One of the most prominent intellectuals in the contemporary world was named to the list of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” in Foreign Policy magazine in 2012. He shares this distinction with the likes of Dick Cheney, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Mossad director Meir Dagan. The theorist’s best idea—according to this well-known publication that is a virtual arm of the U.S. State Department—is that “the big revolution the left is waiting for will never come.”
The following essay is written and published by a columnist at Russia’s main state media outlet, RIA Novosti. The essay provides an overview of the achievements and the lasting legacy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) for today’s Russia and for the world. It is not a comprehensive history of the USSR; that is for historians to continue to write and debate. The essay’s most salient feature is the insight into the thinking of the people of the Russian Federation at this very turbulent turning point in their history.
The essay voices the wholesale loss of positive expectations of the Russian Federation people for the Western imperialist countries as the latter escalate their drive to isolate and weaken their country and its government. Many other such writings are appearing in Russian media. Altogether, they reflect a deepening understanding in Russian society that world imperialism—headed by the United States and including the major powers of Europe and Japan–is very much alive, dangerous, and, quite literally, out to get them. There is a profound upheaval taking place in the political thinking and the aspirations of the many peoples of the Russian Federation.
“The dialectics of history were such that the theoretical victory of Marxism compelled its enemies to disguise themselves as Marxists.” -V.I. Lenin, “The Historical Destiny of the Doctrine of Karl Marx.”
We are very pleased to republish an excellent history of the massive campaign of threats and intimidation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, aka North Korea) by the United States and its puppet government in South Korea since 1953. This document was published in English on one of the official news websites of the DPRK – the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on 4 September 2022.
The DPRK is a Stalinist workers state whose rather austere brand of socialism is entirely conditioned by this continual threat of war from the United States and South Korea. Every attempt by the North Koreans to “open up” their country economically has been met with extreme hostility and renewed threats of war from the United States Government, who can never forgive the DPRK for the profound humiliation that heroic socialist workers state inflicted on the US during the Korean War as it successfully defended itself from one of the most murderous and genocidal attacks ever seen in world history. The increasingly threatening statements from the US Government of “Lesser Evil” Democrat Joe Biden to target and annihilate the North Korean leadership in a nuclear attack is what has led the DPRK to increase its expansion of its nuclear arsenal and to publish a revised statement of its intent to use nuclear weapons if necessary to defend itself and its people from any attack from the USA, South Korea or any other regional puppet regime. We say: the DPRK has every right to possess and to use nuclear weapons to defend itself from an attack launched by US imperialism or its puppets. We agree with the latest statement published by North Korea regarding its revised policy regarding the use of nuclear weapons to deter a war on the Korean peninsula and to utilize those weapons against the US forces in South Korea should they attempt to attack the DPRK. We will be republishing the text of that declaration of the DPRK in a new article as soon as possible.
On this week’s release of “On the Barricades,” host Maria Cernat speaks to the French-American writer, cultural critic, and activist, Gabriel Rockhill. Gabriel completed his graduate studies under the direction of Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray and Alain Badiou, and is now a professor of philosophy at Villanova University. Gabriel’s work in academia led him to a very close understanding of the bourgeois cultural and intellectual apparatus for its fundamental, historical role of bringing leftist thinking in line with the interests of the corporate elites and capitalist order. He wrote an article called “The CIA and the Frankfurt school’s anti-communism,” the content of which is the starting point inspiration for today’s discussion.
The latest US GDP figures for second quarter of 2022 renewed the debate about whether the US economy was in a recession or not. Real GDP contracted in the second quarter of this year by a 0.9% annualised rate (or by 0.2% quarter over quarter). That meant the US economy had contracted for two successive quarters, and so ‘technically’ (by that definition) was in a recession. Real GDP is now up only 1.6% from Q2 2021. And business investment is slowing, up only 3.5% from this time last year, the slowest rate since the end of the COVID slump in 2020.
Republicans will blame gun violence on mental health, psychiatric medications, or violent video games, yet they aren’t willing to support solutions, such as affordable healthcare, affordable prescriptions, or defund the military industrial complex! As for Democrats, all they will offer is banning guns!
Speaking of mental health, and psychiatric medications, Peace Labor May made some good points in her most recent YouTube video (you may have to turn your volume up).
In light of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, and because I’m a glutton for punishment, I’m re-posting a link to my left argument for gun rights from 2017. (One among many. See links at end of article)
Some points covered in the article:
The class concept of the state. It’s not a neutral arbiter to be trusted with a monopoly of armed power. “The concentration of wealth and the concentration of armed power in the hands of a few, are both bad ideas—and the one has everything to do with the other.”
The net effect of eliminating the right of citizens to possess firearms will be to increase the power of the armed capitalist state. Whatever strict gun-control regime is instituted, ruling-class families and institutions will still have all the guns they want.
But what about horrible mass shootings? Recognize that *gun homicides have declined even as gun ownership has increased,*. that mass shootings are a small portion of gun deaths in the US & a lousy index of the social problem of gun violence. But they do grab one’s attention.
Russia’s war on Ukraine both reflects and deepens a global split that should remind us of Karl Marx’s famous remark: “No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.” The United Kingdom already lost its particular social order—its empire—while the United States is now losing its.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
You must be logged in to post a comment.