Wealth is what Nature gives us and what a reasonable man can make out of the gifts of Nature for his reasonable use. The sunlight, the fresh air, the unspoiled face of the earth, food, raiment and housing necessary and decent…. This is wealth.
Useful Work Versus Useless Toil - William Morris
...........................................
How the Coronavirus Hoax Has Permanently Destroyed Health Care
Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc FRSA
Even before the coronavirus fraud closed down many hospital departments, sent waiting lists soaring – even for essential, potentially life-saving surgery – and left millions in constant, unnecessary pain, health care services were in decline.
Indeed, back in January, before most of us had heard of covid-19, I had started to prepare notes for a book explaining why health care today is worse than it was half a century ago, and why, despite all the advances in technology, the health care available in the future will not be as good as it was 50 years ago.
The book got pushed aside as the coronavirus hoax took over our lives and I began researching, writing and recording the Old Man in a Chair series of videos – all of which are available, by the way, as transcripts on my website – vernoncoleman.com.
Today, it is clear that health care is deteriorating by the day and, having been writing about doctors, hospitals and medical treatments for many decades, I am now convinced that the majority of patients today are receiving worse treatment than was available in the 1950s. The coronavirus hoax has made things considerably worse and has destroyed what was left of professional health care.
There are some exceptions, of course. The very few patients who have had successful transplant surgery could argue, accurately, that back in the 1950s they would have died. And there are one or two new drugs available that are life-saving.
But those are exceptions. I’m talking about the quality of medical care available for 99% of patients, 99% of the time.
Doubters will, of course, claim that life expectation today is much greater than it was and that, therefore, medical care must have improved.
This is a fallacious argument.
If you look at the figures it is clear that life expectation rose over a century ago when the number of babies and infants dying fell considerably. A little over a century ago it was commonplace for a woman to have half a dozen babies but for only two of them to survive. It was these infant deaths which lowered life expectation figures. If lots of babies die before they are one-year-old then the average life expectation is brought down dramatically. If one person dies at birth, and another dies at 100, their average life expectancy will be 50 years. But if most babies survive then the average life expectation rises equally dramatically. Back in Victorian times, and even earlier, humans who survived infancy and childhood commonly lived into their 70s, 80s and beyond.
The absence of relatively clean drinking water, and proper sewage systems, meant that serious infections were big killers in the 19th century. And it was infectious diseases such as cholera which meant that infant mortality figures were appallingly high. The death rates fell notably when fairly clean, uncontaminated drinking water supplies were introduced and proper facilities built for dealing with sewage. If you look at the figures it was not vaccinations which helped reduce the number of deaths from infectious diseases – the death rates were largely falling long before vaccinations were introduced – but better living conditions.
In the early part of the 20th century millions of people lived in damp, cramped conditions and had very little decent food to eat. Drug companies, and their supporters, like to claim that their products are responsible for improved life expectation but the figures prove that to be a falsehood. Drugs have changed our lives in many ways but, with the exception of antibiotics such as penicillin, first introduced just in time for the Second World War, they have not had a major impact and it is not difficult to argue that many of the preparations put on the market have done considerably more harm than good. It is, for example, difficult to claim that benzodiazepine tranquillisers have done anything to improve the quality of human life. Prescription drugs such as benzodiazepines and some painkillers are the causes of the biggest dependency problem in the world.
Even the good drugs, the antibiotics, are now often not as useful as they once were. Overprescribing and the wholesale, routine use of antibiotics on farms have meant that antibiotics which once saved lives are now often useless.
I qualified as a doctor almost exactly 50 years ago and after a year working in hospitals went straight to work as a general practitioner. I practised much in the way that doctors were practising half a century before that. If patients wanted a consultation they just turned up at the surgery during opening hours. I did a morning surgery and an evening surgery. I gave my own injections and took my own blood samples. I happily inserted catheters and syringed ears. Patients didn’t have to make another appointment to see a care assistant with little training. If you couldn’t get to the surgery you telephoned, or sent a message, and the doctor visited. If you needed help outside surgery hours you got in touch and the doctor would visit. Medical care was provided 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Accident and emergency departments, called casualty departments then, were used largely for victims of road accidents, fights and fires. Why would anyone trek all the way to a hospital when they could have a doctor in their home within minutes? Patients who were elderly or frail or housebound or disabled were often visited routinely once every couple of weeks. District nurses drove themselves round their local community to dress wounds and check on patients discharged from hospital. It now sounds like something out of a history book but I can’t be the only one who can remember how things were and why they were better 50 years ago than they are now. It wasn’t perfect by any means but it was a damned sight better than things are today.
Today, you’re about as likely to get a home visit from a doctor as you are to win the lottery. And your chances of having a doctor visit you at home at night or at the weekend or on a bank holiday are nil – unless you live in a big city and have an arrangement with a private doctor who does house calls. Having a GP always available at the end of a telephone was reassuring; it was good to know that professional help was always available. If a patient had to go into hospital they knew they had someone they could trust if they didn’t understand what was happening to them – they could speak to their GP or he would visit them in hospital to help explain things.
Everything has been going wrong for decades – but the slide downhill has accelerated recently. Medical care was never better than it was when people wore hats. Decency disappeared when bare heads became the norm. I’m obviously not saying one caused the other, that would be a simplistic example of post hoc ergo propter hoc, but it’s an easy way to define a change. When medicine became more science than humanity the quality of care started to diminish significantly.
Fifty years ago doctors always strove to keep patients alive. Today, ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ notices are placed on patients’ beds as often as temperature charts. It has got so bad that I have heard reports that DNR notices are put on the notes of any patient over the age of 60 or even 45. Those youngsters who cheer this should be aware that in 10 years’ time the age allowed could be reduced to 40 then, in no time at all, to 30. Remember the film Logan’s Run in which 30 was the cut off end of life age.
The ethics committee at Great Ormond Street Hospital, once the standard for quality in the care of sick children, was reportedly criticised by a High Court judge for deciding that a nine-year-old girl should be `managed’ rather than `treated’ and for making this decision without talking to the parents. Lawyers representing the hospital had allegedly asked that Great Ormond Street Hospital not be named. I bet they did. Today, elderly patients in hospitals are routinely left to die, unfed, unwashed and without fluids. In the UK, it’s a government approved programme for the `care’ of the elderly.
The coronavirus hoax gave hospitals the opportunity to shut down whole departments, many of which are still closed, and gave doctors in general practice the excuse to virtually shut down their surgeries. There was never any logical reason for this. GPs claimed that it would be better and safer to conduct all examinations by video rather than in person. It was even seriously suggested that young GPs found their work so onerous that they could not be expected to work more than one day a week – even though they were working 9 until 5 with an hour off for lunch. Patients who had serious symptoms were told that they could not be seen in person by a doctor or even a nurse – because of the coronavirus.
The truth is that video consultations are pretty useless and very dangerous. You can’t examine a patient by video. You can’t listen to their chest or check their heart or blood pressure. You can’t examine lesions properly. You can’t palpate an abdomen. You can’t look down throats or into ears. You can’t even use your sense of smell – useful in the care of diabetics.
Hospital infections, too often untreatable, are now too common to be remarked upon. Fifty years ago, a ward sister or a matron would have forty fits if a patient on their ward or in their hospital contracted an infection or developed a pressure sore or any other sign of bad nursing. Hospitals employed almoners whose job it was to make sure that patients didn’t have to worry about anything. If an elderly patient was admitted to hospital as an emergency, the almoner would make sure someone went round to feed her cat. If a patient was worried about her bills being paid while she was in hospital then the almoner would deal with it. If you don’t remember those days you probably think I’m joking but I promise you I am not. People working in health care used to understand the meaning of the word `compassion’. Today, health care staff would probably laugh or sneer if you told them of such realities.
