Thursday, January 24, 2019

HISTORY AND THE CURRENT CONTEXT (for the week of Jan. 24th, 2019)



* "Plains Indian View of the ‘Buffalo’ Soldier" (by Roy Cook, via Southern California American Indian Resource SCAIR, americanindiansource.com/buffalo%20soldiers/buffalosoldiers.html) [archive.is/5JutO] [begin excerpt]:
On the other side, it is worth noting, at the time and later, black soldiers writing in pension requests and veterans’ newspapers showed no signs of a special regard for the Indians. They used the same dismissive epithets--"hostile tribes,""naked savages,"and "redskins"—and the same racist caricatures employed by whites. Most recently we saw the same mentality and terminology used in the hunt for Osama Bin Laudin: Geronimo. Reminiscent of the use among whites of "blackface" to denigrate and stereotype African-Americans, a black private named Robinson went to a masquerade ball at Fort Bayard, New Mexico, in 1894, dressed as "an idiotic Indian squaw," according to a published report by a fellow soldier.
By the same token, it should not be too surprising to read of a black soldier calling a Plains Indian in 1890 "a voodoo nigger," repeating the voice of a white soldier who called the Plains Indians in 1873 "red niggers." This buffalo soldier only reflected the overall values of the culture in which he struggled for a place, hoping to ally himself with the dominant American group. As historian William Gwaltney, a descendent of buffalo soldiers, said, "Buffalo Soldiers fought for recognition as citizens in a racist country and...American Indian people fought to hold on to their traditions, their land, and their lives." These were not compatible, harmonious goals that could provide the basis for interracial harmony.
The idea that the buffalo-soldier combat record surpassed that of other units helps support the notion that the Indians might have been especially respectful of the black soldiers. However, it fails to withstand analysis. These soldiers did participate in significant battles. They fought in major wars against Indians, including conflicts against the Cheyenne in Kansas after the Civil War, the decade-long and brutal Apache war of the late 1870s and early 1880s, and the last major campaign, Massacre at Wounded Knee, on the Pine Ridge in South Dakota during 1890-1891. [end excerpt]
---

* "Western genocides exposed in London conference" (2019-01-22, presstv.com/Detail/2019/01/22/586441/Western-genocides-exposed-in-London-conference--) [archive.is/bcdz1]


* "Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes; Review finds thousands of papers detailing shameful acts were culled, while others were kept secret illegally" (2012-04-18, theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes) [archive.is/efBFj]

* "History Corner: The Great Irish Famine" (retrieved 2014-05-27, wolfetonesofficialsite.com/famine.htm) [archive.is/kBLyJ]
* "Proving the Irish Famine was genocide by the British" (2015-04-28, irishcentral.com/news/proving-the-irish-famine-was-genocide-by-the-british-tim-pat-coogan-moves-famine-history-unto-a-new-plane-181984471-238161151.html) [archive.is/2rMwA]
* "Irish Holocaust" (irishholocaust.org)
Page List:
- Introduction (irishholocaust.org/home) [archive.is/ambRn]
- Britain's Cover Up (irishholocaust.org/britain'scoverup) [archive.is/7znJv]
- The Food Removal (irishholocaust.org/thefoodremoval) [archive.is/Q7jjO]
- Voices in the Wilderness (irishholocaust.org/voicesinthewilderness) [archive.is/2AArr]
- Official British Intent (irishholocaust.org/officialbritishintent) [archive.is/6J2B1]
- Toll of Holocaust (irishholocaust.org/tollofholocaust) [archive.is/9chNn]
- Complicity (irishholocaust.org/complicity) [archive.is/358cM]
- What We Must Do (irishholocaust.org/whatwemustdo) [archive.is/GdIRN]
- Lisnabinnia Memorial (irishholocaust.org/lisnabinniamemorial) [archive.is/t8ZBs]
- Liverpool, Great Hunger (irishholocaust.org/liverpoolandthegreat) [archive.is/cyedi]
- Sister Jean Marie (irishholocaust.org/sisterjeanmarie) [archive.is/AQaxB]


* "Iran as a Twentieth Century Victim: 1900 Through the Aftermath of World War II; In the first half of the twentieth century, Russia and Britain forced Iran to relinquish its sovereign rights, and the Iranian people suffered severely as a consequence. As many as 10 million Iranians perished in WWI from famine and disease which was largely Britain’s fault" (2013-11-10, by Dr. Stephen J Sniegoski, mycatbirdseat.com/2013/11/iran-twentieth-century-victim-1900-aftermath-world-war-ii/) [archive.is/mfW1s]
* "A book on Britain’s role in famine that killed 8-10 million Iranians in WWI; The deadly famine in Iran, which was caused by the British presence in the country during World War I, is ignored by almost all recent history books; Dr. Mohammad Gholi Majd sheds light on the great Persian famine that a British and Russian invasion caused in Iran during First World War" (2019-01-17, presstv.com/Detail/2019/01/17/586008/UK-Iran-famine-book-Dr-Majd) [archive.is/qboV4]:
Dr. Mohammad Gholi Majd’s “The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia 1917-1919” is perhaps the only book that extensively documents the genocide.
According to the book, the widespread famine coupled with a disease epidemic killed around 8-10 million Iranian between 1917 and 1919, nearly half of the country’s population back then.
Majd, who has a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University, writes in his book that after invading Iran at the beginning of 1916, the British used all means of transportation for war supplies to the front-lines.
That effectively prevented imports of wheat and other foodstuff into Iran from India, Mesopotamia, Asia, and also the United States -- which was back then a rival of the UK.
Majd argues that Brits even kept ships loaded with wheat from entering the southern port of Bushehr in the Persian Gulf.
He also writes that significant amounts of food were confiscated by the British to supply British troops both within Persia and in the region.
Further aggravating the situation was the refusal of the Allies of WWI – France, the UK and Russia –to pay Iran for using its oil reserves during the war, the book says.
Majd argues in his book that the UK intentionally caused the genocide conditions to weaken Iran and effectively take control of the country out of fear for its interest in India, which was then a component of the British Empire.
"According to the American Charge d'Affaires, Wallace Smith Murray, this famine had claimed one-third of Iran's population. A famine that even according to British sources as General Dunsterville, Major Donohoe, and General Sykes had claimed vast numbers of Iranians," reads the book.
Major Donohoe describes Iran of that time as a “land of desolation and death.”
As it has been the case with many other crimes committed by the British Empire, London has long tried to cover up London’s role in the deadly famine.
Historic documents released by the British government over the past decades overlook the genocide. The UK Foreign Office did not even mention the famine in its 1919 “Handbook on Iran.”
* "8-10 million Iranians died over Great Famine caused by the British in late 1910s, documents reveal" (2015-11-04, english.khamenei.ir/news/2197/8-10-million-Iranians-died-over-Great-Famine-caused-by-the-British) [archive.fo/MEzG4]
- (comment): I wonder if the same famine was extended into Eastern Anatolia where large number of Armenians died during their relocation process by Ottaman empire during WWI. Armenians claim it be genocide conducted by Turks where as Turks say food shortage was due to British blockade. The numbers claimed here are too high compared to Iranian population of that time. During the Great famine of India (south) of 1870s estimated death was 5 million people and during the worse Bengal famine of 1943 during WWII death toll had not reached 10 million. Those deaths were attributed to inapt measures taken by colonial British rule in India.
---

* "US violations of international law" (2019-01-11, mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/3470895) [archive.is/CnoxG]: Let’s take a brief historical detour. What we keep hearing from Washington politicians at various levels, including those holding official executive positions, are never-ending accusations that our country allegedly has violated and disrespected international law.
The start of the year is a good time to jog memory and think back to all the instances in history where the United States – without a doubt the most “peace-loving” nation in the world – committed acts of intervention and military aggression around the world throughout its recent history, grossly violating international law, but every time finding excuses, including legal, for its actions.
True, at first, the US politicians did not bother with the now routine juggling of phrases and concepts, and made no bones about calling things for what they were. In particular, following his inauguration in March 1913, President Wilson unashamedly talked about how he was going to “teach the South American republics to elect good men.”
Over time, the professional lexicon evolved, apparently in the wake of human rights activism, and in 1922 US Secretary of State Robert Lansing, justifying the military occupation of Haiti, said it was necessary to “protect American and foreign lives and property.” Soon, this particular thesis becomes a favourite phrase intended for “wide use.” In the same vein, in his state of the union address in August 1945, President Truman claimed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified by military necessity. Historians do not agree on the military expediency of these terrible actions. However, the fact is indisputable that this is the only case in the history of humankind when atomic bombs were dropped on populated urban areas.
During the Cold War again, without the least embarrassment, the Americans began to justify their military aggression in the international arena by pointing to various factors that are incompatible with the norms of international law, and mostly come from the realm of ideology. For example, commenting on the upcoming operation to overthrow the Castro government in Cuba, President Eisenhower in March 1960 openly stated that Washington would not allow the creation of a regime in the Western hemisphere which would be dominated by “international communism.” The US leaders used similar motives to cover up their actions in 1961, as they were gearing up for a bloody military intervention in Vietnam. This is reflected, for example, in the Memorandum of November 8, 1961. Later, though, in the so-called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of August 7, 1964, the Americans rather “elegantly” justified the use of military force with the objective of “promoting international peace and security in Southeast Asia.” The United States also used ideological slogans that do not rely on any norms of international law for overthrowing the leftist government of Francisco Caamano in the Dominican Republic in April-May 1965.
It should be noted that the UN General Assembly has repeatedly condemned such actions by the United States as illegal. For example, in its Resolution 38/7 of November 2, 1983, the Washington military operation in Grenada in October 1983 was unequivocally qualified as “gross violation of international law,” although President Reagan, for example, in his televised address to the nation, justified the aggression by the need to help small peaceful nations and protect American citizens. Similarly, the UNGA in its Resolution 41/38 of November 20, 1986 condemned the US military attack on Libya in April 1986, qualifying it as a “violation of the UN Charter and international law,” although US politicians tried to explain their actions by their “right to self-defence.” The invasion of Panama by US troops, too, allegedly in self-defence, as indicated in the letter by the US Permanent Representative to the President of the UN Security Council on December 20, 1989, in accordance with UNGA Resolution 44/240 of December 29, 1989, was qualified as flagrant violation of international law.
Once the 1980s were over and the Cold War was history, Western countries led by the United States achieved excellence in casuistry, justifying their actions in violation of international law by citing international law itself. One can make entire dictionaries with the terms they invented and which they used to cover and justify violations of international law. In particular, explaining the bloody and destructive operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia which lasted from March 24, 1999 to June 10, 1999, US President Clinton spoke of the need to restore peace, degrade military capabilities, etc. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush used the mythical “threat” that Saddam Hussein allegedly represented to the world as cover. Already at this stage, in April 2017, under the far-fetched pretext of defence against proliferation and the use of deadly chemical weapons, an order was issued to deliver illegal strikes on Syria.
The unlawful seizure of Russian diplomatic property and the expulsion of diplomatic representatives also qualify as a violation of international law, which US politicians justify with arguments rooted in international law. It would be naive to believe that this sentiment in the American political establishment may change in the foreseeable future. As the recent events show, unfortunately, Washington is increasingly trying to replace the concept of international law with the so-called rule-based order. The White House may have different administrations that can change the strategy regarding migration policy, healthcare or taxation, but they remain constant in their deep conviction of the “exceptionalism” of their own nation. This exceptionalism has for more than one century granted them “license” to violate the rules underlying the international order.
I cite these historical parallels not so much because we love history, which we do, but because lately we’ve been hearing numerous accusations that our country is engaged in the very actions committed by those who are accusing us.
---

