Hang Thun Hak, 48 year old former radical Socialist Prime Minister of Cambodia was executed by the Khmer Rouge. He'd been in the far left himself and had contacts with the Khmer Rouge, none of which saved him, with execution of left wing radicals actually being common amongst Communist.
The far left Socialist government of Portugal, which swept into power by way of a junior officers revolt brought about by disgust with conscription and colonial wars, nationalized most of the nation's industries and commenced land reform.
Karen Ann Quinlan collapsed after drinking several gin and tonics in addition to having already taken the tranquilizers Valium and Darvon.
She's be the subject of major controversy over the battle to take her off of life support, which occured on May 22, 1976. She lived until June 11, 1985.
Let's be honest. Socialized highways are socialist. EV mandates aren't.
We like highways, so in our view, socialized highways, which benefit us disproportionally, and which stiff railroads and regular motorists for the benefit of the trucking industry, are okay.
There's really no arguing this at all. Under the MAGA view of the economy, states should pay for their own freaking highways, and certainly an industry, like the trucking industry, should not be subsidized.
But we don't see building highways for the trucking industry as bad or socialist, because we like them. And we only saw a requirement to buy EV cars as bad because the Biden Administration believed in climate science and we don't like that as it hurts our wallets, although now that King Donald likes Tesla and Elon, this is getting confusing.
Socialism is when the government does stuff. And it's more socialism the more stuff it does.
Portugal and FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) recognized independence for Mozambique, with it to formally occur on June 25, 1975. The negotiations took place in Zambia.
FRELIMO, a far left wing political party that was formally Communist, has governed the country continually since that time. It has evolved into a democratic socialist party.
Yesterday, I made some observations on Denver, and today I'm doing the same on Labor Day, 2024.
Of course, it's immediately notable that I'm making these the day after Labor Day, which was a day I didn't get off. I worked a full day.
I was the only one in the office.
Labor Day dates back to the mid 1800s as an alternative to the more radical observance that takes place in many countries on May 1. Still, nonetheless, early on, and for a long time, there was a fair amount of radicalism associated with it during that period when American labor organizations were on the rise. The day itself being a widely recognized day off is due to organized strikes on the day that started occurring during the 1930s, to the day as sort of a "last day of summer holiday" is fairly new.
Even now, when people think of it, they often think of the day in terms of the sort of burly industrial workers illustrated by Leyendecker and Rockwell in the 20s through the 40s. Otherwise, they sort of blandly associate it with celebrating work in general, which gets to the nature of work in general, something we sort of touched on yesterday with this entry;
Early on, Labor Day was something that acknowledged a sort of worthy heavy work. There are, in spite of what people may think, plenty of Americans that still are engaged in that sort of employment, although its s shadow of the number that once did. Wyoming has a lot of people who do, because of the extractive industries, which are in trouble. Ironically, therefore, its notable that Wyoming is an epicenter of anti union feelings, when generally those engaged in heavy labor are pro union. There's no good explanation for that.
When Labor Day became a big deal it pitted organized labor against capital, with it being acknowledged by both sides that if things went too far one way or another, it would likely result in a massive labor reaction that would veer towards socialism, or worse, communism. Real communism has never been a society wide strong movement in the United States, in spite of the current stupid commentary by those on the political far right side of the aisle accusing anyone they don't like, and any program they don't like, of being communistic. But radical economics did hae influence inside of unions, and communists were a factor in some of them, which was well known. As nobody really wanted what that might mean, compromise gave us the post war economic world of the 50s and 60s, which were sort of a golden age for American economics.
One of the unfortunate byproducts of the Cold War era, however, was the exportation of jobs overseas, which brought us the economic regime we have today, in part. The advance of technology brought us the other part. Today we find the American economy is massively dominated by capital in a way it hasn't been for a century, and its not a good thing at all. The will to do anything about it, or even understand it, seems to be wholly lacking. As a result of that, while an increasing number of Americans slave away at meaningless jobs in cubicles, and the former shopkeeper class now works at Walmart, we have the absolutely bizarre spectacle of two Titans of Capital, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, spewing out populist rhetoric. Populism, of course, always gets co-opted, but the working and middle class falling for rhetoric from the extremely wealthy is not only bizarre, its' downright dumb.
Indeed, in the modern American economy, having your own is increasingly difficult. Entire former occupations that were once local have been totally taken over by large corporations while agriculture has fallen to the rich in terms of land ownership, making entry into either field impossible. Fewer and fewer "my own" occupations exist, and those that do are under siege.
