Praises

"I'm a librarian of the Centre Chine (the biggest Asian collection in France), … I wish to receive anything you can send me, … in any Asian language and English." - Gilles Lespade, Centre Chine - EHESS, FRANCE

"I read your article on WTO… I hope more PRC Chinese think like that." - Anita Chan, Australian National University

"Great work!" - Kate X. Zhou, Hawaii University

"Your site is really important." - Ioan Davies, York University, Toronto

"I admire your work. I have read much of what you have written." - Kirk Masden, Kumamoto Gakuin University, Japan

"I like to read what you send." – Chenshan Tian, Hawaii University

"Many thanks for giving us your views on this issue. Even if people disagree with you, you provide a very important service by offering this viewpoint." "I think most people read your messages carefully. The Chinese perspective is extremely important without it our view is incomplete. So, please keep informing us." - Sean Curtin

Comments

Robert W. Aspinall: aspinall@lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp
Dear Jing Zhao, Thank you for replying to my message on the SSJ Forum this week. I think you may have misunderstood my message and I apologise for not making myself clearer. When I wrote the question 'what is wrong with the Ministry of Education enforcing the national flag and anthem?' I wrote it purely as a question which I then sought to answer in the remainder of the message. I hope if you look again at the whole message you can see that I gave some reasons for why there IS something wrong with what the ministry is doing. I was writing that message in reply to Earl Kinmonth who pointed out that American schools are full of nationalistic symbols. The point I was trying to make was that there are many people in Japan opposed to the enforcement of the flag and the anthem on schools and that in less centralised systems (like in England and Wales) the department of education does not have the power to enforce this kind of thing. By taking a quote out of its context you make it look like I am making the opposite point to the one intended. Again I am sorry that I was not clearer in my original message. Yours sincerely, Robert Aspinall
From Comrade Brwon: Ez1H@aol.com
1) The problem with Lenin's statement was that its anyone's guess as to how to distinguish an anarchist from a bandit.
Its very clear, that this passage of Emma's book, which I happen to be very familiar with is a total whitewash of the crimes of certain people who described themselves as anarchists. To Goldman, merely describing oneself as an anarchist gave a person to right to do whatever the fuck they wanted to do, including disobeying direct orders from the Red Army command...which Mahkno did. Mahkno may not have been a direct counterrevolutionary, but he did, for example, arrogate ammunition supplies for himself and refused to share them with other units of the red army, going so far as to hi jack supply trains...
By the way Stalin did the same thing, but Mahkno did it openly and defended his actions as if there was absolutely nothing wrong. Did Mahkno accept the same individualism in the ranks of his own forces? Of course not. Anyone who disobeyed Mahkno was simply exterminated. One can discuss whether the Bolsheviks were right or wrong to eliminate Mahkno, but no one denies the fact that Mahkno committed crimes against Red Army chain of command which anyone else would have been put on trial for treason for committing.
Emma Goldman ludicrously claims that Mahkno and other peoples "claims to be anarchists" should have given their insubordination some sort of political gloss. Which is totally crazy. The anarchists did not, and never did play any major role in the workers soviets which were at least in theory the supreme power in the soviet state.
Yes the soviets atrophied and we think that is one of the keys to the tragedy of the Russian Revolution, but the persecution of Mahkno was largely just and had little to do with this.
Part of the reasons for the bad relations between the Bolsheviks and anarchists were not the Bolsheviks fault... Part of it derived from the anarchists total unwillingness to police their ranks from right wing provocateurs. Furthermore, their total unwillingness to accept revolutionary discipline, for example around the incident where the German ambassador Count Mirbach was assassinated. The anarchists did not represent a force in their own right within the working class, but rather operated as a sort of left tendency within the larger left social revolutionary party. The hard left violent wing of the left social revolutionaries arrogated the right to shoot the German ambassador, launch a revolutionary war which the Bolsheviks probably would have lost, shoot Lenin and do whatever the fuck they want to do.