* (2019-01-17, facebook.com/teleSUREnglish/photos/a.492297374247003/1593435344133195/) [archive.is/oxp5V]:
On this day we remember the African Political Leader Patrice Lumumba on the 57th anniversary of his death.
He was the first Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo. He was a leading figure in the Congo as the country established its independence from Belgium, which had controlled the Congo since the late 19th century.
Lumumba's murder in 1961 made him a symbol of struggle for African nation's attempts to unite and to break free of the influence of the European powers. He is remembered as a passionate believer in the power of African nations to shape their own destinies and free themselves from colonial influence.
Rest in peace comrade!

---

* "This Day. A reflection on Amilcar Cabral" (2019-01-20, tonyseed.wordpress.com/2019/01/20/this-day-amilcar-cabral/) [archive.is/VFdAT]
---

* "Fascism in Croatia: The Independent State of Croatia was founded on April 10th, 1941" (2016-04-04, historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/fascism-croatia) [archive.is/IFVPO]
---

* "Soviet soldiers ‘gave their lives’ to liberate Europe, restore human rights — Intel chief; Soviet servicemen, who liberated European countries from Nazi occupation during World War II, laid the groundwork for modern Europe, says Russia’s director of Foreign Intelligence Service" (2019-01-17, tass.com/society/1040433) [archive.is/H4ZX1]

On 17 January 1945 the Red Army together with First Polish Army liberated Warsaw. A reminder to revisionists of WWII history: more than 600'000 Soviet soldiers sacrificed their lives to free Poland saving millions of Poles, Jews and other peoples from the Nazis.




Warsaw Liberated From The Nazis On This Date In History
74 years ago today, Soviet troops together with the 1st Army of the Polish Army liberated Warsaw in the course of the Vistula-Oder offensive operation. On the night of January 17, the military forced into the Vistula, in the morning Soviet-Polish soldiers broke into the city. By 12 o'clock Warsaw was completely rid of the fascist invaders. -Cody Glacz

* Propaganda poster from Nazi-occupied Poland

---

c. 1920 - 1923 Poland government propaganda posters against Bolshevism







---

* "Laying wreaths at the Monument to the Liberators of Belgrade and the Monument to Soviet Soldiers; Vladimir Putin and President of the Republic of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic visited the Liberators of Belgrade Memorial. The two presidents laid wreaths to the Monument to the Liberators of Belgrade and the Monument to Soviet Soldiers to commemorate those who lost their lives in World War II" (2019-01-17, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59688) [archive.is/UbRY8]
---

* " ‘Heroes’: Budapest lauds Hungarians who allied with Nazis to invade USSR" (2019-01-15, rt.com/news/448839-hungarians-nazi-heroes-government/) [archive.is/3BdWM]
---

* "Almost half of Russians see USSR collapse as shameful – poll" (2019-01-17, rt.com/russia/449026-russians-ussr-collapse-shameful/) [archive.is/nJenR]
---

"The union of workers and dehkan farmers" Soviet poster, Samarkand, 1921

---

* photo (2019-01): Lenin Statue under construction in Tamil Nadu

---

* "Trofim Denisovich Lysenko" page index (updated 2009-09-22, by Hugo S. Cunningham, cyberussr.com/rus/lysenko.html) [archive.is/XjVyH]
* "The Real Genetic vs. Lysenko Controversy" (posted 1999-07-13, via cyberussr.com/rus/ly-tl-cv.html) [archive.is/bQt4w]
1. Geneticists insisted that heredity was carried forth exclusively by what is inside the nucleus of a cell (chromosomes) and that the rest of what is in the cytoplasm of the cell was just junk. This was called the "Chromosome Theory of Heredity." Lysenko did deny the THEORY, but he never denied the importance of chromosomes. DNA was not known of in the 1930's. Lysenko did NOT dispute that heredity was carried forth by chromosomes, but he insisted that the WHOLE of the cell, CYTOPLASM and all, was involved in the heredity process. Lysenko did NOT reject the importance of CHROMOSOMES, he even counted doubling of chromosomes in plants (as did geneticists). What he objected to was the dogma that "heredity was SOLELY contained in the chromosome." He turned out to be right: a lot of factors of heredity are in the cytoplasm of cells, not located in the nucleus! Geneticists claimed it was ALL contained in the chromosomes which are IN the nucleus. Lysenko disagreed, he was right. Ergo, the geneticists were excessively dogmatic in insisting they were right and declaring this that and the other. The disovery of DNA doesn't change this: Mitochondrial DNA, having the DNA of a bacterium, is in the CYTOPLASM of cells, not in nucleus. Without that, the rest wouldn't even work! For Mitochondria and how the discovery of how this evolved and works, see Lynn Margulis's works.

2. Geneticists insisted on pure bred lines and claimed these were the best. Lysenko insisted on occasionally mixing the pure lines with wild varieties or else the pure lines would degenerate. Lysenko was 100% right about this. The head geneticist, Vavilov, admitted he was right, but the real battle over this carried on outside of plant breeding, in the realm of racist politics. Prior to this claim, backed by actions with plants, the geneticists had not yet reached the phase where they went "nuts" over what Lysenko said. This claim made them go nuts.

3. Geneticists insisted that there is strict competition in the survival of the fittest, between species and within one species. Lysenko disagreed with this whole idea of "within one species" (intraspecific) competition and showed that this idea justifies Western Imperialism and exploitation of others by a ruling class (the fittest in the game of survival). He turned out to be right with Margulis topping the cake: she's a Nobel Prize winner. It even turns out that there is far less competition between species than had been theorized before. This phase got the geneticists to claim Lysenko was anti-Darwin and the battle raged on anew.
[end excerpt]

-  He was very wrong about acquired inheritance.
- No, Lamarckian evolution regarding acquired characteristics being inheritable has been validated through recent developments in epigenetics. Read "Unified theory of evolution Darwin’s theory that natural selection drives evolution is incomplete without input from evolution’s anti-hero: Lamarck" (2016-11-09, by Michael Skinner, professor of biological science at Washington State University, via aeon.co/essays/on-epigenetics-we-need-both-darwin-s-and-lamarck-s-theories) [archive.is/gKOP5]
* (from "Pravda," 3 January, 1936; page 1). "COULD WE EVER HAVE DREAMED OF SUCH A GREAT HONOR?" Letter from Academician T. D. Lysenko's Parents to Comrade Stalin, via cyberussr.com/rus/lyse-par.html) [archive.is/LX66]
* (English translation) All-Union Society for the Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge Professor I.E. Slushchenko Akademician T.D. Lysenko-- An Outstanding Soviet Scientist Transcript of a public lecture, given in the Central lecture hall of the Society in Moscow "Pravda" Publishing, Moscow, 1949. pp. 31-32 (conclusion) via cyberussr.com/rus/lyse-slu.html) [archive.is/xO4WY]:
In our country, everything possible has been done so that scientists can freely create and build up the most advanced science in the world, thus making easier the work of mankind.
Our scientists are sustained by the concern of the fatherland, and attention from the Party and Comrade Stalin, from the entire Soviet people.
A true student of the Party, people, and our entire Socialist reality is Academician T. D. Lysenko. He subordinates all his knowledge and strength, all his creative thoughts in science to a single goal -- the further flourishing of our great Socialist Motherland.
And Soviet people readily understand the following deeply felt words of the scientist:
"They often ask me: Who are your parents? And I answer: peasents, in a Collective farm since 1929. [Editor's note-- "1929" means they volunteered immediately for Collectivization, rather than having to be coerced in 1932-1933.] But in fact I have other parents as well -- the Communist Party, Soviet power, and the Collective farms. They raised me, and made me the man I am today."
Such is the path to science, such are the scientific principles and achievements of the outstanding scientist of the Stalin era, Academician Trofim Denisovich Lysenko.
---

* "Abe's Russia complex: The devil is in the details" (2019-01-21, news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d414e354d544d32457a6333566d54/index.html) [archive.is/pywb8] [begin excerpt]: Interminable islands row
The territorial spat over four Pacific islands – known as the Southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan – dates back to World War II, when the former Soviet Union tried to reclaim lands it had ceded to Japan in previous engagements from half a century before. Even after Japan formally surrendered, the Soviet Union advanced, occupying ceded territory and additional islands that it had never claimed.
This state of war continued into the 1950s until negotiators from both sides agreed on how the island territories should be divided. Those on the Japanese side agreed to forfeit all of the Kuril chain islands and the south part of Sakhalin, while the Soviet diplomats decided to return Shikotan and Habomai.
The peace treaty was close to fruition until the U.S. intervened, fearing that Japan's improving relations with the Soviets and potentially China would jeopardize its influence in the region. So the U.S. threatened to annex comparable territory in Japan that it was occupying, such as Okinawa, if the latter were to allow the Soviet Union to keep those islands specified in the treaty.
An emboldened Japan then redefined the Etorofu and Kunashiri islands, which were part of the Kuril chain and which it had agreed to let the Soviet Union keep, as part of the Northern Territories, effectively claiming that these were distinct lands that will remain under the sovereignty of Japan.
The new terms tanked the peace treaty. Instead, Japan and the Soviet Union signed a joint declaration in 1956 that effectively ended the war and restored diplomatic ties. The Soviet Union put the territorial dispute on the backburner by stipulating in the declaration that the islands of Shikotan and Habomai will be returned to Japan upon signing a peace treaty. Over six decades later, a treaty remains elusive. [end excerpt]
---

* "How a Crimean town almost turned into a NATO base in 2006" (2019-01-13, micoff.livejournal.com/658438.html) [archive.is/6MtAF], (translation, stalkerzone.org/crimean-town-nato-base-2006/) [archive.is/BkJwZ]
---

* "Rostislav ishchenko: 25 years ago an agreement on the elimination of nuclear weapons in Ukraine was signed" (2019-01-14, ukraina.ru/history/20190114/1022320495.html) [archive.is/SU9ni], (translation, stalkerzone.org/rostislav-ishchenko-25-years-ago-an-agreement-on-the-elimination-of-nuclear-weapons-in-ukraine-was-signed/) [archive.is/PNvS4]
---

* "9/11 Timeline: Pentagon" (retrieved 2019-01-22, historycommons.org), pg. 1 [archive.is/fov8B], pg. 2 [archive.is/p333j]

* "Saudi flag statue to be removed from near 9/11 site after backlash from public; A statue of the Saudi Arabian flag is to be removed from the World Trade Center grounds in New York later this week in response to public complaints about its proximity to the site of the September/11 attacks, which are believed to have been carried out by Saudi nationals" (2019-01-15, presstv.com/Detail/2019/01/15/585844/Saudi-flag-New-York-World-Trade-Center-exhibition) [archive.is/fO9Qh]
---

* "President of Cuba Remembers Legacy of Ruben Martinez Villena" (2019-01-16, plenglish.com/index.php?o=rn&id=37734&SEO=president-of-cuba-remembers-legacy-of-ruben-martinez-villena) [archive.is/DOn94]

---

* "Europe In Revolt!" (2018-12-25, redmolerising.wordpress.com/2018/12/25/europe-in-revolt/) [archive.is/85ASO]
Stewart MacLennan writes:
“A poster for IMG Rally: Europe in Revolt, to take place in Glasgow on Monday 22 April (1974?), featuring as speakers one Stewart Maclennan (UCATT personal capacity & IMG), John McGeown (President Kent Students Union) and some Belgian chappie called Mandel.   As I recall, the rally went ahead, but Mandel couldn’t make it (no doubt frightened off by the competition on the platform)”
And whilst we are on the theme of Europe, here is the 1979 FI European Election Manifesto: “Out of the Bosses Market- For A Socialist Europe” (https://www.dropbox.com/s/6x030xo26viiqfg/FI%20Euro%20Manifesto.pdf)
The IMG’s candidate was Tariq Ali.






---

* "Chicago Mole Among Us. Obstructing and Smearing Chicago Activists, culminating in false arrests and a murder frame-up" (retrieved 2013-05-31, chicagomole.org/) [archive.is/0YeK8]
- Introduction (chicagomole.org/Introduction.html) [archive.is/eL12j]
- Jerry's deeds (chicagomole.org/Jerrys%20Deeds.html) [archive.is/BIAhz]
- Chronology of events (chicagomole.org/Chronology.html) [archive.is/hiyVG]
- Lumpen Times Articles (chicagomole.org/lumpen.html) [archive.is/jnSW4]
- Refutation of Lumpen Times articles (chicagomole.org/Refutation.html) [archive.is/bMwNR]

* "The Conspiracy that won't go away; How the Moonies, Media, and FBI derailed the Irish Liberation Front in Chicago" (1993, The Lumpen Times, n.8) [https://web.archive.org/web/20190120214402/http://versionfest.org.s3.amazonaws.com/version16/lumpen-pdfs/lumpen-008.pdf]


---

* "Treasure unearthed: Items owned by disgraced Russian princeling found in Uzbekistan" (2019-01-21, rt.com/russia/449344-romanov-prince-treasure-uzpekistan/) [archive.is/YpwHb]
---

* "Before Herzl, There Was Pastor Russell: A Neglected Chapter of Zionism Years before Theodor Herzl proposed creating a Jewish state, Charles Taze Russell was traveling the world holding Jewish Mass Meetings, beginning in 1879, at which he urged Jews to find a national home in Eretz Israel" (2018-08-22, haaretz.com/jewish/.premium.MAGAZINE-before-herzl-there-was-pastor-russell-a-neglected-chapter-of-zionism-1.6409303) [archive.is/wXHOE] [begin excerpt]:
This setting of breakneck development and intellectual progress is where Russell founded the Bible Student Association, which aspired to go back to basics by studying the Bible itself.
Soon a class for systematic Bible Study was formed in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and in 1879 Charles Taze Russell was elected its pastor. The movement founded Zion's Watch Tower, the most widely circulated magazine in the world today, according to Business Insider, with an average of 70 million copies a month in 334 languages. For comparison, National Geographic has a circulation of something over 6 million and is published in 25 different languages.
A few years later, in 1881, Russell was elected the first president of the Watchtower Society. Its purpose was to distribute his teachings in the form of tracts.
Russell was a prolific writer, and his major accomplishments include a six-volume series of systematic theology, "Studies in the Scriptures." By 1909 this series was one of most widely circulated works in the world, surpassed only by the Bible and The Chinese Almanac.
His crowning achievement at that phase was "The Photo-Drama of Creation," a ground-breaking innovation that combined sound and color in a motion picture for the first time in history. The film was, viewed by more then eight million people, an astronomical success in the terms of the times.
In 1909 Russell moved The Watch Tower Society Headquarters to 124 Columbia Heights in Brooklyn Heights. It would remain there until 2016, when Jared Kushner, son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump, bought the property.
Early advocate  of Zionism
On August 18, 1891, now in Jerusalem, Russell wrote to the philanthropists Baron Maurice de Hirsch and Baron Edmond de Rothschild, or as he puts it “the two leading Hebrews of the world.” No less, he put forward a practical plan for Zionism.
It  involved purchasing all government-owned land in Palestine, i.e., land not held by private owners, from the impoverished Ottoman Empire. Years later Herzl would make similar proposals.  (A copy of the letter is published in "Zion's Watchtower and Herald of Christ's Presence", December 1891, pp. 170-171.)
“As you will see from my books, we find the testimony of the prophets to be, that your nation will be greatly blessed and return to divine favor between now and the year 1915, A.D.," Russell wrote. The persecutions that Jews were suffering in Russia were "a mark of divine favor rather then the reverse," the pastor suggested - and it would only get worse because the Lord's purpose was to drive the Jews "out of all lands whither he has scattered them."
To where? To Palestine, as apparently indicated by the prophet (Jeremiah 32:37-44; 33:6-22), Russell explained. Owning not an inch of that land, he had no vested interest, the pastor elaborated, and went on: "My suggestion is that the wealthy Hebrews purchase from Turkey, at a fair valuation, all of her property interest in these lands: i.a., all of the Government lands (lands not held by private owners), under the provision that Syria and Palestine shall be constituted a FREE STATE…"
In his letter, Russell delicately gibes at alternative "Jewish homeland" ideas touted at the time in places other than Israel, though Baron de Hirsch was actually involved in resettling Jews elsewhere: "But please note, my dear Sir, that the sacred Scriptures predict the return to Palestine, and not a further wandering to the ends of the earth—to America or elsewhere. And, therefore, it is my humble opinion that Israel will find no rest for the sole of his foot until he finds the land of promise; and I pray you, therefore, not to waste your efforts in assisting emigration elsewhere, but concentrate them in the direction where God has indicated success…”
We cannot know whether he even replied to Russell, let alone be influenced by him. But a month after Russell's letter to the barons, on September 11th 1891, Baron Hirsch founded the Jewish Colonization Association to buy land, principally in North and South America but in Palestine too, where agricultural colonies could be established and resettled by Jews who were persecuted in Russia.
Meanwhile, the pastor's message did not go unnoticed in the broader Jewish communities of the United States and Europe. [end excerpt]
- image caption: The Bible Students in association with Pastor Russell thought the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt confirmed biblical chronology.

- image caption: Postcard - Transcontinental Tour of Pastor Russell, June 1913

---

* "The Mossad Ran a Fake Diving Resort for Tourists in Sudan. This Is the Incredible Story Behind It; One of the Israeli intelligence agency’s most daring missions is being turned into a movie, ‘Red Sea Diving Resort.’ One of the operatives looks back on a breathtaking operation that saved thousands of Ethiopian Jews’ lives in the 1980s" (2018-05-06, haaretz.com/world-news/asia-and-australia/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-incredible-story-of-the-diving-resort-in-sudan-run-by-the-mossad-1.6036466) [archive.is/qt6WA]
---

* "General's Final Confession Links 1956 Massacre to Israel's Secret Plan to Expel Arabs; 'Yiska' Shadmi, the highest IDF officer tried for the Kafr Qasem massacre, admitted before his death that his trial was staged to protect military and political elites. Historian Adam Raz believes that behind the horrific 1956 event was a secret plan to transfer Israel's Arabs" (2018-10-11, haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-general-s-confession-links-massacre-to-israel-s-secret-plan-to-expel-arabs-1.6550421) [archive.fo/ObVAG]
---

* "Their Pretense Is Over. The Settler Leadership Is a Violent, Lawless, Racist Gang of Vigilantes The blanket public support offered by settler leaders to the suspected murderers of Aisha Rabi is a milestone. The settlement enterprise, long based on Jewish supremacy and territorial expansion, now justifies terror" (2019-01-10, haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-their-pretense-is-over-the-settler-leadership-is-a-violent-lawless-racist-rabble-1.6828777) [archive.is/MZbZt] [begin excerpt]:
On the afternoon of April 11, 1982, I was visiting the Western Wall with relatives when we heard a burst of automatic rifle nearby. We couldn’t see anything happening, but the police quickly evacuated the Kotel plaza. The security forces were running in the opposite direction from us, so it was clear the incident had taken place on the other side of the Wall, on the Temple Mount. It also seemed clear that whatever was happening was a Palestinian terror attack.
Clear at least, until we got back home and listened to the news on the radio.
The attacker’s name was Alan Goodman, an American Jew who had recently made aliyah. The M-16 rifle he used to kill a member of the Muslim Wakf custodians of the Al Aqsa compound, and to wound four others, had been issued to him only days earlier when he began his basic training with the IDF.
It was the first time I’d ever heard gunfire, and the whole idea of a Jew carrying out an attack in the Jewish state seemed bizarre to my eight year-old mind. The only conceivable reason for his actions was that he was "a mad American."
Madness was also the line that his lawyers tried to use in court. But the judges weren’t buying it. Enough literature of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s  were found in the lonely 37 year-old’s room, together with his cries of "An eye for an eye" and "Long live the Jews” during the attack, to convince them it had been an ideologically-motivated act of vigilantism and he was given a life sentence, commuted to 15 years in 1997, when he was released and returned to his native Baltimore.
Alan Goodman was indeed a lone gunman. And there were other individual Jewish terrorists like him, from the late 1970s onwards, carrying out their murderous freelance attacks on Palestinians. Nearly all of them had backgrounds as sad loners or petty criminals, usually using IDF-issued weapons, without any organizational backing or widespread support, exacting their own private revenge for victims of Palestinian terror. Their actions were roundly condemned from all sides of the political scene.
But while Goodman was on trial in Jerusalem, there was a much larger, ideologically serious group of Jewish terrorists active.
Their first operation was in June 1980, when they booby-trapped the cars of three Palestinian mayors in the West Bank, whom they suspected of having been involved in directing murderous attacks on Jewish settlers.
A few members of the group were involved in detailed plans to blow up the Al Aqsa mosque, in the hope that it could derail Israel’s withdrawal from Sinai, part of the peace agreement with Egypt. Others carried out a shooting-attack at the Islamic Collage in Hebron, killing three students. The members of what became known in the media as the "Jewish Underground" were finally rounded up in April 1984, when several were caught placing explosives in four Palestinian buses.
Twenty-five members of the Jewish Underground were charged in court. These weren’t vigilantes or deluded individuals. They included educators and academics, former officers in the IDF, some in their later thirties and forties. Respected members of the settler movement, grown-ups. In a report in Haaretz at the time, they were described as "an underground of good guys."
In the preface to his book on the group, one of its younger members at the time, journalist Haggai Segal (today editor of the right-wing religious newspaper Makor Rishon), pointed out that it was a misnomer to call them an "underground," as they never existed as a clandestine and networked organization, had not chosen a name for themselves, and most of the group were unaware of all four of the planned attacks and had not necessarily supported them.
It didn’t change the fact that they were a group of like-minded ideologues who had murdered in the belief that they were furthering the interests of the Jewish people and Jewish state by their actions. And nearly all the right wing, including most of the settler leadership, condemned them.
Or, to be more accurate: Their actions were denounced, but as individuals, they were not ostracized.
They remained part of the movement, their families were taken care of while the fathers remained in prison (ultimately, they all had their sentences commuted and even those who had received life, were out in six and a half years). Upon release, they returned to their communities as respected members.
Back in the 1980s, it was clear there were two types of Jewish terror. There were unruly vigilantes, acting out of impulse, madness, or Kahanist ideology - and there were those who had been wrong to take the law in to their own hands but remained, as the title of Segal’s book describes them "Dear Brothers." [end excerpt]
---

Capitalists' Science
* "Lynn Margulis, Neo-Darwinism, And Kin Selection" (2009-03-17, by Steve Davis, via science20.com/gadfly/lynn_margulis_neodarwinism_and_kin_selection) [archive.is/RhJHs] [begin excerpt]:
Professor Lynn Margulis is the biologist who had the incredible insight that the cells of modern organisms were originally formed by the symbiotic combination of prokaryotic cells and colonies of bacteria, and then had to battle for years to have this recognised by the science community.
We owe a huge debt to Margulis, but it’s not only for this that we owe her. Margulis has described neo-Darwinism as; "a minor twentieth century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon Biology" and believes that her opponents "wallow in their zoological, capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit interpretation of Darwin—having mistaken him.”Her reference to “Anglo-Saxon” biology as a religion is actually misplaced. I believe the problem she refers to should be labeled “Anglo-Norman ideology” because it was only after the Norman invasion of England that the peculiarly British cultural oddity we now know as individualism, emerged as a significant social force. The concept was eventually given written form and “philosophical” credibility by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, after which it never looked back.
So powerful was its grip on the imagination of a sector of the British intelligentsia that Darwin’s most prominent supporter, Thomas Huxley, was unable to accept Darwin’s clearly unambiguous description of social instincts as superior to individual instincts, and more significant than individual instincts as a factor in evolution. Huxley salved his conscience by mentioning the importance of sociality in a mere footnote to his essay Evolution and Ethics (1894), a concealment that must rank as one of the more notable abandonments of ethics in the history of science. But Huxley’s role in advancing the ideology went further than this.
Concealment of the significance of sociality in evolution went hand in hand with the promotion of ruthless competition. And it was this perception of evolution and natural selection, the image of “nature red in tooth and claw” that was seized with glee by apologists for capitalism who were, at that time, struggling with an outraged public reaction to the inhuman conditions under which the working class, including very young children, were expected to labour.
Huxley and others gave them the justification they craved. Individualism, competition, and struggle it was alleged, is the way of the world, the natural order just as God had created it, now backed up by the findings of science. The political alliance between capitalism and established religion continues to this day, and it was that perverted, anti-social version of Darwinism that was utilized by this political alliance, and which also continues today in its modern form of neo-Darwinism. [end excerpt]
---

* "Unearthing the ancient traces of China-Saudi Arabia exchanges" (2019-01-18, news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d514d3141544d32457a6333566d54/share_p.html) [archive.is/KwExr] [begin excerpt]:
China and Saudi Arabia recently unveiled the achievements of their joint archeological exploration at the ruins of the al Serrian port, an important pilgrim-trade port in ancient times connecting the East and West.
The ruins of the port are located by the Red Sea, the southwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula. It was deserted for unknown reasons and then covered up by sands. [...]
Results show that in the south of the site, there is a place that would have been a natural harbor for ship berthing and a channel for ships to move in and out. The findings also include bronze weights, agates, coins, as well as Arabian pottery and glazed pottery from ancient Persia and China, signifying that the al Serrian area by the Red Sea was an essential maritime channel for East-West exchanges. [...]
The five-year joint archeological exploration is one of the important cultural cooperations reached by the two countries when Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Saudi Arabia in January 2016.
From March to April in 2018, the team conducted the first unearthing and discovered debris of porcelain dating back to China's Song Dynasty (960-1279), Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and Qing Dynasty (1636-1911).
"As a Saudi Arabian, we highly value this cooperation project with China. The ancient trade channel from China to the Red Sea, namely the Maritime Silk Road, to a large extent, strengthens the cultural exchanges and economic and trade cooperation between China and Arab countries," said Mahdi Al Qarni, who is in charge of the joint archeological exploration on the Saudi Arabian side. [end excerpt]
- image caption: A team of Chinese and Saudi Arabian archeologists works at the site.

---


* "Run Through the Jungle" (retrieved 2019-01-20, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Through_the_Jungle) [archive.is/X2icH]
* "John Fogerty: 'Run Through the Jungle' Is Plea for Gun Control; 'There's got to be some sort of lid on this thing', singer says of Second Amendment" (2016-01-12, rollingstone.com/music/news/john-fogerty-run-through-the-jungle-is-plea-for-gun-control-20160112) [archive.is/oXbps]
* "How Creedence Clearwater Revival Became the Soundtrack to Every Vietnam Movie" (2018-02-20, pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-creedence-clearwater-revival-became-the-soundtrack-to-every-vietnam-movie/) [archive.is/AuhOJ]

* "Run Through the Jungle" lyrics (by John Cameron Fogerty, Creedence Clearwater Revival)
Whoa thought it was a nightmare
Lord it was so true
They told me don't go walking slow
The devil's on the loose
Better run through the jungle
Better run through the jungle
Better run through the jungle
Whoa don't look back to see
Thought I heard a rumblin'
Calling to my name
Two hundred million guns are loaded
Satan cries "take aim"
Better run through the jungle
Better run through the jungle
Better run through the jungle
Whoa don't look back to see
Over on the mountain, thunder magic spoke
"Let the people know my wisdom
Fill the land with smoke"
Better run through the jungle
Better run through the jungle
Better run through the jungle
Whoa don't look back to see

===*===*===
===*===*===
===*===*===



All materials not authored by members of the "The Northbay Uprising Media Collective" are ©, ® or ™ to their respective owners and authors, and are included in this database for evaluative purposes only, without commercial profit. For commercial use of the materials on this database, please contact the respective copyright owners of the materials. Copyright owners of materials on this page are not responsible for the contents of this database.

Files types linked are noted if not standard (.html). Files noted as (.pdf) may be viewed in most standard browsers, or by downloading the viewer app from the proprietor [get.adobe.com/reader].
(is.gd) is a web address shortening app, with direct links noted when used with this app.

Archival sites save a text and a graphical copy of a web page with no active elements and no scripts (nor popups or malware), and with timestamps, including Archive.org (how-to) (donate), [peeep.us] [via.hypothes.is] [webcitation.org] [webrecorder.io], & Archive.is/fo (how-to) (donate).


===*===*===
===*===*===
===*===*===

Thursday, January 3, 2019

History & the Current Context (for January 3rd, 2019)

research from the Committee for the Study of
HISTORY AND THE CURRENT CONTEXT
[HistoryAndCurrentContext.blogspot.com]

* "Workers and community can fight GM plant closings" (2018-12-07, by David Sole, fighting-words.net/2018/12/07/workers-and-community-can-fight-gm-plant-closings/) [archive.li/bYO2A] [begin excerpt]: Detroiters also remember that the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant was built on the site of a large and stable community. Over 4200 people were driven from their homes in what was commonly known as Poletown. This multi-national community fought to keep their homes but were told by the Michigan Supreme Court that eminent domain could be used to benefit a giant corporation. Thirteen hundred homes, six churches, 144 businesses, a hospital and a school, spread over 465 acres, were seized and bulldozed for the GM plant’s construction in 1981. [...]
Public officials and union leaders have long complained about plant closings, the loss of jobs and the resulting devastation of communities, but they have been unable to launch any serious struggle due to their limited view respecting capitalist property relations both in the courts and in contract negotiations.
When GM announced its plans to close down 19 plants in 1986, a struggle emerged, led by rank-and-file workers and radical activists for a moratorium on plant closings. Spearheaded by the Stop Plant Closings Committee of UAW Local 15 (Fisher Body Fleetwood Plant), the demand was made that a job was a property right of the workers. This became a national movement led by the “A Job Is A Right Campaign.”
This organizing included mass meetings in Flint, Michigan union halls, mass in-plant meetings at the Detroit Fleetwood Plant, mass marches and rallies in Michigan and Ohio and a protest outside the national conference of governors in Traverse City, Michigan. A tent city of laid off workers, victims of plant closings, also took place on the grounds of the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, in 1988.
Although the campaign got no support from top leaders of the UAW, they did adopt language in the next UAW-GM national agreement providing for a moratorium on plant closings, albeit only after GM closed the 19 plants. The 1990’s saw another massive round of plant closings by GM, which ultimately eliminated 70,000 of 80,000 auto jobs in Flint, Michigan. [end excerpt]
- image caption: GM Fleetwood workers gather by the hundreds inside the plant to talk about keeping the plant open. T-shirts say “stop plant closings.” (1987)

- image caption: A Job is a Right leaflet, August 1988

---


* "The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom - World War II and Post War (1940–1949)" (loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html) [archive.vn/NNu9m] [begin excerpt]:
In the spring of 1941, hundreds of thousands of whites were employed in industries mobilizing for the possible entry of the United States into World War II. Black labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened a mass march on Washington unless blacks were hired equally for those jobs, stating: “It is time to wake up Washington as it has never been shocked before.” To prevent the march, which many feared would result in race riots and international embarrassment, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order that banned discrimination in defense industries. His Executive Order 8802, June 25, 1941, established the Committee on Fair Employment Practices (known as FEPC) to receive and investigate discrimination complaints and take appropriate steps to redress valid grievances.
The fight against fascism during World War II brought to the forefront the contradictions between America’s ideals of democracy and equality and its treatment of racial minorities. Throughout the war, the NAACP and other civil rights organizations worked to end discrimination in the armed forces. During this time African Americans became more assertive in their demands for equality in civilian life as well. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an interracial organization founded to seek change through nonviolent means, conducted the first sit-ins to challenge the South’s Jim Crow laws.
After the war, and with the onset of the Cold War, segregation and inequality within the U.S. were brought into sharp focus on the world stage, prompting federal and judicial action. President Harry Truman appointed a special committee to investigate racial conditions that detailed a civil rights agenda in its report, To Secure These Rights. Truman later issued an executive order that abolished racial discrimination in the military. The NAACP won important Supreme Court victories and mobilized a mass lobby of organizations to press Congress to pass civil rights legislation. African Americans achieved notable firsts—Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, and civil rights activists Bayard Rustin and George Houser led black and white riders on a “Journey of Reconciliation” to challenge racial segregation on interstate buses. [...]
Morgan v. Virginia, 1946 -
On July 16, 1944, Irene Morgan refused to surrender her seat to white passengers and move to the back of a Greyhound bus while traveling from Gloucester County, Virginia, to Baltimore, Maryland. She was arrested and convicted in the Virginia courts for violating a state statute requiring racial segregation on all public vehicles. The NAACP appealed her case to the Supreme Court. On June 3, 1946, by a 6-to-1 decision, the court ruled that the Virginia statute was unconstitutional when applied to passengers on interstate motor vehicles because it put an undue burden on interstate commerce. [...]
The Journey of Reconciliation -
To test the Supreme Court’s decision in Morgan v. Virginia banning segregation in interstate travel, Bayard Rustin of FOR and George Houser of CORE planned and participated in the Journey of Reconciliation. Sixteen black and white men left Washington, D.C., on a bus and train trip through the upper South. In North Carolina, three people, including Rustin, were arrested and sentenced to serve on a prison chain gang. Rustin wrote an article about his experience for the New York Post, which led to the abolition of chain gangs in North Carolina. The Journey of Reconciliation served as a model for the Montgomery bus boycott and the Freedom Rides of 1961. [end excerpt]
- image caption: The Journey of Reconciliation—first “Freedom Ride”—standing outside office of Attorney S. W. Robinson, Richmond, Virginia. Photograph showing Worth Randle, Wally Nelson, Ernest Bromley, Jim Peck, Igal Roodenko, Bayard Rustin, Joe Felmet, George Houser, and Andy Johnson holding suitcases and coats. Photograph, 1947. Bayard Rustin Papers, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (068.00.00) Courtesy of Walter Naegle


You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow!
11 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, Irene Morgan rejected that same demand on an interstate bus in Virginia. Her case caught the attention of the NAACP's Thurgood Marshall and went to the Supreme Court. On June 3, 1946, she won. But the southern states refused to enforce the law, leading 8 white and 8 black men to invent the "Freedom Ride."

* (2015-08-17, facebook.com/TheHstryMakers/posts/you-dont-have-to-ride-jim-crow-noyou-dont-have-to-ride-jim-crowon-june-the-third/950047681709614/) [archive.vn/J5PrF]:
"You don't have to ride Jim Crow, no!
You don't have to ride Jim Crow.
On June the Third the high court said,
When you ride interstate, Jim Crow is dead,
You don't have to ride Jim Crow.
And when you get on the bus,
And when you get on the bus,
Get on the bus, sit anyplace,
‘Cause Irene Morgan won her case,
You don’t have to ride Jim Crow."
These lyrics to “You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow,” were penned by Bayard Rustin and George Houser, who were the organizers of the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation. Also known as the First Freedom rides, the historic journey sought to challenge segregation laws on interstate buses. In the song, Rustin and Houser recognized the contributions of Irene Morgan to the breakdown of Jim Crow laws in the South.
In 1946, Irene Morgan refused to surrender her seat on a Greyhound bus headed to Baltimore, Maryland from Gloucester, Virginia.

After she was arrested and jailed, she took her case to Spottswood William Robinson, III. Thurgood Marshall would then argue Morgan’s case before the Supreme Court. During her interview with the HistoryMakers, Morgan’s niece, Jacqueline Finney Brown, described the victorious outcome of Morgan v. State of Virginia (1946), “They won. Thurgood Marshall won and it established no segregated processes on interstate travel vehicles in the United States. It was the breakdown of Jim Crow laws.”
Listen to Bayard Rustin sing “You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow” here: http://bit.ly/1N3vcIF







===*===*===


* "Lithuanian neo-Nazi march celebrates Nazi collaborators" (2016-02-17, religiousreader.org/lithuanian-neo-nazi-march-celebrates-nazi-collaborators/) [archive.vn/M0B67]