One of those is the law, of course. Lawyers, because of the nature of their work, still tend to own their practices, as to medical professionals of all types. The latter are falling into large corporate entities, however, and the move towards taking down state borders in the practice is causing the consolidation of certain types of practice in the former.
Not that "having your own" in the professions is necessarily a sort of Garden of Eden either, however.
Recently, interestingly, there's been a big movement in which young people are returning to the trades. That strikes me as a good thing, and perhaps the trades are finally getting the due they deserve. Ever since World War Two there's been the concept that absolutely everyone had to achieve white collar employment, which demeaned blue collar employment, and which put a lot of people in occupations and jobs they didn't care for. I suspect the small farm movement reflects that too.
Indeed, on my first day of practicing law as a lawyer over thirty years ago the long time office manager, who must have been having sort of a bad day, made a comment like "you might just end up wishing you had become a farmer". I remember thinking to myself even then that if that had been an option, that's exactly what I would have become. It wasn't, and it never has been for me, in the full time occupation sort of way.
Oh well.
And so we lost the garden to labor in, but we can make things better than they are. And we could do that by taking a much more distributist approach to things. Which seems nowhere near close to happening, a populist uprising notwithstanding.
Just recently the Trumpist have taken up calling Kamala Harris a "Communist".
What horse shit.
Calling right wing politicians "fascists" is an old slander, dating back at least to the 1960s. It's overuse has now lead to the problem that when some of the right are genuinely approaching being fascistic, the slur has lost part of its meaning, compounded by the fact that a lot of the people who use it, even seriously, don't really know what it means.
The US of course fought a fascist power during the Second World War, Italy, and bombed a second arguably fascist power, Romania. Germany, quite frankly, probably doesn't really qualify as fascist during the war, but something else. Vichy France and Francoist Spain had fascist elements, but probably can't really qualify as fascist. That doesn't make any of those powers nifty, but rather it demonstrates the problem of the sloppy use of words.
Since Barack Obama, those on the right have been busy doing it. Obama wasn't a "Marxist", as some on the right like to claim, and Harris isn't a Communist. But now some followers on the Trumpist right seriously believe that Harris is really a Communist.
That is in part because they have no idea what Communism is.
I hear this all the time. The government will propose regulating something, for example, and people will decry that as "Communist". It isn't. It is't Socialism either. Simply favoring government action or espousing "progressive" views isn't either of those things.
And regarding Socialism, there's big elements of Socialism that many people on the right are perfectly fine with. Like state funded highways? Well, you are dirty Socialist, maybe a Communist even.
It's interesting how the far right opposes the government doing stuff, except when it benefits them personally.
No place exhibits this more than Wyoming. We're really fine with the government paying for stuff we used. Highways? The Feds should fund them, doggone it. Why? Well, because they ought to.
The above is a road story. The author notes that he could not get to this spot in his car.
Couldn't get there in a car?
Well, that's probably because if you were from Wyoming, which the author isn't, you'd know that you need to go there in a truck.
Getting the road smoothed out on the government dime is a bit Socialist. . . and very soft and East Coasty.
But then we all like the government to spend if it benefits us, don't we?
Plutarco Elias Calles of the Partido Laborista Mexicano won Mexico's presidential election with 84.1% of the vote. Before the emergence of the PRI, which Calles founded, it was the labor party, a democratic socialist party, was the most powerful party in Mexico.
That Mexico, which had just endured a violent attempt at overthrowing the government, was able to successfully stage an election was a triumph of democracy, albeit a temporary one as the PRI would later lock the country up into being a one party state with the PRI as the official party.
Calles was a left wing figure who had come up as a general in the Mexican War. A controversial figure, he's admired by some for his work on social and institutional changes in Mexico, and an attempt, albeit only partially successful, to reform a military then dominated by revolutionary generals who were a threat to the government itself. His administration, however, attacked the Church which lead to the January 1, 1927 Catholic rebellion known as the Cristero War, arguably the last chapter of the Mexican Revolution, in which 200,000 Mexicans died and would ultimately bring about the reelection of Alvaro Obregón in 1928. He was exiled to the United States in 1936 but returned in 1941 when the PRI was firmly in power. By that time, closer to death, he had become a spiritualist.
The Johnstown Meteor fell to earth in Colorado and interrupted a nearby funeral. It's only one of eleven such events that have been witnessed.
Johnstown is famous today for the Buc-ee's located there.
The U.S. 2nd Marine Division, 4th Marine Division, and the Army's 27th Infantry Division, commenced landing on Saipan. The Marine elements landed first.
The degree to which these island battles against the Japanese were hard fought is almost indescribable.
An interesting detail in Marine Corps photos from this period, and on through the end of the war, is the number of M1 Carbines that appear in them.
Iwo Jima was hit again from the air.
B-29s operating out of China bombed Yawata. By some accounts (but not all) this was the first U.S. bombing of the Japanese home islands since the Doolitle Raid.
From this point on, the air war was being brought to Japan. It was a significant development. Japan could no longer keep the war from the home islands.
The British attempted to advance near Caen after successful air strikes, but were held back by German armor. U.S. advances slowed.
The Germans suffered heavy naval losses due to an RAF attack on Boulogne.
The HMS Blackwood was fatally damaged by the U-764 off of Brittany.
The Socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was elected to office in Saskatchewan, the first such success in Canada by a socialist party.
The CCF is now the center left New Democratic Party.
The American Popular Revolutionary Alliance was founded in Mexico City by Peruvian politician Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre as a Latin American left wing political party/alliance of left wing political parties. It still exists.
The first issue of Liberty, dated May 10, appeared. It lasted until July 1950.
German miners went on strike in he Ruhar over wages.
We have become a more juvenile culture. We have become a childish "me, me, me" culture with fifteen-second attention spans. The global village that television was supposed to bring is less a village than a playground...
Little attempt is made to pass on our cultural inheritance, and our moral and religious traditions are neglected except in the shallow "family values" arguments.
Wes Jackson, Becoming Native to This Place
Today is Earth Day, 2024.
In "Red State", which now means more than it used to as the Reds in the Red States are supporting the Russian effort to conquer Ukraine, and hence are aligned with what the old Reds would have wanted, it's not going to mean all that much. I don't expect there to be much in the way of civil observances.
I saw a quote by somebody whose comments I wouldn't normally consider, that being Noam Chomsky, in which he asserted that a certain class of people who are perceived (not necessarily accurately) as something beyond evil, as they're putting all of humanity in jeopardy for a "few dollars" when they already have far more than they need. That is almost certainly unfair. Rather, like so much else in human nature, mobilizing people to act contrary to their habits is just very hard. And some people will resist any concept that those habits are harmful in any fashion.
Perhaps, therefore, a bitter argument is on what people love. People will sacrifice for that, and here such sacrifices as may be needed on various issues are likely temporary ones.
Of course, a lot of that gets back to education, and in this highly polarized time in which we live, which is in part because we're hearing that changes are coming, and we don't like them, and we've been joined by people here locally recently who have a concept of the local formed by too many hours in front of the television and too few in reality. We'll have to tackle that. That'll be tough, right now, but a lot of that just involves speaking the truth.
While it has that beating a horse aspect to it, another thing we can't help but noting, and have before, is that an incredible amount of resistance to things that would help overall society are opposed by those who are lashed to their employments in nearly irrevocable ways. In this fashion, the society that's actually the one most likely to be able to preserver on changed in some fashions are localist and distributist ones. Chomsky may think that what he is noting is somehow uniquely tied to certain large industries, but in reality the entire corporate capitalist one, which of course he is no fan of, as well as socialist ones, which he is, are driven by concepts of absolute scale and growth. That's a systematic culture that's very hard to overcome and on a local scale, when people are confronted with it, they'll rarely acknowledge that their opposition is based on something that's overall contrary to what they otherwise espouse. We see that locally right now, where there are many residents opposed to a local gravel pit, who otherwise no doubt make their livings from the extractive industries.
But I'd note that this hasn't always been the case here. It was much less so before the influx of outsiders who stayed after the most recent booms. And that too gives us some hope, as the people who are of here and from here, like people of and from anywhere they're actually from, will in fact act for the place.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has governed the country for twenty years, is headed into a runoff election against Kemal Kilicdaroglu, having failed to secure 50% of the vote.
May 22, 2023
Ulster
Sinn Fein made big gains in local election in Northern Ireland this past week.
May 29, 2023
Turkey
Erdoğan unfortunately won the run-off election in Turkey.
May 30, 20223
Alberta, Canada
Danielle Smith's United Conservative Party won provincial elections yesterday.
July 23, 2023
Spain exhibited cheating the prophet in that, contrary to predictions, there were no clear winners in its election.
The With center-right Christian Democratic Party, Partido Popular (PP) came in first, winning 136 seats. The far-right Vox party, which was predicted to be a kingmaker, won 33 seats and it might through in with the PP. The ruling center-left Socialist party won 122 seats, with likely coalition partner Sumar at 31 seats.
But there's no telling, really. The Socialist Party is in power. . . it might throw in with the PP.
So, it's hard to tell who won. They're working out the deals now, but chances are that whoever won will not be in power long.
October 16, 2023
Left and center left parties took 248 seats in the 460-seat lower house of the Polish parliament, compared to the 200 taken by the governing Law and Justice party and 12 by a right wing partner.
The government of Poland will accordingly change in the first European defeat of the king of right wing populism/National Conservatism that most notably emerged in Hungary and recently can be imperfectly argued to have gained ground in several other European countries. It had made statements about openly following Hungary's lead. As recently as 2019 it was gaining ground.
And it might still be. Parliamentary politics are not the same as republican politics. The Law and Justice Party still was the largest vote getter, and the number of votes for it increased. Effectively, it has 212 seats to 248 seats held by various other opposition parties that cross a political spectrum. A government still has to be assembled and it will remain a major voice in the parliament.
November 23, 2023
Argentina.
Difficult to describe, socially conservative, a member of the Austrian school of economics, and sort of a libertarian, Javier Milei won the Argentine presidential election.
This election is so sui generis that it's hard to put in an international context. The temptation is always to view these sorts of shifts as to the hard right, or hard left, and this would sort of be hard right, but it also reflects a rejection of Argentina's political history going back for 90 years or so.
The Netherlands.
The Dutch Party for Freedom made big election gains in the Dutch parliament, signaling a large leap to the far right in the country. While being expressed as a shock, this has been going on in the Netherlands for some time.
This victory makes it possible that its leader, Geert Wilders, could become prime minister of the country, but only if he is able to put together a coalition with other right wing and center right wing parties.
The party is strongly anti immigrant and wishes to leave the European Union.
The original family owned Delmonico's restaurant closed. The restaurant had been in business, in more than one location, since 1827 and had become one of the most famous restaurants in New York. It was a favorite of Theodore Roosevelt.
It was not able to survive Prohibition.
Not surprisingly, the famous name had cache and there were subsequent operations that used it, having some connection with the original, but not owned by the original family. There are plans to reopen a restaurant in the location late this year.
The restaurant is the claimed originator of a variety of famous dishes, the best known being the Delmonico's Steak. Roosevelt favored the double lamb chops.
The Labour and Socialist International, an organization of socialist and labor parties, was formed and became the largest organizational union of those entities. It ceased to exist in April, 1940.
Does Congress have so little to do that it actually needed to pass this:
118th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. CON. RES. 9
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
Whereas socialist ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has time and time again collapsed into Communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and brutal dictatorships;
Whereas socialism has repeatedly led to famine and mass murders, and the killing of over 100,000,000 people worldwide;
Whereas many of the greatest crimes in history were committed by socialist ideologues, including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, and Nicolás Maduro;
Whereas tens of millions died in the Bolshevik Revolution, at least 10,000,000 people were sent to the gulags in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and millions more starved in the Terror-Famine (Holodomor) in Ukraine;
Whereas between 15,000,000 and 55,000,000 people starved to death in the wake of famine and devastation caused by the Great Leap Forward in China;
Whereas the socialist experiment in Cambodia led to the killing fields in which over a million people were gruesomely murdered;
Whereas up to 3,500,000 people have starved in North Korea, dividing a land of freedom from a land of destitution;
Whereas the Castro regime in Cuba expropriated the land of Cuban farmers and the businesses of Cuban entrepreneurs, stealing their possessions and their livelihoods, and exiling millions with nothing but the clothes on their backs;
Whereas the implementation of socialism in Venezuela has turned a once-prosperous nation into a failed State with the world’s highest rate of inflation;
Whereas the author of the Declaration of Independence, President Thomas Jefferson, wrote, “To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, and the fruits acquired by it.”;
Whereas the “Father of the Constitution”, President James Madison, wrote that it “is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest”; and
Whereas the United States of America was founded on the belief in the sanctity of the individual, to which the collectivistic system of socialism in all of its forms is fundamentally and necessarily opposed: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That Congress denounces socialism in all its forms, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States of America.
Passed the House of Representatives February 2, 2023.
Attest:
First of all, this conflates Socialism with Communism. Most of this pertains to Communism. Socialism doesn't work as an economic theory, but you can't blame, say, the Social Democratic Party, Germany's largest political party and one that opposed both Communism and Nazism, for killing people.
But then most Americans can't seem to tell the difference between Communism, Socialism, Social Democracy, and the Girl Scouts, so we shouldn't be surprised. "No coconut cookies? Why you dirty Marxist. . . "
And what does this do. Isn't this sort of like declaring the Barbary Pirates to be bad? Does anyone own a calendar back there?
As it was Saturday, the Saturday Evening Post hit the stands. On this occasion it had an illustration of children playing music, probably loudly but badly, by Alan Foster.
For some reason, uploaded versions of period illustrations from the Saturday newsstands are a lot harder to find after late 1922 for a while. Probably the drama of the war and the comparative lack of drama of the early 20s was the reason. The Country Gentleman hit the stands with an excellent illustration of Independence Hall. Judge had a fascinating, nearly photo realistic painting of flappers in a club.
The Canadian Northern Railway and the Canadian Government Railways merged into the Canadian National Railway. The merger of the CNR and the CGR was forced by the government due to the financial failure of the CNR, although at one time the railroad had steamships as well as trains.
The CNN is one of the world's great railways, spanning all of Canada and the Eastern United States.
You'll note that the creation of this system is either an application of the American System of economics, albeit in Canada, or of Socialism. At one time the nationalization of railroads was not the controvery it would be now.
The French arrested twenty-one German mine operators for failure to cooperate in the occupation, and Essen's banks all voluntarily closed.
The London Daily Mirror ran this cartoon:
Some current Chicago expats in the solon in Cheyenne would likely take offense.
As odd as it is to realize it, with yesterday being the birthdate for Janis Joplin, this is the same for Slim Whitman. The country music star who came to prominence in the 50s, but who continued to record through the 90s, died at age 90 in 2013.
Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister of (Vichy) France, stated in a radio address;
I wish for a German victory, because, without it, Bolshevism tomorrow would settle everywhere.
He was in his third period of being the Prime Minister, with the second and third both being during the Vichy period.
The statement came as a shock to many of his countrymen, who assumed that Vichy France was playing a waiting game until an Allied liberation would come. Laval, however, had come to heavily sympathize with the Nazis.
Laval had been Prime Minister in 1931-32. He originally had been a pacifist Socialist politician and a lawyer who championed working men, but by the 1940s he'd migrated towards fascism. He was executed following a trial after the war.
In part of what would end up being a decades long process, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union began to the massacre of its fellow travelers. The Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries began.
Scene from the trial.
The Socialist Revolutionaries were a left wing Russian Party that were pro-democracy and had participated in Kerensky's government. Indeed, the Socialist Revolutionaries out polled the Bolsheviks in the 1917 election for a Constituent Assembly, and only the Bolshevik's illegal seizure of power precluded a democratic body from forming. By 1922, they had been crushed, but Lenin's government opted for a show trial anyhow, resulting in death sentences for the party figures who were tried.
It turned into a pr disaster, with the victims of the show trial becoming a cause célèbre among non Communist radicals. Marxist, but anti Bolshevik, Karl Kausky said about the event:
The Bolsheviki were first to use violence against other socialists. They dissolved the Constituent Assembly not by way of resistance against any violence on the part of the Socialists-Revolutionists and the Mensheviki, but because of their realization of their own inability to obtain the support of a majority of the peasants and workers by means of free propaganda. This was the fundamental cause of the Bolshevist coup d'etat against the representatives of the revolutionary workers and peasants. Hence, the abolition of all rights of all other socialists who refused to submit to the crack of the Bolshevist whip. Hence, the establishment of a political regime which leaves but one form of open political action for the opposition — civil war.... The real crime of which the Socialists-Revolutionists are guilty before the Bolsheviki at the present moment is not in the preparation of terroristic acts and armed uprisings, but in that...[they] are acquiring in ever increasing measure the confidence of the toiling masses of Russia. This bids fair to bring about the complete isolation of the Bolsheviki in a short time.
The results of the trial were that Central Committee of the SRP were found guilty, of course, and sentenced to death. The Communists position was still sufficiently tenuous that disquiet over the results meant the sentences were commuted. All twelve were later murdered during Stalin's purges, of course.
While this trial was a well known event, and while mass killings were already a feature of Soviet rule, Stalin's later purges overshadowed these to such a degree that they're often treated as something uniquely Stalinesque. In truth, the Communist Party everywhere featured the murder of its rivals as a norm, once in power, and murdering those who were closest to it in views, but not wholly their views, was not unusual at all. In some ways, therefore, Stalin's murder of party members was a mere continuation to what had become the blood soaked norm already, different only in degree and that it was typically based on nothing at all.