you think you're life is a bit shit and stuff closer to home like asymetrical warfare in Lebanon doesn't hit the radar, you should try to get out to the killing fields a few clicks south of Phnom Penh in Choeung Ek and see the infamous tree where in the mid 70's the Khmer Rouge (who were once backed by Prince Norodom I might add) was used as a target to swing babies by their feet so that their skulls smashed instantaneously on the bark of the trunk. I guess that's better than say the women who for example had their breasts cut off in Tuol Sleng.

Anyway I've changed my mind. Reading this book its clear that Mao wasn't some sort of freedom fighter who galvanised China on a path that is unambiguously now paying debatable dividends and then made philosophical judgements on social engineering, that will in time see the occidental variant of capitalism crushed. He was a brutal thug that intuitively knew that the times were right to divide, and kill, and rule, to achieve his own agenda. Sorry Winnie, I'd love to get a bottle of red in and sit through another intelligent discussion on this one but as this well written book is not allowed on the mainland, having a debate isn't the same if both parties aren't fully informed. Even if that is to discuss the veracity of the text.

Update: I got into a very feisty discussion with an extraordinarily stylish Chinese lady in The Endeavour Endurance Pub on Berwick Street about this book, and she was very angry that it portrayed Mao as having bourgeoisie tendencies. I accept her point about the possibility of bias in this book but not about Mao's innocence to kill his own. It was a good argument though. Sexy actually and I really liked the protection sock she gave me for my iPod as a gift.