Even in small things, hospitals have gone backwards.
So, for example, many hospitals no longer allow flowers on the ward. The real reason? They make a little more work for the staff. But for several thousand years it has been known that having flowers on a ward cheers up the patients and improves their recovery.
Similarly, when I was young, it was commonplace for someone to come onto a women’s ward every day and do the hair and make-up of the patients. That doesn’t happen anymore.
When I was a young doctor, all patients requiring hospital treatment were subjected to a full medical examination. They also had a full history taken. Woe betide any young doctor if a patient was seen by a consultant without there being a full medical history in their file.
How can it be an improvement to know virtually nothing about the patients you are looking after? Back in the 1960s, we derided doctors who thought of patients as being `the liver in the end bed’ or `the kidney problem in the bed third on the left’. But that is what health care has become once again.
Everywhere you look there are problems. Hospitals and general practices are managed by people who don’t understand the first thing about medicine. In Europe the EU has stopped doctors working more than a basic working week, and so in hospitals there are frequently no doctors at all available at weekends or at night.
In the UK, the NHS has always been a money wasting machine. The amount now spent on the NHS is so great that if that money were simply handed out to the public, everyone in Britain would be able to buy themselves top level private health care. How can that be? It’s simply because there are more administrators than hospital beds in the health service and vast amounts of money is wasted on pointless bureaucracy. Like all large, bureaucratic organisations the last people to be fired are the bureaucrats themselves. They just keep hiring and building their empires.
The NHS is regarded worldwide as the pinnacle of socialised medicine. Many around the world look upon it with envy. But that is only because they look at from a distance: as observers rather than as consumers. The NHS has been a disaster in every possible sense. Most people who work for it say they wouldn’t want to be treated in their hospital. The outstanding legal claims in the NHS had reached £85 billion before the coronavirus fiasco hit and left patients untreated and uncared for. Untold thousands of people will be entitled to sue and demand huge damages as a result of the coronavirus hoax – now better referred to as a fraud.
Overall satisfaction with the NHS is low and falling annually. People complain of long waits, staff shortages, lack of money and money being wasted. It is a deadly tale of indifference, incompetence, greed, selfishness and weariness. The incidence of doctor induced disease (iatrogenesis) soars every year.
It has long been recognised, incidentally, that waiting lists of all kinds were and are deliberately created by doctors to enhance their private incomes.
This is a weakness of the system which allows some consultants to work in the NHS and at the same time to have private practices. Their NHS income is the bread, butter and jam and the private income is the piece of cake. Consultants deliberately keep their waiting lists long because they know that this is the great selling point for private care. I once worked at a hospital where, during a consultant’s annual holiday, a registrar and I worked hard and got rid of the waiting list completely. It wasn’t particularly difficult. Naively we thought that the consultant would be pleased when he returned from his holidays. He was furious. `Why the devil should people come and see me privately if they can be operated on tomorrow in the health service?’ he demanded. He was the norm and not the exception.
Life expectation now is actually falling for women, waiting lists are growing and waiting times are soaring, the amount of illness is rising constantly and the number of patients made ill by doctors has made iatrogenesis an epidemic – up there with cancer and circulatory disease as one of the three major killers in our world. One in six people in hospital is there because they have been made ill by doctors. In half a century, the quality of medicine offered has slumped.
And there have been virtually no breakthroughs in the last 50 years. There are plenty of new drugs – but most of them are merely variations on long established themes. Health care is now controlled by lobbyists working for big drug companies and lies and myths rule our lives in a thousand different ways. The future, we are assured, is vaccination. Vaccination for this, vaccination for that, vaccines in syringes and vaccines in foods. The coronavirus has given drug companies the opportunity to introduce potentially deadly DNA and RNA vaccines.
Screening programmes are known to often do more harm than good but they are immensely profitable, and so they are popular with businesses and doctors. Medical education is controlled by drug companies and so when doctors are looking for a treatment they think first of pills. Lifestyle changes rarely even figure in their calculations. Laws which control the hours doctors can work mean that even quite large hospitals often have no doctors available at weekends or at night.
Long stay hospitals have been closed with the result that patients who need long-term care spend their days wandering the streets. Celebrities now promote health products and eating habits without having any knowledge or understanding of the harm they are doing. New regulations mean that small hospitals have closed with the result that patients have to travel for hours to visit a hospital.
Charities have become commercially linked with drug companies and use their lobbying skills to influence public policy in favour of their partners. Food companies promote bad eating habits because they are more profitable than good eating habits.
In the UK it can, and does, take weeks or even months for X-rays and scans to be read and for blood results to be recorded, distributed and interpreted. It is for this reason, more than any other, that Britain has the worst cancer survival rates in Europe.
All things considered the modern history of medicine is a deadly tale of indifference, incompetence, greed and selfishness. All of this importance because it was long ago established that when a doctor is sympathetic and compassionate his or her patients will get better quicker – it’s a human version of the placebo response which can add a quarter to a half to the effectiveness of a treatment. That has pretty much been lost.
In the UK, the only response to the chaos from the politicians and the collaborating public has been to demand yet more money for the health service, which actually has far too much money but just wastes most of it on unnecessary layers of administration and throws away billions because administrators pay far too much for just about everything from pens and loo rolls to drugs, and to demand that NHS leaflets and so on all be translated into more languages.
When I published the prices the NHS pays for office equipment, washing powder and so on – and proved that the NHS was paying more for stuff bought by the ton than I would pay if I bought the stuff at a supermarket – the NHS responded not by dealing with the waste but by demanding to know where I had obtained the computer print-out containing the NHS prices. They were only interested in covering up the waste – not doing anything about it.
Complex financial schemes, private finance initiatives and absurd bonus schemes for executives have cost the NHS billions. It is hardly surprising that services are deteriorating and that some services, such as dentistry, are likely to be abandoned completely.
The future, I fear, is bleak.
Thanks to the coronavirus hoax, health care is set to deteriorate even faster than before and the relationship between patients and health care professionals doomed to collapse still further.
Alternative branches of medicine will doubtless blossom and bloom. But for most people the future will involve telemedicine, preventive care and self-care. We all have to learn to look after ourselves and our loved ones.
Doctors haven’t yet grasped this, but computer programmes will take over from medical practitioners. Back in 1984, a friend and I wrote the first home doctor programme for computers and ever since then computer programmes have been improving. They are now being fitted into robot physicians and surgeons. In ten years’ time there will be very few jobs for human doctors. Students thinking of entering medical school might like to look for another profession. A career in plumbing might offer better prospects. I am being very serious.
This has not happened by accident. It is all part of the United Nations global plan for the future – Agenda 21. We are now living in the future they designed for us.
And unless we speak up, soon and loudly, the future will simply get bleaker and bleaker.
I don’t suppose I should admit this but this is my second attempt to make this video.
I had to abandon the first attempt when I suddenly found myself sitting here with tears pouring down my cheeks and quite unable to continue. It saddens me enormously to see my former profession overwhelmed by self-interest and apparently quite without any sense of humanity or vocation.
I pray that hope triumphs over current experience.
Copyright Vernon Coleman August 30th 2020
......................................
The Tremendous but “Secret” Success of Socialist Vietnam
Hue – full of public spaces
Some twenty years ago, when I moved to Hanoi, the city was bleak, grey, covered by smog. The war had ended, but terrible scars remained.
I brought my 4WD from Chile, and insisted on driving it myself. It was one of the first SUVs in the city. Each time I drove it, it was hit by scooters, which flew like projectiles all over the wide avenues of the capital.
Hanoi was beautiful, melancholic, but clearly marked by war. There were stories, terrible stories of the past. In “my days”, Vietnam was one of the poorest countries in Asia.
Used to be under US gun
Many great heritage sites, including the My Son Sanctuary in Central Vietnam, were basically vast minefields, even many years after the terrible U.S. carpet-bombing. The only way to visit them was by government-owned military vehicles.
The building where I lived literally grew out of the infamous “Hanoi Hilton”, the former French prison where the Vietnamese patriots and revolutionaries used to be tortured, raped and executed, and where some captured U.S. pilots were held during what is called in Vietnam the American War. From my window, I was able to see one of two guillotines in the courtyard of what by then had become a museum of colonialism.
Still full of US mines
In 2000, Hanoi did not have one single mall, and when we first arrived, the terminal of Noi Bai Airport was just a tiny edifice, the size of a provincial train station.
In those days, for the Vietnamese people, a trip to Bangkok felt like a voyage to a different galaxy. For journalists like myself, those who were based in Hanoi, a regular commute to Bangkok or Singapore was an absolute necessity, as almost no professional equipment or spare parts were available in Vietnam.
*****
Two decades later, Vietnam has become one of the most comfortable countries in Asia. A place where millions of Westerners would love to live.
Its quality of life is growing continually. Its socialist model and central planning are clearly successful. Vietnam feels like China, some twenty years ago. There are tremendous promenades in the cities of Hue and Danang, there is the construction of modern public transportation networks, as well as sports facilities. All this is in stark contrast to the extreme capitalist gloom of countries like Indonesia, even Thailand. Vietnamese people count on constantly improving sanitation, medical care, education and cultural life. With a relatively small budget, the country is often on par with much richer nations in Asia and the world.
Future of Viet Nam
Its people are among the most optimistic in the world.
In just the three years that I spent living in Vietnam, the country changed dramatically. The tremendous strength and determination of the Vietnamese people helped to bridge the void which was left after the destruction of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries of Eastern Europe. Just like China, Vietnam opted, successfully, for a mixed economy, under the leadership of the Communist Party.
A massive attempt by the United States and Europe to derail the socialist system, using Western-sponsored NGO’s and individuals inside the country, was identified and decisively defeated. Pro-Communist and pro-Chinese factions inside the government and the Party have overpowered those who were trying to derail Vietnam, pushing it towards the West.
Stunning art galleries in Hue
What followed was significant success, on many fronts.
According to the Southeast Asian Globe report, published on 1 October 2018:
Vietnam performed the best of 151 countries in a study that assessed quality of life versus environmental sustainability.
This is not the first time that Vietnam has performed exceptionally well when compared to other countries in the region, and in the world.
The article explained further:
The wide-ranging study, called A Good Life for All Within Planetary Boundaries, published by a group of researchers from the University of Leeds, argues that we need to dramatically rethink the way we view development and its relationship to the environment.
We were essentially working on several different indicators and relationships between social outcomes and environmental indicators,” Fanning told Southeast Asia Globe. We came up with the idea of, well, if we’re looking at social indicators, can we define a level that would be equivalent to a good life?
The survey included 151 countries, and Vietnam showed the best indicators.
The researchers settled on 11 social indicators that included life satisfaction, nutrition, education, democratic quality and employment.
It did surprise us that Vietnam did so well overall,” Fanning said. “You might expect it to be Costa Rica or Cuba, as Vietnam doesn’t typically come up as a sustainability hero.” Fanning was referring to two countries the researchers expected to do well since they generally provide good social support and haven’t seen the same environmental damage many countries have.
This is not the only report that celebrates the great success of Vietnam’s socialist model.
Freedom-Equality-Brotherhood — For French maybe but not for colonized Vietnamese
In the region of Southeast Asia, Vietnam has already gained the reputation of an economic and social superstar. Compared to the fundamentalist pro-market Indonesia or even the Philippines, Vietnam’s elegant socialist cities designed and maintained for the people, as well as the neat increasingly ecological countryside, clearly suggest which of the two systems is superior and fit for Asian people and their culture.
In times of grave emergencies; of natural and medical disasters, Vietnam is also well ahead of other Southeast Asian countries. Like Cuba and China, it invests heavily in the prevention of calamities.
According to New Age, socialist states including Vietnam, did a superb job fighting against the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic:
Developing countries such as Cuba and Vietnam with socialist or communist state structures and philosophy are successfully handling the COVID-19 pandemic. What are the roles that their long term health and economic strategies playing behind this success? MD Talebur Islam Rupom asks this question and stipulates that this is high time that states should invest heavily in the health sectors to ensure health care for all.
Countries with centrally subsidized or fully funded health care systems are battling the COVID-19 crisis better than any other countries. There are also several other proactive reasons which makes it possible for them to decrease the fatalities and positive cases.
Cuba and Vietnam are two developing countries that have moved rapidly to deal with the emerging threat. Despite the embargo and restrictions by the United States and limited resources, Cuba’s handling of the pandemic could be a role model for others.
With a smaller economy than Bangladesh, southeast Asia’s Vietnam is also earning its credibility to restart their economy after reportedly eradicating COVID-19 from the country even though it shares its crucial border with China.
At the end of May 2020, when this essay was being written, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam with 95.5 million inhabitants, has registered only 327 infections and zero deaths, according to data provided by Johns Hopkins University.
Even the mainstream, right-wing British magazine, The Economist, could not overlook the great success in battling against Covid-19 by Communist states, such as the Indian Kerala and Vietnam:
…With 95m people, Vietnam is a much bigger place. In dealing with covid-19, however, it has followed a strikingly similar script, with an even more striking outcome. Like Kerala it was exposed to the virus early, and saw a surge of infections in March. Active cases also peaked early, however, and have since tumbled to a mere 39. Uniquely among countries of even remotely similar size, and in contrast to such better known Covid success stories as Taiwan and New Zealand, it has not yet suffered a single confirmed fatality. The Philippines, a nearby country of roughly the same population and wealth, has suffered more than 10,000 infections and 650 deaths.
Like Kerala, Vietnam has recently battled deadly epidemics, during the global outbreaks of Sars in 2003 and of swine flu in 2009. Vietnam and Kerala both benefit from a long legacy of investment in public health and particularly in primary care, with strong, centralised management, an institutional reach from city wards to remote villages and an abundance of skilled personnel. Not coincidentally, communism has been a strong influence, as the unchallenged state ideology of Vietnam and as a brand touted by the leftist parties that have dominated Kerala since the 1950s.
Some analyses, including those based in the West, go as far as to claim that Vietnam has already bypassed many countries in the region, including those which are, at least on the paper, much wealthier.
DW (Deutsche Welle), for instance reported on 22. May, 2020:
Adam McCarty, the chief economist of research and consultancy firm Mekong Economics, expects that Vietnam will widely benefit from how it has handled COVID-19. “Maybe this is a turning point where Vietnam leaves the group of countries as Cambodia and the Philippines and joins more sophisticated countries as Thailand and South Korea, even though Vietnam doesn’t have a similar GDP yet,” McCarty told DW from Hanoi…
With the rest of the world still suffering from COVID-19, exports are really going to get hurt,” McCarty said. The economist stressed that things cannot just go back to how they were. And even though domestic consumption is likely to increase in the months to come, a 5% growth figure for 2020 may be too ambitious. “It’s probably more like 3%, but that’s still good in these circumstances. It still means Vietnam is a winner.
I periodically return to Vietnam. One striking thing I keep noticing is that the country has no slums. Extreme misery is so common in brutal capitalist Indonesia, the Philippines, but also in Cambodia and Thailand. There is no misery in the Vietnamese cities, towns and countryside. That itself is an enormous success.
Communist planning means that most of the natural and medical disasters are well prevented. When I used to live in Hanoi, the vast and densely populated areas between the Red River and the city used to get flooded, annually. But gradually, the neighborhood got relocated, and green areas reintroduced, stopping the water from reaching the city.
Step by logical step, Vietnam has been implementing changes designed to improve the lives of the citizens.
The mass media in the West and in the region writes very little about this ‘Vietnamese miracle’, for obvious reasons.
With tremendous sacrifice, Vietnamese citizens defeated the French colonizers, and then the U.S. occupiers. Millions of people vanished, but a new, confident and powerful nation was born. It literally rose from ashes. It constructed its own, “Vietnamese Model”. Now, it is showing the way to those much weaker and less determined countries of Southeast Asia; those that are still sacrificing their own citizens, by being obedient to the diktat of North America and Europe.
Hanoi
From one of the poorest Asian countries, Vietnam has become one of the strongest, determined and optimistic.
• First published by NEO – New Eastern Outlook (a journal of the Russian Academy of Sciences)
• All photos by Andre Vltchek
.................................
KIM IL SUNG
Answers to the Questions
Raised by the Iraqi Journalists' Delegation
Pyongyang, 1971
Date : 1971
Transcription/Source : Booklet published by FLPH, Pyongyang, 1971
HTML Markup : Salil Sen for MIA, 2008
Public Domain : Marxists Internet Archive (2008). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit "Marxists Internet Archive" as your source.
QUESTION:We express our admiration and wonder at the experiences gained by the Workers' Party of Korea under your wise leadership.
Would you please tell us what the most important experience of the fighting people of Korea is and what they have contributed to enriching the treasure of mankind in the struggle for socialism?
ANSWER : First of all, I would like to express thanks to you for your high appreciation of our experiences.
As you know, our country was a colonial, semi-feudal society in the past. Our people took over a backward economy and culture from the old society, and that was totally destroyed in the three-year war started by the U.S. imperialists. And we had to build a new society under the conditions where the country is bisected into the north and the south and we stand directly opposed to the U.S. imperialist aggressors. .
Though they met with many difficulties and ordeals in the course of their advance, the Korean people, always deeply convinced of the justness of their cause, unfolded an unyielding struggle and thus put an end to age-old backwardness and poverty and built a new, good socialist society in a brief time. Today, an advanced socialist system, under which all people work and live a happy life helping each other, has been established in our country where exploitation and oppression once prevailed, and our country has turned into a socialist industrial state with a modern industry and a developed agriculture. .
Our people owe all their victories and achievements in the socialist revolution and socialist construction to the wise leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea. .
The most important thing in the guidance by the Workers' Party of Korea of our people's revolutionary struggle and construction work is that it has thoroughly established Juche. .
We have always held fast to the principle of settling all problems of revolution and construction independently, in keeping with the actual conditions of our country and in reliance mainly on our own strength. We have creatively applied the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism and experiences of other countries to suit our country's historical conditions and national peculiarities, and have solved our problems on our own responsibility under all circumstances, opposing the spirit of reliance on others and displaying the spirit of self-reliance. The word Juche widely known to the world is a term expressing such a creative and independent principle and position adhered to by our Party in conducting revolutionary struggle and constructive work. .
Life has confirmed the correctness of the Juche idea to the full.
Through a struggle for establishing Juche in ideology we have brought about the complete spiritual emancipation of our people from the shackles of flunkeyism towards great powers, dogmatism and other old ideas which had long been corroding their consciousness of national independence. The tendency of making light of their own things thoughtlessly and swallowing foreign things whole has disappeared from among our people, their national pride and consciousness of independence have risen and the trait of relying on their own efforts has been given fuller scope. .
While establishing Juche in ideology, our Party has thoroughly embodied the Juche idea in all fields of revolution and construction. .
Our Party's line of independence is the embodiment of the Juche idea in the political field.
Our Party has opposed the tendency of clinging only to the existing formulas of Marxism-Leninism or swallowing whole the experiences of other countries in shaping the lines and policies of revolution and construction and used its brains and formulated the original lines and policies conforming to our specific conditions, and carried them through by organizing and mobilizing the masses of the people. In the question of the country's reunification, too, we hold fast to the independent position that it must be settled by the efforts of our people themselves without the interference of any outside forces under the condition that the aggressive army of U.S. imperialism is withdrawn from south Korea. .
Also in the sphere of external activity, our Party has steadfastly maintained independence. We have developed the relations of friendship and cooperation with other countries, big or small, on the principles of complete equality and mutual respect, and have also carried on the anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. struggle and the struggle against opportunism of all hues in conformity with the actual conditions of our country, basing ourselves strictly on our own judgment and faith. .
Our Party's line of building an independent national economy is the embodiment of the Juche idea in the domain of economic construction. .
We have held fast to the principle of developing our country's economy mainly by our own technique and resources and by the strength of our national cadres and our people, displaying the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance. Such line of building an independent national economy followed by our Party reflects the lofty aspiration of our people after complete national independence and the prosperity of the country. This line has brought about a brilliant victory in the socialist construction of our country.
Today the economy of our country has become an independent economy which is equipped with modern technique and comprehensively developed. As a result of the building of an independent national economy, we have become able to develop the national economy at a steady, high rate and further improve the people's living conditions by our own efforts. Our independent national economy serves as a reliable material basis for guaranteeing the political independence of the country and increasing its defence potential.
By establishing Juche and relying on our own efforts we do not mean on any account building .'Socialism in isolation. We fully recognize that it is necessary for states to supply each other's needs and cooperate with each other, and are striving to expand and develop it. Our position is that mutual cooperation between states should be conducted on the basis of the building of an independent national economy in each country. This alone makes it possible to expand and develop economic cooperation between states on the principles of complete equality and mutual benefit.
We have held fast to the line of self-defence in the field of the nation's defence upbuilding. As a result of the thorough implementation of the self-defensive military line of the Party, our country has today come to possess its own defence potential strong enough to crush any aggressors and enemies.
As seen above, all the lines and policies of our Party proceed from the Juche idea and are penetrated with the Juche idea. Juche in ideology, independence in politics, self-sustenance in the economy and self-defence in national defence represent the revolutionary stand consistently adhered to by our Party.
Under the revolutionary banner of the Juche idea, our country has become a developed socialist country which has complete political sovereignty, a powerful independent national economy, strong self-defence potential and a brilliant national culture. As a result of the establishment of Juche and] reliance on our own efforts, we have also become able to conduct cooperation with other countries on the principle of complete equality and make a better contribution to the cause of the international revolution.
In the guidance of revolution and construction, our Party has actively striven to carry through the revolutionary mass line, while establishing Juche.
Socialism can be built only by the voluntary and creative labour of millions of the masses of the people. Our Party, therefore, found the basic guarantee for the promotion of socialist construction in bringing the revolutionary zeal and creative activity of the masses of the people into the fullest play.
In our country, all sectors of revolutionary struggle and construction work have been conducted as an all-mass movement, all-people movement. We have been able to carry out successfully all the difficult and huge tasks of revolution and construction by relying on a high degree of revolutionary zeal and creative activity of the people. An important key to the rapid progress of our socialist construction lies precisely in the fact that we have solved all problems by the revolutionary method of relying on the masses and rousing the broad masses to action.
When we met with a grave difficulty and trial in socialist construction, we, placing faith in the masses of the people, went into the midst of the masses and consulted them directly and earnestly about ways for breaking bottlenecks and effecting innovations. In this course, the working masses grasped the Party's intention and launched into a collective innovation movement to carry through the Party's lines and policies, and it developed into the well-known Chollima movement in our country.
The Chollima movement is a mass innovation movement of our people for stepping up socialist construction to the maximum. The Chollima movement is the most brilliant embodiment of our Party's mass line in socialist construction, and through this very movement all the wisdom, enthusiasm and creative energy of our people have been brought into full play. With the wide spread of the Chollima movement, innovations have taken place in all spheres of our economy, culture, ideology and morality and resplendent achievements have been made in the socialist construction of our country.
All our victories are the great victories of the Juche idea of our Party and, at the same time, the brilliant victories of its revolutionary mass line.
Our experience shows that when Juche is firmly established in ideology and is thoroughly embodied in all domains of revolution and construction and the creative zeal and talents of the masses of the people are organized and mobilized properly, it is possible, in a country, however backward it was in the past, to build a new, rich and prosperous society in a short time, rout any imperialist aggressors and defend national independence and the dignity of the people and attain the prosperity of the country and the nation.
You have expressed your admiration for our experiences, and we consider it to be an encourage-l ment to our work.
We have already done a great deal of work, but have much to do in the future. We have not yet reunified the country. The U.S. imperialists keep occupying the southern half of our country, maintaining the brutal colonial fascist rule in south Korea.
The greatest national task confronting the Korean people is to drive the U.S. imperialist aggressors out of south Korea, accomplish the national liberation revolution and realize the reunification of the country. In order to accomplish the task, we are striving to build up more solidly the revolutionary base of the northern half of the Republic politically, economically and militarily, increase in every way the revolutionary forces in south Korea and, at the same time, strengthen solidarity with the international revolutionary forces.
QUESTION : The relations between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Iraq were established already long ago. However, it was only after the July 17, 1968 Revolution that the relations took a decisive turn.
What is your appraisal of the successes attained by the Iraqi people in two years after the Revolution and, particularly, the solution of the Kurd national problem on a peaceful and democratic basis and of its influence upon the strengthening of the anti-imperialist people's front?
ANSWER : The Iraqi people attained national independence through their protracted arduous struggle against the domination of foreign imperialism and took the road of new development particularly after the July 17, 1968 Revolution. This was not only a great victory of the Iraqi people but a common victory of the peoples who have risen in the anti-imperialist, national-liberation struggle and a heavy blow to the imperialists and colonialists.
Since the Revolution the Iraqi people, holding aloft the banner of anti-imperialism and independence, have unfolded a devoted struggle to consolidate national independence and build a new, prosperous Iraq and have achieved great successes in a short span of time.
Many difficulties confronted the Iraqi people who set out on the road of struggle for building a new life. The imperialists headed by U.S. imperialism and the Israeli aggressors and their accomplices, the reactionary forces at home, resorted to every underhand scheme to wrest the Iraqi people from the anti-imperialist front.
With no sinister machinations, however, could the imperialists and their lackeys break the fighting spirit of the Iraqi people. The Iraqi people have been developing the national economy and national culture with their creative labour, resolutely frustrating all the subversive plots and activities of the enemy and defending the revolutionary gains vigilantly.
As for the successful solution of the Kurd national problem in Iraq, we congratulate it as I one of the greatest achievements made by the Iraqi I people in bringing about national unity.
Antagonism and discord between nations, as a product of imperialist rule, are advantageous only to the imperialists and simply detrimental to the people.
The peaceful, democratic solution of the Kurd national problem is a telling blow to the imperialists and an important measure which makes it possible to strengthen the anti-imperialist people's front and further intensify the anti-U.S., anti-Israeli struggle in Iraq. It will also consolidate Iraq itself internally and provide favourable conditions for the progressive development of the country.
The Government and people of the Republic of Iraq stand firm in the ranks of struggle against imperialism and colonialism and actively support the Asian, African and Latin-American peoples in their struggle for freedom and liberation.
Such a righteous struggle of the Iraqi people contributes to the anti-imperialist revolutionary cause of the world people.
QUESTION : The aggressive manoeuvres of U.S. imperialism against the Indo-Chinese peoples have been further intensified through its military intervention in Cambodia.
What do you think of the consequences caused by a new aggression the United States committed in this inflamed region?
ANSWER : As is well known, the aggression of the U.S. imperialists against Cambodia is a link in the chains of their premeditated scheme to extend the war to even broader areas of Indo-China and Asia. By perpetrating an armed invasion against Cambodia, the U.S. imperialists have embarked upon the road of openly staging the criminal war of aggression not only in Viet Nam and Laos but also in the whole area of Indo-China.
Such war expansion policy of the U.S. imperialists has rendered the strained situation of the Indo-Chinese Peninsula still more acute and is gravely menacing peace in Asia and the world as a whole.
However, the expansion of the aggressive war by the U.S. imperialists in Indo-China places them in an ever more difficult position and hastens the defeat of the aggressors. The U.S. imperialists have stretched out their crooked hands of aggression to the whole area of Indo-China, thereby running up against the indignant denunciation and resistance on the part of the entire Indo-Chinese peoples and the peace-loving peoples throughout the world. The new aggression of U.S. imperialism against Indo-China bands all the peoples of Indo-China in a single common front against U.S. imperialism and draws more and more peoples into the anti-U.S. joint struggle.
Now the Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian peoples, united closely, are fighting courageously against the U.S. imperialist aggressors, the common enemy. They are inflicting serious political and military reverses in succession upon the aggressors and driving the U.S. imperialists into an inextricable quandary. Contrary to the calculation of the U.S. imperialists, the whole land of Indo-China has become a graveyard for the aggressors. With no I frantic manoeuvre can the U.S. imperialists bring the heroic Indo-Chinese peoples to their knees.
The U.S. imperialist aggressors will certainly drink the bitter cup of a crushing defeat consequent upon their expansion of the war in Indo-China. The complete defeat of the U.S. imperialists in Indo-China is inevitable. The militant solidarity of the Indo-Chinese peoples and the peoples of all the fighting countries in Asia is being strengthened day by day in the midst of the joint struggle against U.S. imperialist aggression. With the support of the Asian peoples and the progressive peoples of the whole world, the Indo-Chinese peoples will strike a harder blow at U.S. imperialism and its lackeys and thus will chase out the aggressors, win the liberation and independence of their countries and build their new prospering countries.
The Korean people deem the aggression of U.S. imperialism against the Indo-Chinese peoples an aggression against themselves and regard the struggle of the Indo-Chinese peoples as their own. Our people will fight more resolutely against U.S. imperialism, the common enemy, and will do everything in their power to support and assist the fighting peoples of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia.
QUESTION : There are many points of similarity between the experience in the revolutionary struggle of your people under the leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea and the experience of the Arab nation gained in the struggle for unity, freedom and socialism for more than 20 years now under the leadership of the Arab Baath Socialist Party.
Would you please tell us about the prospects of development of the relations between the two progressive experiences and the influence they will exert upon the world revolutionary movement.
ANSWER : The Korean people value the experience accumulated by the Iraqi people in the struggle against imperialism and the Israeli aggressors and for unity, freedom and socialism under the leadership of the Arab Baath Socialist Party.
The Korean and Iraqi peoples are close comrades-in-arms fighting against the common enemy. The peoples of our two countries understand each other's position well and sympathize with each other and closely cooperate with each other on the principle of genuine equality and mutual benefit, as they were both humiliated and oppressed in the past.
Today the relations of friendship and cooperation between our people and the Iraqi people, between the Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Government of the Re-public of Iraq are being steadily expanded and developed and the ties between our Party and the Arab Baath Socialist Party are also being further strengthened. The parties and the peoples of our two countries make frequent mutual visits and exchange lots of useful experiences as well. This is a very good thing.
Such reciprocal support and encouragement and exchange of experiences between us are greatly helpful to deepening our mutual understanding and strengthening our unity and enable us to learn much from each other.
We feel satisfaction over the development of the relations between the Korean and Arab peoples, and in the future, too, we will strive to further strengthen and develop such unity and relations of cooperation. If we make concerted efforts, such unity and cooperation will strengthen and develop still further and display even greater vitality from day to day in all spheres of politics, economy and culture.
The friendship and solidarity of the Korean and Arab peoples is a part of the great unity of the Asian and African peoples against imperialism and colonialism. To strengthen the unity and cooperation between our two countries not only conforms to the interests of the peoples of our two countries but also greatly contributes to the unity of the progressive peoples of the whole world and to their common cause.
QUESTION :The armed revolution in our Arab fatherland is aimed at putting an end to the concessions of imperialism in this area and to the existence of Israel, a military base of U.S. imperialism.
What support and encouragement could you, who waged a similar struggle and gained a wealth of experience in the armed struggle of the people against imperialist aggression, give to the revolution of the Arab people?
ANSWER : The Arab people are vigorously fighting in arms against U.S. imperialism and the Israeli aggressors. It is quite natural that the gallant Arab people resist the armed aggressors with arms. As long as the imperialists plunder and oppress the people by violence, the oppressed peoples can win freedom and independence and regain their deprived rights only when they fight with arms in their hands against the aggressors. This is a plain truth of the anti-imperialist liberation struggle proved by history.
The armed struggle of the Arab people against U.S. imperialism and the Israeli aggressors is a just struggle to defend national independence and dignity, restore the occupied Arab territories and accomplish the cause of liberation of the Palestinian people. This revolutionary struggle of the Arab people enlists the active support and encouragement of the progressive peoples the world over.
Our people's solidarity with and support and encouragement to the Arab people's revolutionary struggle are constant. The Korean people will continue to resolutely support the valiant struggle of the Palestinian people for liberating their fatherland and the struggle of the entire Arab people against Zionism and imperialist aggression and will always remain a close comrade-in-arms of the Arab people in the struggle against the common enemy. Our people will render active support and encouragement to the righteous struggle of the Arab people at all times.
Availing myself of this opportunity, I sincerely wish the Arab people greater successes in their just struggle against U.S. imperialism and the Israeli aggressors.
..................................
Guy Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, Chapter 7:
With the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a fabulous distance, among its unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning. For every imbecile who has advanced spectacularly, there are only the mediatics who can respond with a few respectful rectifications or remonstrations, and they are miserly, for besides their extreme ignorance, their personal and professional solidarity with the spectacle’s general authority and the society it expresses, makes it their duty, and their pleasure, never to diverge from that authority whose majesty must not be damaged. It must not be forgotten that all mediatics, through wages and other rewards and recompenses, has a master, and sometimes to several; and that every one of them knows he is dispensable.
All experts are mediatics-Statists and only in that way are they recognized as experts. Every expert follows his master, because all former possibilities for independence have been almost been reduced to nil by present society’s conditions of organization. The most useful expert, of course, is the one who lies. Those who need experts are, for different reasons, falsifiers and ignoramuses. Whenever individuals lose the capacity to see things for themselves, the expert is there to offer a formal reassurance. Once there were experts in Etruscan art, and competent ones, for Etruscan art was not for sale. But a period which, for example, finds it profitable to fake by chemical means various famous wines, can only sell them if it has created wine experts able to con connoisseurs into admiring their new, more recognizable flavors.[7] Cervantes remarks that “under a poor cloak you often find a good drinker.”[8] Someone who knows his wine may often understand nothing about the rules of the nuclear industry, but spectacular domination calculates that if one expert can make a fool of him with nuclear industry, another can easily do the same with wine. And it is well known, for example, that experts in mediatic meteorology, forecasting temperature or rainfall for the next forty-eight hours, are severely limited in what they say by the obligation to maintain certain economic, touristic and regional balances, when so many people make so many journeys on so many roads, between so many equally desolate places; thus they can only try to make their names as entertainers.
One aspect of the disappearance of all objective historical knowledge manifests itself concerning any personal reputation, which has become malleable and correctable at will by those who control all information, those who collect it and also those — an entirely different matter — who diffuse it. Their license to falsify is thus unlimited. Historical evidence, of which, in the spectacle, one does not want to know, is no longer evidence. When the only fame is that bestowed as a favor by the grace of a spectacular Court, disgrace may instantaneously follow. An anti-spectacular notoriety is becoming something extremely rare. I myself am one of the last people to possess one, having never had any other. But it has also become extraordinarily suspect. Society has officially declared itself to be spectacular. To be known outside spectacular relations is already to be known as an enemy of society.
It is permitted to change a person’s whole past, radically modify it, recreate it in the manner of the Moscow trials — and without even having recourse to the clumsiness of a trial. One can kill at less cost.[9] Those who govern the integrated spectacular, or their friends, surely have no lack of false witnesses, though they may be unskilled — but what capacity to detect this clumsiness can remain among the spectators who will be witnesses to the exploits of the false witnesses? — or false documents, which are always highly effective. Thus it is no longer possible to believe anything about anyone that you have not learned for yourself, directly. But in fact false accusations are rarely necessary. Once one controls the mechanism that operates the only form of social verification to be fully and universally recognized, one can say what one likes. The movement of the spectacular demonstration proves itself simply by going round in circles: by coming back to the start, by repetition, by constant reaffirmation on the unique terrain where anything can be publicly affirmed, and be made believed, precisely because that is the only thing to which everyone is witness. Spectacular authority can similarly deny whatever it likes, once, or three times over, and say that it will no longer speak of it and speak of something else instead, knowing full well there is no danger of any other riposte, on its own terrain or any other.
For the agora, the general community, no longer exists, nor even communities restricted to intermediary bodies or to autonomous institutions, to salons or cafes, or to workers in a single company; no place where people can discuss the realities which concern them, because they can never lastingly free themselves from the crushing presence of mediatic discourse and of the various forces organized to relay it. Nothing remains of the guaranteed relatively independent judgment of those who once made up the world of learning; of those, for example, who used to base their pride on their ability to verify, to come close to what one called an impartial history of facts, or at least to believe that such a history deserved to be known. There is no longer even any incontestable bibliographical truth, and the computerized catalogues of national libraries are well-equipped to better suppress the traces. It is disorienting to consider what it meant to be a judge, a doctor or a historian not so long ago, and to recall the imperative obligations they often recognized, within the limits of their competence: men resemble their times more than their fathers.[10]
When the spectacle stops talking about something for three days, it is as if it did not exist. For it has then gone on to talk about something else, and it is that which henceforth, in short, exists. The practical consequences, as we see, are enormous.
We believe we know that in Greece, history and democracy appeared at the same time. We can prove that their disappearances have also been simultaneous.
To this list of the triumphs of power we should, however, add one result which has proved negative for it: a State, in which one has durably installed a great deficit of historical knowledge so as to manage it, can no longer be governed strategically.
................................
This is the model of the man who parasites and vegetates in the maximum of possible comfort. This man wants to live as long as possible, never be sick, never physically suffer, never express ideas; he desires to chew what’s already been chewed, to repeat what is said to him, to be happy when the daily routine unfolds without major upsets. Against the repetitive sheep, stands the member of the ORDER, free of any type of obligation regarding obsolete worldviews, free to no longer repeat conformist slogans, free from the duty of having to patronize repetitive people, to adopt their forms of life and their ideas.
Eberhard Koebel, nicknamed “Tusk”
.........................................
The concept of humanity is an especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in its ethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism. Here one is reminded of a somewhat modified expression of Proudhon’s: whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat. To confiscate the word humanity, to invoke and monopolise such a term probably has certain incalculable effects, such as denying the enemy the quality of being human and declaring him to be an outlaw of humanity; and a war can thereby be driven to the most extreme inhumanity.
- Carl Schmit
.......................................
Che Guevara and the Conservative Revolution - Maxim Medovarov
By: Zero Schizo Posted on August 23, 2020
By Maxim Medovarov, Russian Political Theorist
Translated by Zero Schizo
On June the 14th we celebrate the 90th anniversary of the birth of Ernesto Che Guevara. Internet reacted in a surprisingly strange manner: the majority posted something on his memory, and his enemies were reduced to two categories: liberals and neo-Nazis, who, as usual, are put in such a hysteria by the mere mention of the comandante.
However, let’s go deep into this: where is Che Guevara placed in the framework of left and right? Isn’t this figure significative in the aspect of his synthesis, in the aspect of the Conservative Revolution? In the last years many reports have been published about both the Spanish caudillo Franco and the Argentinian leader Peron had connections with Che and Fidel. From a banal ideological point of view this should had been unthinkable, but in practice it was. What is the key? What is the economic vector of the Conservative Revolution, to which Che Guevara also contributed to?
The answer can be found in Immanuel Wallerstein: it is about the opposition to the commercialization of lands and against the proletarianization of work, these two realities of the capitalist world-system. Any political force which undermines these two realities opens the door to liberation. And such was during the time of Arbenz in Guatemala, during his regime Che Guevara started his political career, when Arbenz nationalized the American Multinational Fruit Company.
Are the real movements of the left capable of fighting the commercialization of lands and the proletarianization of work? No. They themselves are divorced from the land, they themselves are globalists, they only welcome the free movement of hordes of migrants from one country to another, meanwhile, inside of the paradigm of the Conservative Revolution, there should be attempts to unite the farmers and the workforce of the land. In this sense, what Che Guevara did, and what Sub-comandante Marcos did later, is a profoundly conservative act.
The real revolution, the liberal revolution to promote the proletarianization of work and the commercialization of lands, is being carried out in modern times by the FMI. In consequence, all uprisings against this, whether it be bottom-up or, as in Malaysia under Mahathir Mohammad, top-down, are essentially counter-revolutionary or, more precisely, “the opposition to the revolution”, according to De Maistre. And this is another lesson from Che Guevara, aristocrat and Irish-Spaniard noble by birth (from what he was always proud of and what the left is uncapable to understand), defender of his people by vocation.
This lesson is important, but it is not the last one. The last one is probably his words that the life of a person, the life of a people is more valuable than any amount of money. This is why the financers of the world hate him so much. This commandment is not fulfilled by the majority of the rulers of the modern world, who for the sake of a budget surplus, are willing to sacrifice even the life* of their own people, without mentioning that of strangers. But sometimes there are people who break into this world, people who turn the tables of the moneylenders and remind us that there is another dimension, another reality and other ethics.
Hasta siempre, Comandante!
...........................................
Trivia about North Korea.
A famous Russian fan of North Korea.
′′ Found a small country, but proud and strong ".
That's what Mariana Naumova said, a Russian athlete 15-time power lifting champion.
One day they wrote to him on a social network: ′′ Mariana, if you want to live like you were in the Soviet Union, travel to North Korea and you'll see how horrible it is."
At that moment, the girl realized that everything she knew about the country was counted by others and with a critical position towards the North Korean government.
Mariana wrote a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in which she explained that she is a champion and wanted to visit the country.
Two weeks later, he received a response and travelled to North Korea, where he visited schools, the palace of pioneers, different children's and sports institutions.
Mariana joined the Communist Party in Russia.
Source: research on Sputniknews. (2017).
............................................
“Man evolved in cooperating groups united by common cultural and genetic ties, and it is only in such a setting that the individual can feel truly free and truly protected. Men cannot live happily alone and without values or any sense of identity; such a situation leads to nihilism, drug abuse, criminality, and worse. With the spread of purely egotistic goals at the expense of the altruistic regard for family and nation, the individual begins to talk of his rights rather than his duties, for he no longer feels any sense of destiny, of belonging to and being part of a greater and more enduring entity. He no longer rejoices in the secure belief that he shares in a heritage which it is part of his common duty to protect - he no longer feels that he has anything in common with those around him. In short, he feels lonely and oppressed. Because all values have become strictly personal, everything is now equal to everything; e.g. nothing equals nothing.”
The idea of European sovereignty seems chimeric today: in the case of crisis, the states are left to themselves, as we saw with the health crisis. Is European sovereignty necessarily unattainable?
Souverainistes often affirm that the nation is the only framework in which sovereignty is imaginable. Basically, they think, like Maurras, that the nation is the “largest communitarian circle, in the temporal realm, that is complete and solid” and that political sovereignty can only be exercised on this scale. They add, in general, that a political Europe is impossible because there is no European people, forgetting that there wasn't a French people either when the French state began to exist (and in 1789, the majority of French people didn't speak French). I do not share this opinion. I think, with time, that a politically unified Europe is perfectly possible, and that it is especially necessary. I understand very well, in the present situation, that we're falling back on national sovereignties (or what remains of them), but I'm convinced that it can only be a last resort. In a multipolar world, the future belongs to large civilizational and continental ensembles. The “Europe of nations” is a nice phrase, but it is synonymous with a powerless Europe, because governments are incapable of agreeing on common policies. In the short term, the European Union, the veritable anti-Europe must disappear – as it is not (or no longer) reformable – because it wants to make Europe a market when it must become an autonomous power, and a crucible of culture and civilization at the same time.
................................................
From an interview with Michel Onfray in Le Figaro, July 31:
A man of the left, you have readers and supporters on the right and even on the right of the right, what would be your link to the right: Joseph de Maistre, Tocqueville, Aron?
Proudhon ... As his socialism is not displeasing to the right because it is pragmatic, empirical, and it refused ideology. Proudhon is for private property, the freedom to start a business, for individual initiative and responsibility, but also for mutualism, cooperation, profit sharing, self management. Likewise, he didn’t subscribe to the ideology of progress and even less to its religion, progressivism. He is a conservative in what must be conserved and a revolutionary for what could be surpassed. A conservative without revolution and a revolutionary without conservatism both embody two modes of barbarism. Proudhon is both conservative and revolutionary.
............................................
Article 13 of the Belarusian Constitution.
Property may be the ownership of the state or private.
The State shall grant equal rights to all to conduct economic and other activities, other than those prohibited by law, and guarantee equal protection and equal conditions for the development of all forms of ownership.
The State shall promote the development of co-operation.
The State shall guarantee to every one equal opportunities for free utilisation of abilities and assets for business and other types of economic activities which are not banned by the law.
The State shall regulate economic activities on behalf of the individual and society, and shall ensure the direction and co-ordination of state and private economic activity for social purposes.
The mineral wealth, waters and forests are the sole and exclusive property of the State. The land for agricultural use is the property of the State.
The law may specify facilities that may be the property of the State alone, or specify the special terms for their transition to private ownership, or grant the State an exclusive right to conduct certain types of activity.
The State shall guarantee the workers the right to participate in the management of enterprises, organisations and establishments to enhance their efficiency and improve social and economic living standards.
......................................................
′′ The enemy is a reality that makes people slave to selfishness. The enemy is a reality that promotes competition between people and the accumulation of material goods. The enemy is a reality that destroys the ecosystem and promotes the rich bourgeois to the detriment of the community. The enemy is a reality that destroys healthcare, school, research and training.
We therefore need more democracy. Which requires more intelligence, less ignorance, less selfishness. More sense of community, morality (without moralism) and duty ".
Referendum on cutting parliamentarians, a false problem. What is needed is an authentic democracy.
......................................................
"There was a whole universe Napoleon and many other contemporary Europeans deeply distrusted: the ethos of what they perceived as modern, globalised British capitalism. Unfettered by any ‘social contract’ between rich and poor; all connections with the land and a traditional way of life severed in the interests of the pursuit of Mammon; anarchic deregulation of every aspect of economic life; an economy locked into dangerous cycles of ‘boom-and-bust’; and all backed by a huge, aggressive and utterly ruthless navy – which had razed neutral Copenhagen to the ground with the help of its lethal Congreve rockets – a sign of how the English warped their technological superiority in the cause of evil."
..............................................................
Where We Stand
Ernst Niekisch
A warning against Widerstand has been directed at workers – and how might we have expected anything else? – suggesting that it fosters “nationalistic obscurantism” in the consciousness of the working class with the aim of winning that class over to the socially reactionary aims of the bourgeoisie. Reference has been made to certain terminological similarities as if they offered proof of such assertions; we have made use, it was said, of some expressions that one also hears from social reactionaries. Such terminological similarities might in fact be present; it cannot be helped that such persons also speak of vital national necessities for whom it is more a matter of the pocketbook than a serious consideration of these necessities.
Naturally we presume that those who have “identified” these terminological similarities seek intentionally to misunderstand us. For it truly does not take much to grasp the essential tendencies that inform our position. We are wholly rooted in the vital feelings and sentiments of the working people of Germany; their needs and their instincts are our own. We do not want to lead them astray, do not want to betray them; we are flesh of their flesh, blood of their blood; our thoughts, feelings, and aspirations issue exclusively from the ground of their being and the current circumstances of their fate. What moved us most profoundly was this: that the burden of the tributes to which Germany has been subjected weigh most heavily on the working people; that it is the living conditions of precisely the German worker which have been called into question by the collapse of German status in the world. Here the challenges of the German nation coincide with the law of self-preservation of the working class. That to be sure can be truly understood only by those who are more than mere literary figures. So many of these literary sorts are busy insinuating to workers what they are supposed to think, such that they have already diverted workers from many a good course of action.
We speak justifiably of the proletarian situation of Germany: the nation is oppressed and dependent; it slaves for others and lives hand-to-mouth. That signifies the historical moment in which the worker, the personification of a proletarian situation as such, has a national mission to fulfill: he turns against the ultimate causes of his social oppression, the victorious states of the Treaty of Versailles, he also rises up against the chains by which the nation is shackled. Is it not strange that social-democracy, which has vainly set itself the goal of “liberating the working class,” continually conceals from the worker the social effects of the policy of acceding to the treaty demands? He is not supposed to know of them. How is that to be explained? Social-democracy is vaguely aware that the moment the working class becomes conscious of the equivalence between its social struggle for liberation and the national struggle for liberation, it will become such an elemental, vehement, and vitally progressive force that no little party secretary will be capable of controlling it and no rootless literary type of interpreting it. Therefore it is silent on the question of the nation’s task! Therefore if resistance to the yoke of social oppression must necessarily take on a national coloration, better that there be no resistance at all, better that the workers patiently resign themselves to the social yoke.
We will have no part in lulling the worker to sleep – that is what characterizes us. This, however, does not convict us of a sin against the worker’s livelihood. It is his freedom that we want, even if Mr. Briand and Mr. Chamberlain turn up their noses. To us, contrary to many social-democratic writers, the freedom of the German worker is more important than the welfare of Briand and Chamberlain. To chase after their welfare – that is truly not the substance of socialism.1
That is why we are very far from being national-socialists in the usual sense of the term. What distinguishes us above all from the latter is this: they are, similar to social-democracy, driven almost exclusively by the point of view of domestic politics. They think too much of “hanging the criminals of November”; their intentions are too much dominated by hate, revenge, retaliation. Those are not the means by which one pulls a people together in a struggle for liberation. We are less destructive and negative. We affirm everything that increases the political power of the German people; we are concerned solely with the question of how it can be raised to its highest level. Those who want to hang the “November criminals” partout, will afterward probably have to let the French go free; they will scarcely have sufficient force in reserve to inflict upon the latter the justice they deserve.
- Ernst Niekisch, First published in Widerstand, vol. 2, no.1, 1926
.................................................................
When the capitalist spends his time doing business, and nothing besides business, his soul necessarily ends up shriveling. Everything around him also shrivels, all life withers, all values disappear. […] The fatherland becomes a foreign territory for the entrepreneur, a territory of exile. Nature, art, literature, the state, friends, all disappear into a mysterious oblivion for him; he no longer has the “time” to concern himself with all that. […]
Behold he descends into the deepest solitude and values no longer exist for him. But he wants to live, as he's endowed with a strong vitality. So he sees himself obligated to create new values, and he must draw them from business. If he doesn't want to see the light escape him, if he doesn't want to deprive himself of the last reason to live, he must persuade himself that his activity as such is full of meaning and value. And something peculiar happens: from the dry sand of his daily occupations, the parched man suddenly sees new springs surge; having learned to content himself with fear, he begins to find a particular charm in the accumulation of profits as such, in the continuous improvement and expansion of his business as such.
- Werner Sombart, "Le Bourgeois : Contribution à l’histoire morale et intellectuelle de l’homme économique moderne", Kontre-Kulture, 2020, p.508-509 et 509
..................................
"He [the statesman] may believe in humanity if he wishes in his private affairs. Then, if he errs, the damage is his. But he may not risk the nation on this belief, for it is not right that the nation, and with it perhaps the most precious possessions which the people in a thousand years of struggle have acquired, will pass over into misery, just so that it can be said of him: 'he believed in human beings'."
~ J. G. Fichte
......................................
Those of you planning hear people 'oh but it is terrible , you have a guide with you all the time ' .
Well of course this is not strictly 100 per cent true , the guide is not actually with you literally all the time but yes they will be around for a lot to time ensuring that your visit is as smooth as possible .
It is actually commonsense to have a guide especially in a country where few signs are in English and most people do not speak English . Having a guide can prevent or iron out misunderstandings .
In fact once in 1989 the DPRK did experiment with the idea of unsupervised visits to the country . This was at the 13th Festival of Youth and Students . One character from a country we will not name , took himself off to the countryside and went sunbathing in a rice paddy wearing only very skimpy shorts . He was found asleep by some farmers who were both shocked and concerned . So it is in the interests of the local population that there is supervision of visitors .It is also an exercise of sovereignty .
I can also remember two incidents with a 1992 trip which centred on a young Danish man .All the time he tried to slip away . When we were at Mt Myohyang his guide explained to him that when you get to the top of Mt Myohyang there are 4 different paths down , if you taken the wrong one you could end in another county 10 kilometres from here . When we were in Kaesong the Danish young man went off his own and came back really pleases with himself . He showed the guide a big bottle of a dark brown liquid . "Look I bought this big bottle of alcohol at a dirt cheap giveaway price !" to which the guide replied ' You have actually bought a bottle of soy sauce " ! . The moral of this story is always stick with your guide !
I have always found our DPRK guides very helpful and could not manage with them .
- KFA UK
..........................................................................
.................................................................
“Power, instrument of the collective force, created in society to serve as mediator between capital and labor, has become inescapably enchained to capital and directed against the proletariat. No political reform can resolve this contradiction, since, according to the avowal of politicians themselves, such a reform could only end by giving more energy and expansion to power, and until it had overthrown the hierarchy and dissolved society, power would not be able to attack the prerogatives of monopoly. The problem consists, then, for the working classes, not in capturing, but in defeating both power and monopoly, which would mean to make rise from the bowels of the people, from the depths of labor, a power greater, an action more powerful which would envelop capital and the State and subjugate them.”
- Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary.
.......................................................
Ironic that so many who claim to be on the left are happily going along with a fascist agenda been rolled out over a pandemic that’s not even a pandemic, its just relentless FEAR mongering coupled with cooked up figures.
Children are the most targeted and effected by this, with such dystopia imposed on them in schools, (they have already been scared shitless with the XR death cult bull) the State is taking control of your children, this is what happened in Nazi Germany.
“Our” governments are controlled by big Corporations, big Pharma, psychopathic Billionaires etc, this IS the definition of fascism…and all these Liberal Numptons who claim to be anti fascist are embracing a fascist agenda!!! They should be hanging their heads in shame!
- Tim Everett
...................................................................
