Roland Boer's Blog, page 50

From Mao to Now: Trades Hall Melbourne talk

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But he still keeps up the fight (Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner)

For some reason, this song came back to me recently. It is ‘Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner’ by Warren Zevon. As I pointed out some time ago, I like the line, ‘The deal was done in Denmark, on a dark and stormy day’.

But as a friend in China pointed out recently, the relevant line now is: ‘Now it’s ten years later, but he still keeps up the fight’. What should be added here is China, since I think it is great that the communist party is the government of China. As a recent application to...

A Stranger in Europe

I feel like a stranger in the world, especially Europe. Over the past week or two we have travelled across Europe, from east to northwest, and stayed in different places. It is turning out to be intimately familiar and disconcertingly strange.

Why? After some discussion, it seems as though these are some of the features.

Everywhere it seems as though people are obsessed about refugees and immigrants, no matter what the political persuasion. It is not merely the right-wing groups and parties w...

From the Transylvanian countryside

Fidel, eat your heart out

Fidel Castro is renowned for his hours-long speeches (to which I would have loved to listen). But he is by no means the only communist leader who could regale an audience for hours on end. In May of 1927, Stalin made these opening comments to the students of Sun Yat-Sen University:

Comrades, unfortunately, I can devote only two orthree hours to today’s talk. Next time, perhaps, weshall arrange a longer conversation.

More on the China-Russia joint naval exercises, and the USA as a world troublemaker

More reports on the People’s Daily and Xinhua News on the China-Russia joint naval exercises in the South China Sea.

And a series of articles in the People’s Daily analyse the USA as a ‘source of turmoil in the world’. It is keen both to make a mess and to brainwash the elites in some non-Western countries. To a large degree, this is ‘a reflection of a twisted mentality of an empire moving downhill’.

Russia and China in major joint military exercise in South China Sea

Strange how I need to read Chinese newspapers to find out details about the major joint naval exercises between China and Russia in the South China Sea. As I have pointed out before, their increasing closeness is perhaps the major geopolitical development in recent years.

How about this for an image (from Xinhua News):

A core principle of socialism with national characteristics

While working on another project, I came across a couple of statements that embody one of the core principles of socialism with national characteristics:

Hence, in order not to err in policy, in order not to find itself in the position of idle dreamers, the party of the proletariat must not base its activities on abstract “principles of human reason,” but on the concrete conditions of the material life of society, as the determining force of social development; not on the good wishes of “grea...

Will Trump ‘win’?

I keep having a gut feeling that Trump will pull it off in the circus called ‘US democracy’. Yesterday, I had a somewhat interesting argument with an evangelist for the the ‘American dream’, for ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ – US imperialist style (this person is working in China). Our disagreements ranged over the DPRK (North Korea), China and the struggle between Trump and Clinton in the United States.

At one point, he said that he wishes three things for the disgruntled, exploited and shafted...

The return of ‘yellow peril’ hysteria

This week has seen one of the more nasty and ugly developments in Australian politics, and that is saying something. In a classic case of dog-whistle politics, a senator was accused of accepting donations from a Chinese businessman, which implied that his positive comments on China had been ‘bought’. ‘Manchurian candidate’ is the term bandied about, with both racist and anti-communist undertones. Then of course the university China research centres that offer a more positive view of China hav...