The Bolsheviks were absolutely correct to turn the Cheka against them...in fact, they were the main reason why a Cheka had to exist...its was their irresponsibility and then they cry wolf. Comrade, you are being taken in by bullshit.
Yes the Cheka got worse and worse and more and more arbitrary, but at every step of the way even in 1922 with the suppression of the Antonov rebellion, the left social revolutionaries and their ultra left apologists, the anarchists, played a crucial role in fucking up any attempts to get industry back on track and to create social peace which is a precondition to reconstructing industry which was a precondition to stopping to the dissolution of the proletariat as a class which was, in Lenin's last years the greatest threat to the workers state. None of this mattered to the anarchists, what mattered was their desire to do whatever they want to do, from committing assasinations of Bolshevik working class leaders like Comrade Volodarsky and Moishe Uritsky, to blocking with white guard scum, to creating their own foreign policy through pistol fire.
2) This is not true. There were protests both from disoriented elements of the petit bourgeois left, ie Kronstadt, Antonov, Mahkno, as well as disoriented ultra proletarian elements within the Bolshevik Party, the Workers Opposition, Ossinsky's Dem Cents, Workers Truth of Bogdanov etc However, these protests were coming in opposite directions.
The petit bourgeois left attacked the Bolsheviks ultra left policy on grain requisitioning and they were correct on this, and their essential demand was coopted by the Bolsheviks in 1921 with the NEP program. However, the nature of these protests very quickly sent their membership over to the side of the white guards.
Whereas the ultra left factions within the Bolshevik party made some correct criticisms of the growing power of Stalin and Zinoviev within the party regime and they were totally loyal but their main programmatic axis was to oppose the NEP which would have been suicidal.
Eventually in late 1922, Lenin and Trotsky briefly stepped into the gap and began their own failed fight against the bureaucracy which by then was choking the very heart of the workers state.
3) The anarchists had ALWAYS been between two fires, that of labor and that of capital, and they had never clearly broken with the political axis of capital...not even in theory...not even by a long shot. The Russian revolution only took this problem into the open field of activity...and thus the anarchists played a pathetic and absurd role in the Russian Revolution Again, they weren't completely immune from doing this either. Emma Goldman did a lion's share of the work to demonize the USSR around the world. Mahkno was quite willing to join hands with the counterrevolution and the Kronstadt rebels..who were not exactly anarchists were willing to take assistance from the imperialists.
All the anti Bolshevik groups in Russia have to be suspect because of the enormous amount of British and French money pouring into them. The anarchist Alfred Rosmer who defended the Bolsheviks gave much credence to this point.
Besides which, the anti Bolshevik anarchists were a small and isolated grouping. They tended, with the exception of the small Russian anarcho sydicalist group to be intensely anti proletarian and anti industry...so they were of much more use to the foreign intelligence services as a front which the Bolsheviks would hestitate to attack than they were to the proletariat. That doesn't mean there weren't some anarchists who were not precisley "pro Bolshevik" and who also didn't take money from the white guards. These elements no doubt existed, but they were tiny and isolated.
Its rarely admitted by the anarchists, that these "rebellious" peasants were rabid anti semites and responsible for the worst pogroms against Jews. Furthermore, according to Paul Avrich there was not a single identifiable "anarchist" at Kronstadt despite all myths to the contrary.
Mahkno based himself on some of the most backward sociological elements and his forces are accused of committing despicable racist crimes which were of no big deal to Mahkno.
For example, another anarcho bandit Grigoriev was entrusted by the Bolsheviks with supporting the Hungarian revolution, but they didn't think it was worth the bother, so the who European proletariat went down to defeat in isolation. It is defense of the ludicrous proposition than anyone can do anything they want to and still be a great leftist that Goldman defends. Goldman was a lousy phoney.
4) BULLSHIT... You ignore the crushing of the left opposition and the entire workers movement from 1923-1937 and the Moscow trials and the fact that China was a workers state deformed from the beginning not at all comparable to Lenin's government.
There were limits to Lenin's persecution of the ultra leftists in his ranks even at his worst in 1922...Schliapnikov for instance WAS treated unfairly but he was not sacked, expelled, sent to shovel shit etc. These purge policies were a later development. As for Golmand and Berkman they were people a mile away from the Bolsheviks politically and its an example of immense generosity that they were received by the Bolsheviks as honored comrades despite their arrogance and political idiocy.
5) You come off here as a weeping pathetic liberal idiot, instead of drawing the specific conclusions that this is proof that the "Radio Free World" crap is just that.
Jing, they don't give a flying fuck about you unless you fall in full square behind their party line of counterrevolution. They rank you with the market system, how much counterrevolutionary scumminess can they wring out of you. For you to complain, for you to insinuate that this is somehow unfair, merely shows that you don't understand that capitalism is capitalism and capitalism is a CLASS DICTATORSHIP of the BOUGEOISIE which is actually despite what you may think QUALITATIVELY more oppressive on a global scale than are the Stalinist deformed workers states
But you make this out as...oh how horrible that good decent democrats like Imperialist USA and Japan knuckle under to the big bad Beijing Stalinists. To us, all this shows how the Beijing Stalinists are the transmission wires of imperialist backed counterrevolution into China...and yes, the Beijing Stalinists get favors for their ultimately counterrevolutionary role. You seem primarily miffed that you don't get enough favors for your inconsistently counterrevolutionary role...
Well why should they give you anything...after all, they have plenty of lackeys to choose from.
Jing, I don't know if you are a reluctant defender of Chinese collectivized property, or a reluctant defender of "democratic imperialism" But I know where I stand...I am an ARDENT defender of collectivized property and to me that aim stands higher than defense of democracy in the abstract...although i do defend workers democracy and I defend democratic rights like freedom of speech...
I don't defend the "right" of Chinese workers and peasants to "vote" to restore capitalism.
6) This is a total absurdity. I do not see Jesus Christ, if he existed, as a particularly appealing figure in the ancient world. He certainly was no friend of the truly oppresed like Spartacus, nor was he a budding rationalist like Democritus. He was, rather, a Jewish extreme sectarian, who was charcterizable versus others of his kind primarily by his willingness to seek some sort of agreement with Rome.
However, in his defense, he was not a reactionary figure per se, because in that era the communist program and proletarian struggle were not posed, nor were they posable...
Don't blame anarchism on Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was a religious obscurantist and sell out to the Romans...but we have nothing per se against that... after all we don't judge him by the standards of other Jewish extremists.
But anarchism is at best a disorienting philosophy of class compromise and can only continue to become more and more anti proletarian
7) Plehknov also supported the bourgeoisies war of mass slaughter both under the Tsar's leadership and that of Kerensky.
Subject: [***] Comparative Policy Research Institute
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1998 16:51:00 +1000
From: "T.Matthew Ciolek"
To: stf@anasift.com
Asian Studies WWW Announcements: early August 1998 Vol. 5, No. 59
14 Aug 1998
US-Japan-China Comparative Policy Research Institute, USA
Supplied note: A "non-profit think tank [est. Dec 1997 by a group of Chinese scholars, researchers, scientists, managers, and engineers residing in Silicon Valley - ed.] focusing on comparative social, economical, political, and technological policy issues concerning the US-Japan-China axis. [...] CPRI issues [an annual] 'Comparative Policy Review (CPR).'"
URL https://members.tripod.com/~cpri
Link submitted by: Jing Zhao (stf@anasift.com)
* Resource type [news - documents - study - corporate info. - online guide]: Corporate Info.
* Research usefulness [essential - v.useful - useful - interesting - marginal]: Useful
Src: Asian Studies WWW Monitor ISSN 1329-9778
URL http://coombs.anu.edu.au/asia-www-monitor.html
Announce your new/improved Asian Studies' Web sites
via http://coombs.anu.edu.au/regasia.html
Dr T. Matthew CIOLEK tmciolek@coombs.anu.edu.au
Head, Internet Publications Bureau,
RSPAS, The Australian National University, Canberra
ph +61 (02) 6249 0110 fax: +61 (02) 6257 1893
http://www.ciolek.com/PEOPLE/ciolek-tm.html
From: "Farrell Cleary" fcleary33@hotmail.com
Dear Dr. