Travelling the world recently again, I am struck by the staggering ignorance among the great majority of people in the world, as to what Canada is like today. All of them, with rare exceptions, seem to think this is 1974. They think of Canada as a rich, First World country,
Continue readingTag: Communism
Writings of J. Todd Ring: Renaissance, Resistance & Revolution
In terms of social movements, the Left is dead, for the time being, at least in the formerly industrialized, formerly “leading”, “developed”, First World nations of the (North-) West. The reason it is dead, is because it has been seduced into supporting authoritarianism, and has thereby been co-opted by the
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The Collapse Of The West: Chapter One: The Global Tectonic Shift
By J. Todd Ring Preface: I wrote this essay in January of 2020, then the covid crisis hit, and it was shelved for over a year. The macro-scale patterns have not changed fundamentally since then, although the slow-motion collapse of the US, and the West more broadly, has accelerated. I
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: What Are Family Values Anyway
So what are these family values the right is always going on about. I am not talking about specific religious or cultural values but the values all families share. It seems there is one common thread and that is that families care about and take care of each other. They
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: Xi puts women in their place
When President Xi Jinping introduced his Politburo Standing Committee at the 20th Communist party congress in Beijing, one thing stood out. Of the seven, none were women. Furthermore, of the 24-member Politburo itself, for the first time in 25 years none were women. The Standing Committee is the small group
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: How fares the emperor?
Xi Jinping has it all: general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, chairman of the Central Military Commission, commander-in-chief of the People’s Liberation Army, and the Politburo Standing Committee filled with his own hand-picked loyalists. He is, in all but title, the emperor of China. For a dictator, this is
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: The Communist Family
From each according to his abilityTo each according to his needs* If you did not know the source of this you could easily mistake it for a description of the family. After all in a family the family unit takes care of all of your needs from birth, and as
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Know Your Rights, And Exercise Them, Now – Or We Will Lose Them All
Here are some important documents you might want to read, reflect on, save to USB, and share. The Magna Carta – the foundation of Western law and all constitutional rights, signed 800 years ago, and being burned now https://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/magna-carta-english-translation# The US Constitution and Bill of Rights – shredded by the
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: If You Are Going To Vote, Read This
Things are changing rapidly in the world, but as of this moment, we can say a few things about the major political parties of the Western world, with reasonable certainty. It is now undeniable, that by their actions, the major parties of the Western world, including the Democratic party of
Continue readingViews from the Beltline: China—Lying flat confronts consumerism … and Communism?
Young people in China are channeling the 60s and it worries their Communist overlords. They are rejecting consumerism, hard work and all that other middle class stuff. They are lying flat. Literally. A story in the New York Times describes how youth in China are rebelling against the country’s work
Continue readingScripturient: Socialism, Communism, and Liberalism
Watching American political dramas like their presidential elections is both entertaining and frightening. Yet it is also strangely educational. it has taught me a basic tenet: Americans as a people know little to nothing about politics. Not just about international politics, but their own. It is a commonly held belief
Continue readingScripturient: Will communism as a dominant political ideology ever make a comeback
I took the title from a discussion on Quora about whether Communism is dead or will re-emerge, and if so under what conditions. I don’t believe that the author of the post (Susanna Viljanen, from Aalto University in Finland) who opens that discussion wanted to see Communism arise again, but
Continue readingWill the "Red Menace" Work in the 21st Century?
During the Cold War, conservative politicians could always be relied on to trot out the “red menace,” accusing opponents of being soft on communism. It was usually good for a few votes—in the U.S. for many votes. It was, of course, just a version of one of the oldest and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Canada’s universal single-payer health care system is our best vaccination against the neoliberal virus
Who would have thought a decade ago, or even six months back, that Canada’s chances of surviving as a unified country would be better than those of the United States? The thought the mighty United States of America — e pluribus unum, and all that — could be on the
Continue readingFrom Emperors to Emperors and Tsars to Tsars—Plus ça change
The French proverb plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same) most aptly describes what has been happening at the pinnacle of government in China and Russia. Two years ago, the Chinese Communist Party, completely dominated by its 64-year-old president
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Importing From China: A Virus? Or A Totalitarian Model Of Elite Control?
Someone prescient once said, “Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for a little security, deserve neither, and will lose both.” We would do well to remember those words now. And we are most definitely in the process of losing both, as we speak. But maybe we aspire to be
Continue readingKersplebedeb: Announcing kites: a new journal of communist theory & strategy
As the editorial to this new journal explains: In the American and Canadian prison systems, kites are “contraband” correspondence shared among inmates, and between inmates and those on the outside. Tiny, folded-up pieces of paper, kites are slipped past the watchful eyes of our tormentors, passed through commissary or along
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: Sinatra’s birthday today: We remember when “Old Blue Eyes” was red
December 12, 2019 1:19 PM CST BY GERALD MEYER Frank Sinatra | AP This article first appeared in Science and Society in the Fall of 2002 and was run later in Political Read more…
Continue readingEastern Europe happy (mostly) with democracy and free markets
In November, 1989, the world’s most infamous wall came down and the “Evil Empire” crumbled away. The communist regimes of Eastern Europe collapsed like dominoes and by 1990 free elections were held, the free market was adopted throughout, and Germany was whole again. And how do the citizens of these
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