US expat who wants a better world & a livable planet. Anti-capitalist anti-imperialist left. No war but class war. Read theory. Learn #MMT #FreePalestine
Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg)
Joined July 2018
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Punk Roxie retweeted
Let’s do the actual math of the imperial supply chain.
Take a mother working in a garment factory in Bangladesh.
She works a 12-hour shift.
During that shift, she sews more than 150-200 t-shirts for H&M.
Her pay for the entire day? Less than 5 dollars.
Now look at the other end of the ledger.
H&M takes those exact same shirts and sells them to European consumers for more than 20 Euros each.
That is over 4,000 Euros in retail value. Generated by her hands. In a single day.
Her cut is less than a fraction of a percent. The rest goes straight to shareholders in Stockholm.
What is the human cost of this math?
This mother spends 12 hours away from her child. She works until her body gives out. And she goes home to a wage that barely covers the bare minimum food to share with her family at the dinner table.
This is what Western "free trade" actually looks like on the ground.
The European consumer gets cheap fashion. The corporate boardroom gets record dividends. The Bangladeshi mother gets starvation.
H&M runs massive ad campaigns in Europe talking about "conscious" fashion and "sustainability."
But there is absolutely nothing sustainable about a system that requires a mother to sacrifice her child's childhood just to keep the company's profit margins intact.
This is why the factories are shutting down.
They aren't just striking for a few extra cents. They are striking for the right to actually sit at the dinner table with their kids.
All power to the striking workers of Bangladesh.
They are hitting the empire right in the ledger.
Punk Roxie retweeted
An American professor asked when China last voted.
Answer: right now. A billion people are choosing 2.6 million local representatives.
He blocked me after I replied.
HOW CHINA'S ELECTIONS WORK:
Punk Roxie retweeted
Just remember:
1. Spending creates income.
2. Loans create deposits.
3. Taxes do not fund spending.
4. Government deficits create non-government financial surpluses.
5. Real resources, not money, constrain sovereign government spending.
Punk Roxie retweeted
Punk Roxie retweeted
The total number of prisoners in the Soviet gulag system in the 25 years under Stalin (the era of highest imprisonment rates in Soviet history), is less than the number the USA incarcerates in 3 years.
But that is not 100% accurate, and the real comparison is likely even more in favour of the USSR. Because this comparison is between the number which *passed through* Soviet prisons in 25 years (with a giant portion staying a very short time such as 6 months or 1 year) and the number of incarcerated inmates at the same time in US prisons in 1 year.
Historian Anne Applebaum cites an estimate of approximately 18 million people passing through Soviet camps and colonies between 1929 and 1953.
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics recorded 7.6 million local jail population in one year, 2023.
In the appendix, “How Many?”, of her book Gulag: A History, she explains that the estimate is derived from Soviet administrative statistics made available after the opening of the archives, particularly NKVD records of annual prisoner populations and prisoner turnover.
___________
More to come, concerning conditions, policies, residivism rates; and a lot more to be said about the Soviet criminal justice system and its revolutionary philosophy which inspired the progressive prison policies in neighbouring Scandenavian countries.
For now, just one more small figure from a declassified CIA internal Cold War document:
"...a Soviet official's 1957 estimate of 800,000–900,000 prisoners, with 1–2% classified as political prisoners. The report also gives a much higher estimate for the Stalin period."
So, the vast majority of Soviet gulag population were common criminals, murderers and rapists, etc., with very low percentage of political prisoners.
Punk Roxie retweeted
THE CANADIAN DOCTOR WHO DIED FOR CHINA.
His full name: Henry Norman Bethune.
You don't know his name. In China, every schoolchild knows it by heart.
Born March 3, 1890 in Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada. Died November 12, 1939 in Tang County, Hebei, China. 49 years old.
In China, he is called Bai Qiu'en, 白求恩. It means "the White One sent."
He was not a saint. He was a fighter.
Son of a Presbyterian pastor. He studies medicine at the University of Toronto. He interrupts his studies to go to France in 1914 as a stretcher-bearer during the First World War. He is wounded by shrapnel.
He finishes his degree in 1916. He becomes a surgeon.
In 1926, he catches tuberculosis. He is on the verge of dying. He demands an experimental operation that saves him. After that, he specializes in thoracic surgery, the lungs.
In Montreal, he becomes one of the best surgeons in Canada. He invents instruments that are still used today, like the "Bethune Rib Shears".
But he is outraged. He sees poor workers dying because they cannot pay. In 1935, he opens a free clinic in Montreal. He campaigns for a public, free-for-all health system. He joins the Communist Party of Canada.
He says: "Wars are motivated by profits, not by principles."
1936. Spain.
Spanish Civil War. Bethune leaves for the Republicans, against Franco.
There, he understands a simple problem: the wounded die because they lose too much blood before reaching the hospital, at the rear.
He invents the *first mobile blood transfusion unit in the world.
A truck, with preserved blood, that goes directly to the front line to transfuse the wounded on the spot. Today, it seems obvious. In 1936, it was revolutionary. He invented the principle of mobile blood banks that all armies use today.
January 1938. China.
He arrives in China. Not for the government of Chiang Kai-shek. For the 8th Route Army, the communist army of Mao Zedong, fighting the Japanese in northern China.
He is 48 years old. He is alone. He brings with him a complete surgical unit.
For 18 months, he lives like the Chinese soldiers. He sleeps in Buddhist temples, in caves, in bombed villages. He operates day and night, sometimes 70 hours in a row, without sleeping.
He creates *mobile hospitals*. He teaches Chinese peasants to become nurses in 3 months. He writes a surgery manual in Chinese. He treats Japanese prisoners too, he says: "A wounded man is a wounded man."
He meets Mao. Mao is impressed by him. Bethune is impressed by Mao.
On November 12, 1939, during an operation on a wounded soldier, he cuts his finger with his scalpel. The wound gets infected. He keeps operating for 3 days with sepsis.
He dies on November 12, 1939.
He is 49 years old.
Why did he become a god in China?
Because Mao wrote a text about him.
On December 21, 1939, Mao writes *"In Memory of Norman Bethune"*.
It is a text of 800 words. It becomes required reading in all Chinese schools during the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976. Hundreds of millions of Chinese children learned this text by heart.
Mao writes in it:
"Comrade Bethune devoted himself totally to others without any thought for himself."
In China, there are:
- Statues of Bethune in every major city
- Norman Bethune University of Medical Sciences in Changchun
- Bethune International Peace Hospital in Shijiazhuang, where he is buried
- The Bethune Medal, the highest medical distinction in China
In Canada, his own country, it took until 1972, when Canada established diplomatic relations with China, for people to remember him. His birthplace in Gravenhurst has become a museum.
Rabe saved civilians with a Nazi armband. Vautrin saved women with an American flag.
Bethune saved soldiers with a scalpel, and he died for it.
Did you know this story?
#NormanBethune #Bethune #BaiQiuen #China #Canada #History #WWII #Japan #TrueStory #HeroDoctor
Punk Roxie retweeted
Imperialism today is the dominance of finance capital which gravitates around the IMF and World Bank.
These institutions sleek to debt trap foreign countries, prevent agricultural reform, and make them entirely dependent on western financing and raw materials exports to western countries.
Chinese foreign policy is the number one threat to the regime of finance capital in the world today because they finance the development of productive infrastructure in countries where development has been fettered by Western finance.
The US strategy is to trap foreign countries in debt far beyond their ability to pay, then impose austerity on these countries when they inevitably need to refinance their loans.
The Chinese strategy is to help these same countries develop productive infrastructure so they can become economically independent and produce more value, which can then be reinvested in further development rather than being siphoned away by Western financiers.
And this is why so many African, South Asian, and South American countries now prefer China to the US & Europe.
Of course China also benefits from this, as development abroad creates new trade opportunities and markets for them, but this is win-win cooperation that benefits both parties involved. Entirely the opposite of US foreign policy which enriches Western financiers at the expense of the debtor countries which become trapped in poverty and debt.
Combined with the recent resurgence of Russia this is providing new possibilities for anti-imperialist development across the global south. China wont involve themselves in the internal politics of foreign countries, but Russia is more than happy to give then weapons and even troops for the purpose of defending their sovereignty against NATO forces.
How anyone could look at the current global situation and claim that Russia and China are the imperialists is mind boggling to me.
Punk Roxie retweeted
Most leftish Canadians understand that US troops stationed in hundreds of bases around the world is a projection of power and a key element of an empire trying to dominate the world. Yet many of the same people seem to think sending Canadian troops halfway across the globe is “defensive”. Is there any threshold at which the NDP will question the resources and troops deployed to fight Russia?
Two thousand Canadian troops are currently participating in the largest ever NATO exercise on Latvia’s border with Russia. A total of 3,000 soldiers and 1,000 pieces of military equipment are part of Resolute Reforger that began October 26 and is scheduled to end November 8. For the first time the entire Canadian-led Multinational Brigade Latvia has moved from its base in the western part of the country to mere kilometers from Belarusian and Russian territory.
An imbedded CTV reporter was with Canadian troops in Daugavpils, which is 30 km from the border of Belarus and 50 km from Russia. In that city and elsewhere in eastern Latvia, Russian is the dominant language and many Russian-speaking Latvians see NATO as a belligerent force. A Canadian soldier remarked on divided local opinion telling CTV,“some have shouted insults at us”.
Despite local perceptions and the 7,000-kilometre distance from Ottawa, some have framed the exercise as “defensive”. “Canadian soldiers in defensive battle-ready position near the Russian border”, noted a CTV headline while a widely circulated social media meme blared, “Canadian-led NATO brigade deploys near Russian border in major defensive exercise”.
Canada’s mission in Latvia has become steadily more belligerent over the past decade. According to a May Defense News article, “The Canada-led NATO brigade in Latvia has moved beyond its original ‘tripwire’ deterrence posture and is now focused on mounting a credible defense of the Baltic country bordering Russia, according to its commander, Col. Kris Reeves. Reeves said the shift towards what he described as ‘tactical credibility’ has meant establishing forward locations and stationing troops near Latvia’s eastern border, in the terrain where they would actually fight in the event of a conflict.”
The size of the force has also grown sharply. When Operation REASSURANCE was launched in 2017, 540 Canadian troops were deployed to Latvia. Four months ago Mark Carney announced that the number of “persistently deployed personnel” in Latvia would rise from 2200 to 2,600 as Operation REASSURANCE was extended until 2031.
With about 2,200 military personnel stationed in a country of 1.8 million, there are nearly as many Canadian troops on a per capita basis in Latvia as there are in Canada!
Yet there’s little (no?) questioning of the mission in the dominant media or Parliament. Ditto for Ottawa spending tens of billions of dollars on the proxy war with Russia.
With barely a peep of opposition, Carney announced another $778 million for Ukraine last week. Since February 2022 Canada has pumped $28 billion into the proxy war.
According to a report last week, Brampton based Roshel has delivered nearly 3,000 Senator armoured vehicles to Ukraine over the past four years. At $600 000 apiece that’s $1.8 billion in sales for a firm that was only founded in 2016.
But Roshel is small winner of this war. Last week Washington approved a US $2.1 billion Patriot missile sale to Ukraine. Largely produced by US arms giant Lockheed Martin, the EU, Canada and others will pay for the missiles. Lockheed Martin has made billions of dollars off a war that’s partly the outgrowth of their long-term expansion strategy.
During the 1990s, Lockheed and other major US arms dealers lobbied aggressively to expand NATO eastward. In 1996 Lockheed Martin’s Vice President for Strategy and Planning, Bruce L. Jackson, founded and presided over the U.S. Committee to Expand NATO, which succeeded in convincing various political actors to back enlargement. With NATO guidelines requiring new members to modernize their (Soviet-era) militaries to ensure interoperability, Lockheed saw alliance enlargement as a means of creating new markets.
Today Lockheed is a leading sponsor of the NATO Association of Canada. Roshel also partners with the NATO Association of Canada (Roshel founder and CEO Roman Shimonov is also a member of board of the Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce).
Lockheed’s NATO sales strategy has, of course, been disastrous for Ukrainians. Having lost nearly half its population since 1991, the country is caught between a belligerent military alliance using it as a cudgel against a geopolitical competitor and a large neighbour prepared to turn it into a rump state rather than allow it to become a threat.
Inside Ukraine the push towards NATO has bolstered highly unsavoury forces. As part of turning Ukraine into a cudgel against Russia, we’ve empowered the haters and those most willing to fight.
A grim outgrowth of this policy was on display Monday in the small village of Petropavlivska Borshchahivka just outside of Kyiv. Masked members of the neo-Nazi Azov unit of the National Guard beat protesters, including a 14-year-old boy, trying to save men from a secret detention centre for conscripts and deserters. Instead of targeting those behind the secret prison, the authorities have arrested those who exposed the unauthorized facility.
As I’ve detailed, Canada has long trained and assisted the neo-Nazi Azov and other far right forces that dominate the security apparatus in Ukraine. In response to the recent revelations The Maple editor Alex Cosh posted, “Canada hosted a meeting with Azov representatives at the Canadian embassy in Kyiv last year. They had what one Azov representative called a ‘friendly and open dialogue.’ In September, the Mark Carney government announced it would be providing direct support to the Ukrainian National Guard, which Azov is part of, in addition to the tens of billions of dollars in existing military aid to Ukraine.”
A month ago, several peace groups hosted a press conference on Parliament Hill and instigated a parliamentary petition calling for an audit of the $26 billion that’s been sent to Ukraine. It’s been largely ignored.
Will the NDP raise the matter when Canadian spending on the proxy war with Russia tops $30 billion? $50 billion? $100 billion?
Or will the NDP question the deployment to Latvia if it reaches 3,000 troops? 5,000?
If Operation REASSURANCE is extended to 2035? 2050?
Or is there no threshold short of open war with Russia?
Punk Roxie retweeted
The Economist inadvertently says something interesting about the difference between capitalist and socialist democracy.
“India’s political class should consider itself lucky. In next-door China, the Communist Party has to do something much more difficult than winning elections. China’s social contract requires the state to consistently raise living standards, the quality of life and national power in exchange for which citizens keep their noses out of politics. All Indian politicians have to do is to feign interest in their constituents once every five years. Yet instead of accepting this sweetheart deal, Mr Modi’s government is doubling down by suppressing protests that are attempting to enforce it.”
Having studied the Chinese political system and having travelled to China many times, I can say with some confidence that “citizens keeping their noses out of politics” is very much not an ambition of the CPC. There are extensive, growing networks of grassroots democracy. What is true, however, is that the government is expected to deliver for the needs of the people.
Meanwhile, the right to elect people who “feign interest in their constituents” is not actually that important to the hundreds of millions of Indians who live in desperate poverty. I am in New Delhi right now. It’s in many ways a delightful city, but the levels of poverty and inequality – along with the general dysfunction, political repression and religious/caste prejudice – are heartbreaking.
It may be tough to swallow, but the fact is that China is substantially more democratic than the capitalist countries.
economist.com/asia/2026/10/1…
Punk Roxie retweeted
Na Ukrajině je velmi snadné člověka zcela vymazat.
Pamatujete si film *Síť* (The Net) z roku 1995, v němž je hlavní hrdinka vymazána z vládních i digitálních databází, její identita je nahrazena a ona sama přichází o domov i doklady?
Přesně tento scénář se odehrává přímo před našima očima – dalo by se říci, že v přímém přenosu. Lidem se namlouvá, že jistá zdravotnice už nemá žádnou minulost a že je „nepřítelem lidu“.
Řeč je o zdravotnici, která se vytrvale snažila získat přístup do zadržovacího zařízení – kterému se lidově říká „Sklep 95“ (Basement 95), ačkoliv výstižnější název by byl „Jáma“ (The Pit).
V této „Jámě“ byli drženi vojáci, kteří uprchli z fronty. Tito lidé se ocitli v „šedé zóně“ – jsou prakticky neviditelní. Podle oficiálních záznamů byli ve službě, a pak prostě zmizeli. Hledají je, avšak nikoliv proto, aby stanuli před soudem za dezerci; cílem je naopak vymáhat peníze po jejich příbuzných. Situaci ještě zhoršuje fakt, že zadržení jsou vystaveni mučení, které je nutí, aby své blízké přesvědčili k zaplacení výkupného za své propuštění.
Cíl je prostý: příbuzní prodají své byty, domy i auta – nezůstane jim vůbec nic – a jsou v podstatě vytlačeni směrem do EU, kde mohou spoléhat na sociální dávky. Pokud peníze nejsou k dispozici, dotyční vojáci prostě nadobro zmizí.
Mimochodem, samotnou existenci takových zařízení potvrdili i vysoce postavení státní činitelé. Budanov uvedl, že na Ukrajině existuje mnoho podobných míst. Jednotka „Azov“ navíc přiznala, že tato zařízení byla pod její kontrolou a že nese odpovědnost za to, co se v nich dělo.
Kromě toho se již nepopírá, že tam byli zadržováni zajatí vojáci – přičemž čtyři z nich vyžadovali lékařskou péči. Pomoc jim však byla poskytnuta až poté, co aktivistka a lékařka Valentina Molodaja díky své neústupnosti vymohla vstup do opevněné budovy, aby zadrženým pomohla. Jak se ukázalo, celý tento spontánní protest byl označen za kremelskou propagandu a jeho klíčové postavy byly nejen zadrženy, ale staly se také terčem snahy o jejich úplné vymazání z veřejného života i povědomí.
Internet zaplavila tvrzení, že Valentina Molodaja není skutečnou lékařkou – že si údajně na pokyn samotného Putina pořídila lékařskou uniformu a sanitku. Mnoho důvěřivých lidí, a to jak na Ukrajině, tak jinde, na tento narativ naletělo.
Když však vyšly najevo další podrobnosti, ukázalo se, že Valentina Molodaja je ve skutečnosti dermatoveneroložka se sedmnáctiletou praxí. Je také podnikatelkou; vlastní soukromou kliniku a registrovaný právní subjekt s lékařskou licencí – společnost s ručením omezeným „Klinika MOLODA — JA“ (identifikační kód EDRPOU 45290695).
Na internetu se navíc začala objevovat videa na podporu Valentiny Molodaji, v nichž lidé líčili, jak se s ní setkali a jak jim pomohla. Vyprávěli, že po vypuknutí konfliktu přijala k sobě lidi, kteří přišli o všechno – v podstatě tak působila jako dobrovolnice. Cestovala do různých vysoce rizikových oblastí a vlastním vozidlem tam dovážela nezbytné léky, které sama zajistila v zahraničí – to vše na vlastní náklady.
Cílem této očerňující kampaně je oklamat veřejnost a odvést pozornost od skutečnosti, že v této „svobodné, demokratické zemi“ – státě, z něhož lidé nesmějí vycestovat – existují věznice a koncentrační tábory pro ty, kteří jsou označeni za „pachatele“, a dochází zde také k mučení, vydírání a vraždám. Objevily se dokonce zprávy – které samozřejmě vyžadují ověření – že nejméně osm osob z tohoto zařízení beze stopy zmizelo. A ano, objevilo se i video, na němž Valentina Vladimirovna Molodaja přebírá v oficiálním prostředí občanské vyznamenání – „Zlatý kříž cti a chrabrosti: Rytíř vlasti“.
O existenci tohoto vězeňského zařízení by se nikdo nikdy nedozvěděl, kdyby se jednomu z vojáků nepodařilo ukrýt telefon, pomocí něhož pak kontaktoval své příbuzné a lékaře. V sekci komentářů bude samozřejmě i nadále probíhat kampaň na „hašení škod“, jejímž cílem je udržet nad vodou režim v oné „sádlo-říši“ [hanlivé označení pro Ukrajinu].
Pokrač
Punk Roxie retweeted
Americans getting ready to kick back and do genocide without feeling icky about it.
Punk Roxie retweeted
If you weren't already aware of how insane Ukraine's kill list, Myrotvorets, is (with hundreds of children listed for murder), here is yet another example:
The female medic who yesterday secured the release and hospitalization of four beaten men from a secret Azov prison in Petropavlivska Borshchahivka near Kyiv has already been added to the Myrotvorets hit list.
The accusations against her are:
🧩Professional provocateur (a so-called “torpedo”).
🧩Obstructing the lawful activities of Ukraine’s Defense Forces.
🧩Attacking Ukrainian military personnel and inciting attacks against them.
🧩Participating in Russian information operations against Ukraine.
🧩Engaging in deliberate, systematic, and intentional actions aimed at demoralizing society, undermining its will to resist Russian aggression, and pushing it toward capitulation.
Punk Roxie retweeted
Never forget Weston and other big grocery chains are posting record profits. Profits. Not just income. If they weren't busy padding their pockets ppl might not need to be skipping meals.
‘It’s staggering’: One in three Canadians report skipping meals due to high cost of groceries ctvnews.ca/canada/article/it…