* "My grandfather wasn’t a Nazi-fighting war hero — he was a brutal collaborator; A deathbed promise led to me discovering his complicity in the Holocaust — and what it means beyond my family" (2018-07-14, salon.com/2018/07/14/my-grandfather-didnt-fight-the-nazis-as-family-lore-told-it-he-was-a-brutal-collaborator/) [archive.vn/UsOBj] [begin excerpt]: Growing up in Chicago’s Marquette Park neighborhood — the neighborhood that had the largest population of Lithuanians outside the homeland — I’d heard about how my grandfather died a martyr for the cause of Lithuania’s freedom at the hands of the KGB when he was just 37 years old. According to the family account, he led an uprising against the Communists and won our country back from them, only to have it snatched by the Germans. He became chairman of the northwestern part of the country during the German occupation. According to family lore, he had fought the Nazis and then been sent to a concentration camp in retaliation. He escaped that camp and returned to Vilnius to start a new rebellion against the Communists, had been caught, taken to the KGB prison and tortured. I’d heard how he was the lawyer who had led the defense for 11 rebels before the KGB tribunal, was found guilty and had been executed. His nom de guerre was General Storm. It all seemed so romantic to me. [...]
In October 2000, after my grandmother died, my brother, Ray and I took the cremated remains of our mother and grandmother back to Lithuania to be buried, as they had wished. We were surprised by the outpouring of affection shown at their funeral in the Vilnius Cathedral, and especially astonished when President Landsbergis appeared with his wife to pay their respects to the widow, daughter and grandchildren of General Storm. Many at the funeral had asked, “What about the book on your grandfather?” I answered, “I promised I would finish it.” They patted my back, squeezed my arms and kissed my cheeks. “You’re such a good daughter. Our country needs heroes.” [...]
From Vilnius, Ray and I traveled as honorary guests to Šukoniai, the northern town where our grandfather was born, to see the grammar school named after him. We were shown the modest building of white bricks and oak trim. The school director, a roly-poly man with disheveled white hair, enthusiastically grabbed our hands, telling us how pleased he was that we had come to host the ceremony in homage to our grandfather. He had heard I was writing a book. I asked him, “How did you decide to name the school after our grandfather?” Stroking his chin, he answered, “It was during a meeting of the County Board. We wanted to pick a new name instead of the Russian one we had. Your grandfather’s surfaced immediately.” Then he pulled Ray and me aside so the others couldn’t hear. “I got a lot of grief at first when we picked his name. He was accused of being a Jew-killer.”
Ray and I were aghast. Accused of being a Jew-killer? I looked around the room, at the teachers and the principal. Who were these people? Who was my mother? My grandmother? Who was I? My mind whirled: There must be some mistake. The director stroked my arm in reassurance. “I’m getting more support than ever over choosing your grandfather’s name. All of that is in the past.”
Feeling lost, I couldn’t wait for the ceremony to end so that I could ask more questions. My brother and I got into the back seat of a blue Falcon with Ašmenskas, my grandfather’s colleague, then an 88-year old with snowy white hair. He handed me a copy of the book he had written about our grandfather called "Generolas Vėtra" (General Storm), the cover of which bore a photo of my grandmother pulling my grandfather closer to her by his neck-tie. It had been published by the Lithuanian Genocide Museum, dedicated to Lithuanians who suffered during World War II, many whom died in Siberia. The museum was created in 1992, shortly after Lithuania’s independence, in response to the Holocaust, to show the world that Lithuanian nationalists had suffered under Communism just as much as Jews had under Nazism. The museum was criticized for appropriating the word genocide wrongly, and earlier this year it changed its name to the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights. Formerly, the museum was the KGB prison where our grandfather died in 1947, and it bears his name, along with many others’, on its gray marble walls.
“Have you ever heard any of those rumors about him killing Jews?” I asked. Ašmenskas fixed me with his blue eyes. “The Nazis appointed him to the position of county chair in 1941. He was conflicted about taking it, but he thought he could help our country more by accepting it. He was good at playing both sides of the fence, so he took it.” I knew my grandfather was the county chair, considered the height of his political career, but I had never considered that he might have been a Nazi collaborator.
Back in Chicago, I continued to sift through my mother’s material on my grandfather. I was unwilling to admit that this accusation could be true, but then I noticed a yellowing 32-page booklet titled, “Hold your Head High, Lithuanian!!!” In it, I came across a rant against Jews: “In the land of Klaipėda, the Lithuanians are being overthrown by the Germans, and in Greater Lithuania, the Jews are buying up all the farms on auction. . . . Once and for all: We won’t buy any products from Jews!” It was written by my grandfather. My hands shook: I did not want a grandfather who was the author of this brochure.
I strongly considered dropping the project, even if it meant breaking the promise to my mother. Years passed until I felt psychologically ready to continue the investigation, bracing myself for the horrifying possibility that my grandfather was indeed involved in killing Jews.
In 2013 I spent seven weeks in Lithuania. I hired a Holocaust guide, Simon Dovidavičius, director of Sugihara House, a museum honoring Chiune Sugihara, who helped 6,000 Jews escape to Japan during WWII. We became an unlikely pair, investigating the life of my grandfather. I showed him all the monuments on my grandfather; he showed me pits of where Jews were buried because of my grandfather. I gave him the book published by the Genocide Museum stating my grandfather was a hero; he gave me Holocaust books stating my grandfather was a villain.
Dovidavičius was the first to suggest that my grandfather conducted the initial akcija (action) during World War II before the Germans arrived. It coincided with Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, when Hitler invaded Russia, the same day Lithuania began its uprising with the Germans against the Soviets, marking the start of a Holocaust there, where 95 percent of its 200,000 Jews were murdered, the highest percentage of any country in Europe. (About 3,000 Jews remain in Lithuania today.)
Within three weeks, 2,000 Jews had been killed in Plungė, half the town’s population, and where my grandfather led the uprising. This preceded the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, when Nazi Germany decided to make mass-murder its state policy. Put in more chilling terms, Dovidavičius claimed that my grandfather, as captain, taught his Lithuanian soldiers how to exterminate Jews efficiently: how to sequester them, march them into the woods, force them to dig their own graves and shove them into pits after shooting them. My grandfather was a master educator.
I resumed the investigation. I sought out Damijonas Riaukia, a colleague of my grandfather during the five-day uprising. He was a 17-year-old in 1941.  “Didn’t my grandfather have anything to do with the killing of the Jews?” “He wasn’t here,” he answered. “He had nothing to do with it. It was the Germans.” By this point I suspected a cover-up, but I needed proof.
Near the end of my trip, my aunt, Aldona Budrytė Bužienė, whose mother was my grandmother’s sister, described how, as a 10-year-old, she babysat my mother in 1941 in Plungė. She told me the story while we were in her apartment in Klaipėda, enjoying a lunch of chicken and rice that she had prepared. Shortly after the uprising, my grandfather moved his family into a house in the center of town once it became “suddenly free” and stayed until they moved to Šiauliai, where my grandfather became chairman of the county. “What do you mean by suddenly free?” I asked. She answered, “The Jews were gone, so the house was free. Many Lithuanians were moving into the new free houses.”
Taking a deep breath, I asked, “Do you mean the houses became free because the Jews were killed?” Looking pained, she nodded. “What about the killing of the Jews then?” I asked. “Who ordered them to be killed?”
“I don’t believe it was your grandfather’s initiative. He was too good for that.”
After a pause, I asked, “But if he was living there, as you said, and he was the head of the uprising, as Damijonas and many others said, wouldn’t he have given the order?”
As Aunt Aldona pieced together the events for the first time, putting them side by side the way I had during my trip, she shook her head and cried. “I just can’t believe it. Maybe he had no choice. He had to maintain order. I don’t know what to think anymore. I suppose it’s possible.” She seemed confused as she tried to come to terms with the possibility about her Uncle Jonas’s involvement in killing the Jews.
It turned out that the house in question faced the police headquarters, an imposing rounded structure with white and blue trim on the corner of the town’s most prominent intersection. The headquarters had been the Nazi command center. The house also stood next to the synagogue, where Jews were sequestered before they were marched into the woods and shot. Is this why my grandmother asked me not to write the book?
By the end of the trip I came to believe that my grandfather must have sanctioned the murders of 2,000 Jews in Plungė, 5,500 Jews in Šiauliai and 7,000 in Telšiai.
Back in Chicago, feeling a mix of rage and anxiety, I continued to work on the book during summers. Two months ago, my project led me to Grant Gochin, a Jewish man of Lithuanian descent now living in California, who has spent decades investigating his own family history. He learned about his cousin Sonia Beder, a Holocaust survivor who testified that armed Lithuanians prevented 6,000 Jews in her village from escaping to the Soviet Union three days before the Germans arrived. Sonia saw eighth-grade boys from the local school being recruited to help shoot these Jewish victims. Armed Lithuanian men plundered the Jews’ homes; they beat the Jews murderously; they humiliated, raped and killed girls. They set a rabbi’s beard on fire, branded his body with hot irons and shot him in front of his community. Sonia managed to escape from certain death. She survived a ghetto that had been created under orders from my grandfather, and later, she survived Dachau.
Gochin has identified more than 100 relatives killed in the Lithuanian Holocaust. Our independent research has shown that my grandfather murdered Gochin’s relatives. We decided to join forces.
While I had been focused exclusively on my grandfather over the past two decades, Gochin had launched a movement in Lithuania to expose multiple men lauded as heroes by the Genocide Museum who played a role in the Holocaust. Three years ago, he launched a campaign to remove my grandfather’s plaque from the Vilnius Library of the Academy of Science building. Despite wide media coverage and a petition signed by 19 prominent Lithuanian politicians, writers, and historians, the government refused to remove the plaque. This month, Gochin presented a 69-page exposé on my grandfather, charging the government with a cover-up of the Holocaust. I’m trying to play my small part in Gochin’s movement by offering an affidavit of support describing my research on my grandfather.
In the face of tremendous resistance by the Lithuanian government, the effort to convince it to acknowledge its role in the Holocaust will be long and hard. The souls of 200,000 Jews buried in Lithuanian soil demand such a reckoning. [end excerpt]


===*===*===



Communist International History
* "Most Russians regret USSR collapse, dream of its return, poll shows" (2016-04-19, rt.com) [archive.is/qQzl8]
* U.S. Friends of the Soviet People [facebook.com/groups/291623721304790] [paypal.me/USFSP]



* "An inconvenient truth: the enduring popularity of socialism in the post-Soviet states; The popularity of the political and economic system of the Soviet Union is at an all time high in its homelands" (2018-12-28, morningstaronline.co.uk/article/inconvenient-truth-enduring-popularity-socialism-post-soviet-states) [archive.li/km4BT]

* "Socialist States are more Democratic than Capitalist States" (2018-12-25, socialism-simplified.com/2018/12/25/socialist-states-are-more-democratic-than-capitalist-states/) [archive.vn/sbZO9]
Already Existing Socialist States (AES), states with a single party system, such as the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and the DPRK (North Korea), have been incessantly slandered for decades by western liberal and conservative media and called “totalitarian dictatorships”. The reason is both the popular liberal and conservative understandings of what democracy is in the west, in countries with multi-party systems. But it is increasingly obvious here there is still a material and social paradox in the end result of our style of democracy (under capitalism) as inequality and power are so unevenly distributed.
In so-called capitalist democratic countries where different parties take power, the public is regularly distracted with blaming one party or another (liberal vs conservative or social democrat) over the lack of progress for the citizens and the society. Instead of taking on the system of capitalist democracy itself, which fails the majority of people over the demands of a tiny monied minority .
In countries with a single party system (the members of which are also elected into power, not selected by a “dictator”), there is no other party to blame so the single party must champion the majority of the people or the very system is threatened.
This article looks at democracy and its outcomes in Already Existing socialist states as a result of the changes in the material conditions in these societies.


* "Why was Soviet medical care among the best in the world?" (2018-06-08, rbth.com/history/328493-why-was-soviet-medical-care-best) [archive.vn/gYMmk]
---

* "Countering the West's Lies About the Red Army's WW2 Poland Campaign; A short story about the logical dismantling of western propaganda fictions on key topics of World War II…" (2018-10-29, by Yury Selivanov, news-front.info/2018/10/29/yurij-selivanov-vremya-obvalnogo-fejkopada/) [archive.vn/nzirA], (translation, stalkerzone.org/yury-selivanov-countering-the-wests-lies-about-the-red-armys-ww2-poland-campaign/) [archive.vn/HsIeT]


US President F. D. Roosevelt on Marshal J. V. Stalin (facebook.com/StalinSociety.Pk)


"Мурзилка" Journal, January 1941

---

* "The Scale of the Destruction of Soviet Cities During the Second World War" (2018-09-16, by Viktor Bergun, facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1795818610466710&set=a.413249488723636&type=3&theater) [archive.vn/ZKksm], (translation, stalkerzone.org/the-scale-of-the-destruction-of-soviet-cities-during-the-second-world-war/) [archive.vn/e0tpF]
- Note: According to modern histriography, all victims of the Nazi-lead European invasion are "victims of communism"... that's it. They are counted as victims in order to inflate the death count attributed to Stalin, despite the historical facts as far as the documented attacks against civilian populations by the Nazi-lead European armies (equipped, in part, by Wall Street companies like Ford Motor Co., General Motors, & ITT).


* comment (2018-12-30) [archive.ph/4NPiy]: It’s obvious, even to left anti-communists, that bourgeois propaganda about communism’s great death toll is hypocritical. But what must first be understood is that most of it is simply fabricated mythology.
Some of the most trusted and commonly cited sources like ‘The Black Book of Communism’ are, to be frank, bullshit. Several of the authors admitted they made up or changed many of the numbers and throughout the book use pictures of Czarist atrocities or famines from decades before the USSR even existed to show the supposed horrors of life under communism.
Similarly, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a known sympathizer of the fascist dictator Francisco Franco, admitted that ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ was entirely made up by mashing together what he calls “camp folklore” ("Natalya Reshetovskaya, 84, Is Dead; Solzhenitsyn's Wife Questioned 'Gulag' ", 2003-06-06, nytimes.com/2003/06/06/world/natalya-reshetovskaya-84-is-dead-solzhenitsyn-s-wife-questioned-gulag.html) [archive.vn/glANo].
The organization Victim of Communism too resorts to the most insulting and hypocritical slander, counting those killed by US bombings in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea as “victims of communism”, as though it’s the communists who are at fault for the US war machine.
Many of our numbers and events like Holodomor are taken directly from the mouths of Nazis and Nazi collaborators. The myth that the terrible famine in Ukraine was intentional comes from the same Ukrainian ultranationalists who purged Jews and Roma under Nazi occupation. Even Stalin’s 20 number comes half from Hitler. In ‘Mein Kampf’, Hitler claims Lenin, not even Stalin, but Lenin, before collectivization, before the purges, killed 10 million Russians. This is, of course, nonsense and stands up about as well as any other piece of Hitlerite propaganda but the anticommunists took the number and ran anyway. Tacked on an extra 10 million for Stalin and called it fact.
Another thing we have to consider is the fact that these were nations with reliable, modern state organs. Hell, the very same anti-communists love to criticize socialism as bureaucratic! We have reliable numbers on how many people lived there, on how many worked and were involved in state functions, and yet communism’s body count has more and larger discrepancies than the Spanish Flu. Even in actual genocides like the Holocaust or the Cambodian Genocide, though there is some disagreement, when there is it’s never by more than a couple million. Meanwhile, I’ve seen Stalin alone blamed for anywhere from 10 to 50 million people! Communism as a whole has a death toll placed anywhere between 100 to 250 million people! It’s absolutely preposterous!
The only purpose of such nonsense and whataboutism is to downplay the horrific crimes of fascism which in its short time industrialized murder. Hence why so many of our great “anti-Soviet heroes”, from Stepan Bandera to Osama bin Laden, have also been Nazi collaborators and mass murderers. It also points the spotlight away from the horrific crimes of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism which occur everyday and remain responsible for the worst genocides and massacres in history.

- comment: Notice the use of the Goddess of Freedom statue from the Tienanmen square protests they're using in that photo op. What's especially infuriating is that many of those who took part in the Tienanmen protests were Communists themselves protesting Deng Xiaoping's reforms. They were singing the Internationale before they were crushed!

* "The Data About Gulags Was Falsified to Discredit the USSR" (2018-10-25, by Aleksandr Zinovyev, via zen.yandex.ru/media/histor/aleksandr-zinovev-dannye-o-gulage-falsificiruiut-s-celiu-diskreditirovat-sssr-5bd2911372e96d00aaca8ad0) [archive.vn/XE0qY], (translation, stalkerzone.org/aleksandr-zinovyev-the-data-about-gulags-was-falsified-to-discredit-the-ussr/) [archive.vn/1u3EZ]:
The sociologist Aleksandr Zinovyev noted at the end of the Soviet period that the story about Gulags isn’t just spread for no reason: it has a specific goal — to strike a blow to the USSR. It is necessary to inflate the problem as much as possible so that citizens decide that the USSR is one continuous Gulag and that this state isn’t worthy of existing.
Those who experienced perestroika remember very well how this topic was strongly inflated. However, when archival documents were opened it became clear that Solzhenitsyn just lied to the population about the number of prisoners in Gulags.
There were never more than 2.5 million people at the same time in Gulags, including also prisons and colonies. Moreover, there were so many there only for the reason that at one time there were German prisoners of war after the Great Patriotic War.
And before war the figure in all such institutions at the same time was a maximum of 1.8 million people (1938). It is worth noting that a Gulag is a labor camp, and it was necessary in those years because there were very few prisons in the country. Before the creation of a wide network of labor camps it was quite often necessary to punish serious criminals with community service.
If to take the number of Gulag prisoners during quiet times, then it isn’t much more than the number of prisoners in modern Russia.
---

* "The Forgotten Truth About Lenin" (2018-10-30, by Ilya Belous, cont.ws/@iliabelous/190868) [archive.fo/vWl0e], (translation, stalkerzone.org/ilya-belous-the-forgotten-truth-about-lenin/) [archive.vn/aS0Le]:
Who needed the execution of the royal family? Who overthrew the Tsar? Who destroyed the Russian Army? The current generation that grew up with the books of George Soros and Igor Chubais have already forgotten the truth about these events.
I will try to explain very briefly, succinctly, and to the point.
1. The interest of the Russian Empire in the First World War was to solve the Eastern question – control over the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, the longtime geopolitical need of our country.
2. England and France promised the Russian Empire to solve the issue of opening the Eastern front (against Germany and Austro-Hungary).

3. Russia fulfilled its allied role, and England realised that its promise will have to be kept, and that Russia’s “services” were no longer needed.
4. England decided to withdraw Russia from the war, artificially inciting chaos in Petrograd, and as a result, within a week the autocracy fell like a house of cards.
5. The fifth column in the State Duma, consisting of oligarchs and intelligentsia, entered into an alliance with England and carried out the bourgeois February coup, forcing Nicholas to sign a renunciation.
[The February bourgeois revolution can be compared to Euromaidan. Guchkov was bourgeois, like the oligarch Poroshenko, Shulgin – a lawyer, founder of the white guards – according to modern terminology was a representative of the creative class. The most important victory of the CIA in the information war is that millions of people now do not distinguish the February bourgeois revolution from the October people’s revolution. They think that Lenin arrested the Tsar personally. Can they show us Lenin in this picture? No, because the Bolsheviks will be back in Russia only in 2 months.]

6. On 6th April, 1917 the United States took the place of Russia in the Entente.
7. Put under pressure by the Provisional government, the Menshevik Council of St. Petersburg signed Decree No. 1, which introduced the democratic election of officers and the subordination of soldiers to soldiers’ committees. This is how the fifth column destroyed the Russian Army.
8. After the great October Socialist Revolution, Lenin was obliged to urgently make peace, because there was nobody and nothing to be at war with. He insisted on the withdrawal of all parties from the war without the annexation of contributions.
[German caricature in 1917 about the dismantlement of the Russian Army]

9. It wasn’t profitable for the entente, which was winning. They were obliged to negotiate with Germany separately from Russia. So the Brest peace treaty appeared.
[Prince Leopold of Bavaria signs the armistice in the middle of Russians and the enemy delegates]

10. The Entente interfered with the establishment of peace. On July 6th, 1918 the Social Revolutionary Blumkin killed the German Ambassador Mirbach.

11. Aleksandra Feodorovna and her daughters were German princesses, and killing them was also beneficial for England in order to aggrevate relations between Russia and Germany.
12. According to the testimony of three telegram operators from the Ekaterinburg post office, Lenin, in a conversation with Berzin by direct line, ordered him, “at the expense of his own life, to take the entire royal family under protection and to prevent any violence towards them”.
13. In order to mitigate the harsh result of the murder of Ambassador Mirbach, the possibility of delivering one or more members of the royal family to Germany wasn’t excluded.
14. From May, 1918 the whole country, from the Urals to Vladivostok, already wasn’t controlled by the Bolshevik leadership from Moscow. And it was like that until 1922. This area was ruled by separatist-anarchist sentiments – they wanted neither the Tsar nor Lenin.
15. The leaders of the Urals had their own position concerning the royal family. The Presidium of the Ural Regional Council was ready to exterminate the Romanovs already in April 1918, during their transfer from Tobolsk to Ekaterinburg.
16. The decision to execute the Romanovs was made by the Executive Committee of the Ural Regional Council, whilst the Central Soviet leadership was informed about it only after it had happened.
17. Neither Lenin nor Sverdlov had anything to do with the execution of the Tsar.
These are the contents of historical documents. These are the facts. Everything else is American-liberal nonsense.

---

* "From the Buran to the Caspian Sea Monster: 5 epic Soviet projects" (2018-12-26, rt.com/news/447467-soviet-epic-projects-legacy/) [archive.is/K5ET0]
---

Havana, Cuba: Revolutionaries of the 26th of July Movement pay a New Year’s visit to police headquarters and wish Batista’s police a Happy New Year, January 1, 1959.
Photo by Bert Clay

---

new books for distribution from New Outlook Publishers: [http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/BolshevikiPress]

---

* "A History of Afghanistan" (1985, Progress Publishers) [archive.org/details/AHistoryOfAfghanistan]
* "Afghanistan: The Revolution Continues" (1984, by Makhmud Baryalai) [archive.org/details/AfghanistanRevolutionContinues/page/n1]

* "Afghanistan: The Battle Line is Drawn" (1980, by Irwin Sillber, The Institute for Scientific Socialism, San Francisco, California) [archive.org/details/AfghanistanTheBattleLineIsDrawn/page/n1]
* "Human rights in Democratic Republic of Afghanistan: Facts and Fictions" (1979, by Hamid Khurasani) [archive.org/details/azu_acku_pamphlet_jc599_a34_k48_1986]


* (2018-12-31, Steven Argue): Photo: Former CIA asset Osama bin Laden. Of all his crimes, his worst was waging a holy war on Afghanistan that murdered a million people & enslaved its women. That CIA operation overthrew a pro-woman, secular, & socialist government, replacing it with repressive anti-woman anti-communist religious fanatics. The Soviet Union didn't invade Afghanistan. Jimmy Carter's CIA were in Afghanistan arming, training, financing, initiating, & directing the Afghan counterrevolution before any Soviet troops were present. To counter that U.S. aggression the government of Afghanistan repeatedly invited Soviet troops, which were finally sent. This was not a native resistance to socialism either. Like Osama bin Laden, 100,000 fighters of this U.S. financed holy war on women were foreign fighters recruited by the CIA & U.S. allies.


Why exactly did Maoist insurgents fight the Marxist-Leninist government of Afghanistan and the Soviets during the Afghan-Soviet war??? I would think as fellow communists they would side with the government and Soviets over reactionary Islamic insurgents

The PDPA didn’t think the same thing; when they took power, they began to immediately crackdown on the PYO and Shola a-Jawad than they did to the Islamists and warlords
PDPA were revisionist opportunists; they cracked down on each other as internal factions(between the more radical Khalq and the moderate Parcham) before the USSR intervened and shot one faction in charge(the Khalq) in favour of the other
even the Khalq where revisionist
khalq’s errors lay in its attempts to force reform on the masses that did not want said reforms and, when threatened and instead of trying to connect with the masses, ask the USSR to support them.
In turn, the USSR invaded and repressed the Khalq.
Only the ALO allots with the Islamists that were supported by the West(and PRC).
In turn, the ALO also supported and defended Deng and his reforms while the rest of the MAoist forces remained separate from Islamist forces.
The problem was that the consolidated social base for the Khalq were in the cities and the majority of the country, the rural masses, were not consolidated.
And we are on the same page with the “win over the intermediate while not tailing them”; the thing was that, same as land reform, the method that the PDPA used to enact these reforms in the countryside was the use of a standing army that was a holdover of the bourgeois army pre-Saur revolution.
So the masses weren’t engaged in their own liberation as the PDPA’s own base among the masses were unravelling and would then be utterly destroyed with the USSR’s intervention.
They didn’t train and arm women or the masses in general to foster a People’s Army instead of a professional bourgeois army; this stemmed from their top-down opportunistic bent.
also it is frequently forgotten that the DPDA were Pashtun Chauvinists that messed with the Hazara pop(the Mujahideen weren't good either toward them obv) and after Najibullah was assassinated many politburo members found them themselves mixed in *with the Taliban* because of this nationalist interest.  the legacy of the PDPA also veing the Uzbek Warlord General Dostum, being a good lacky in the US-led Northern Coalition
By the way, it's always good to note that comrade Faiz Ahmed was murdered by the fascistic "mujahedinn" under Hekmatyar, who were on the CIA payroll.
Massoud killed around 900 Hazaras, between 11-12 February 1993, in an operation called Afshar Operation. He and his soldiers were known for practicing ”bacha bazi”, its basically pedophilia, look it up. Sure, he was a brave commander, but surely not a hero, thats only Tajik people who thinks so
 The PDPA wasn't Marxist-Leninist AT ALL. Comrades from the ALO — lead by comrades Akram Yari and Faiz Ahmed — were the true Marxist-Leninists. Also, the Shale-ye Javeed fought alongside the anti-Taliban, anti-yankee mujahedinn, not the ones led by the Bin Laden–Hekmatyar–CIA clique. The Maoists from the ALO were waging war against a counter-revolutionary, puppet governmen which has installed themselves at the behest of the Moscow social-imperialists.
No, the position of the ALO wasn't that of siding with the capitalist-roading Chinese government. Instead, they've summed up the experience of the Chinese Revolution, and although not completely correcting some of its leftist mistakes, they were mostly right on their theory and practice.
http://a-l-o.maoism.ru/98-mim.htm

1) After Hafizullah Amin's coup d'etat and assassination of Taraki, he launched launched massive purges against personal rivals inside and outside the PDPA, thus alienating people among all stratas of the Afghan population (including communists inside and outside the PDPA).
2) Many of the so-called "Maoists" in Afghanistan weren't really ideological adherents to the Mao Zedong thought but merely self-proclaimed communists who aligned internationally with the People's Republic of China no matter who comes out victorious in the power struggle in Beijing. So they continued to support Beijing even after Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping staged their revisionist coup after the death of Chairman Mao Zedong, ended the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and purged its ring leaders (the "Gang of Four"), and launched "reform and opening".
The ALO and the so-called "Revolutionary Group of the Peoples of Afghanistan" led by Faiz Ahmad were rubbing shoulders with "moderate Islamists"
http://a-l-o.maoism.ru/glossary.htm#Rev.%20Group
I'm talking about the religious fundamentalists (regardless of how "moderate" they are) whom the ALO and RGPA proudly went to war hand-in-hand against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
Does it matter that the Afghan "Maoists" and their supporters among petite-bourgeois and national-bourgeois elements were not in the same category as the CIA Mujahideen. They were open enemies of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan - the most progressive and revolutionary government the country has ever seen with success - and their attack against that government only helped strengthened the CIA and Pakistani-backed Mujahideen that would soon spell their own very death years before they finally overthrew the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in 1992. How well did it end up for Faiz Ahmad and his fake "Maoist" chums when they ended up getting assassinated one-by-one by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami and the Pakistani ISI in the mid-1980s? If they had reached out to Karmal and later Najibullah's government (which was willing to make peace with certain factions of the armed opposition groups) for rapprochement, they wouldn't have got themselves f***ing killed by their own sectarian stupidity.
The ALO's war against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and alliance with Islamists ranks as one of the stupidest, most self-destructive and most extremist courses ever taken by a communist organization

The ALO had allied themselves with the non-communist "islamists" for the fact that they needed to do so, in order to fight occupation of the country by the social-imperialist Russian invaders and the revisionist government which took over via a Moscow-ordered coup. The PDPA fail to correctly handle the contradictions amongst the people, paving over them and treating the masses of the people as "counter-revolutionary", while at the same time asking muscovite social-imperialism for help when the people started to rebel en masse and shit got out of control. Put it simply, they didn't rely on the masses of the people, using the help of a foreign superpower to help them run shit and keep the power in their hands. The PDPA itself has created the conditions for Western imperialism to recruit, fund, train and arm their own "rebels", which were enemies of the revolutionary united front led by ALO in alliance with anti-imperialist Muslim peasant insurgents. The PDPA was one of the most counter-revolutionary and sock-puppeting forces of the history of the revisionist movement, which accomplished its historical mission by maring proletarian revolution whenever it attempted to do so.

after Khalk took power during the Saur Revolution and overthrew the previous goverment, the people rejoiced and welcomed it. But the Khalks made a lot of mistakes, by introducing reforms that the people weren't ready for. The Khalks introduced land reforms, the seperation of state and religion etc. which wasn't very popular. But they never wanted any foreign presence or intervention. Only after internal rivalry intensified through Soviet meddling leaders started to kill one another: Amin was told Taraki wanted to kill him, so he killed Taraki instead, then Karmal killed Amin and others by poisening them during a meeting, and the night after Amin's death the Soviet Union entered Afghanistan and recognized Karmal as leader, which was a year after Hezbe Democratique took power. The Afghan people responded massively by boycotting the schools etc. and waves of protests started.
I think the Maoists were against Hezbe Democratique, because they were being controlled by a foreign revisionist party. And at the same time, during Amin's reign the crackdown on opposition was very brutal. So I think they sided with the Islamic fundamentalists as a tacktical alliance to resist Soviet Imperialism and their crackdown on opposition.

===*===*===



* "The Israeli Fighter Pilots Who Got Rich Off Angola's Civil War and Their Link to a Massive Cyberattack; Three Israeli ex-fighter pilots operating in Africa have a surprising tie to a sophisticated attack that caused a global scare" (2018-12-31, haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-the-israeli-businessmen-who-got-rich-off-angola-s-war-and-their-ties-to-cyberattack-1.6792027), text [archive.vn/F3lMl]
[begin excerpt]: An international criminal probe has been investigating for the past two years suspicions that a company named Cellcom Liberia (and which has nothing to do with the Israeli mobile carrier of a similar-sounding name) ordered an Israeli-British hacker it hired in Angola (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/israeli-developer-wins-290m-angola-farm-contract-1.5445350) to wage continuous cyberattacks against a competitor called Lonestar.
The attacks, whose goal was to put Lonestar out of business, spun out of control so much so that by November 2016 the Liberian government believed the state was actually being targeted by these assaults (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/as-part-of-israel-s-return-to-africa-netanyahu-heads-to-liberia-1.5479792).
As Markerweek reported last week, hacker Daniel Kaye testified in his investigation — which took place in Germany — that the operation he carried out was ordered by the CEO of Cellcom Liberia, Avishai Marciano.
One of the controlling shareholders of Cellcom Liberia since its establishment in 2004 until mid-2016 was a secret business empire named LR Group. It was founded by three Israeli former fighter pilots, who monetized on business opportunities that arose out of Angola's 27-year-long civil war, which ended in 2002. After one of the founders, Eitan Stiva, left in 2011 to set up an independent investment fund, the company remained in the hands of the other two founders: Ami Lustig and Roee Ben-Yami. [ ... ]
A rich, anonymous trio -
The three Israelis started LR in the 1980s. They knew each other from Israel Air Force's flight academy, where they trained together to become pilots.
Similarly to other resource-rich African nations that have oil, gold, diamonds or particularly fertile soil, Angola is a paradox of a country full of natural wealth that actually makes its citizens poorer largely due to the involvement of foreigners in its local conflicts and corrupt government.
LR got involved in defense exports in Angola in the mid-80s and spent years massively arming the government there and training its troops. According to a variety of reports, the company sold Sukhoi 27 combat planes, artillery shells, and light weapons to the government. At the same time, the three founders also built airports and security systems and were involved in purchasing a plane for Jose Eduardo dos Santos, a president who ruled in Angola for 38 years through 2017. Some attribute his victory in the war to the country’s aeronautical enrichment, which LR greatly contributed to.
In the 2000s, after the war ended, the ex-pilots sought to break into civilian fields. They entered into infrastructure, technology and agriculture projects; first in Angola and then in other countries. They led ambitious projects to set up dozens of agricultural communities in Angola and Congo, modeling them after the Israeli moshav. Later they set up farms, barns, water purification plans and other agricultural projects in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, and most recently, Chad. They also supported philanthropic work such as orphanages and agricultural boarding schools in Angola — projects which they didn’t fail to share with Israeli media.
The three also dabbled in the medical field, setting up clinics in Angola and a hospital in Ukraine at an investment of tens of millions of shekels. Recently they joined a deal to train a medical team in China.
“This trio seem to be among the richest people in Israel, but because their business is private, people don't know them,” a source familiar with them said.
How wealthy are they? “Every one of them has a billion, maybe more,” the source added.
Throughout the years LR has had cellular companies in countries such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. The cellular network was operated by Ben-Yami and Lustig since Stiva’s retirement in 2011. The company website says it employs some 2,000 people worldwide. [ ... ]
- image caption: Ami Lustig, right, and Roee Ben-Yami, the owners of LR Group that partly controlled Cellcom Liberia.


===*===*===




All materials not authored by members of the "The Northbay Uprising Media Collective" are ©, ® or ™ to their respective owners and authors, and are included in this database for evaluative purposes only, without commercial profit. For commercial use of the materials on this database, please contact the respective copyright owners of the materials. Copyright owners of materials on this page are not responsible for the contents of this database.

Files types linked are noted if not standard (.html). Files noted as (.pdf) may be viewed in most standard browsers, or by downloading the viewer app from the proprietor [get.adobe.com/reader].
(is.gd) is a web address shortening app, with direct links noted when used with this app.

Archival sites save a text and a graphical copy of a web page with no active elements and no scripts (nor popups or malware), and with timestamps, including Archive.org (how-to) (donate), [peeep.us] [via.hypothes.is] [webcitation.org] [webrecorder.io], & Archive.is/fo (how-to) (donate).


===*===*===
===*===*===
===*===*===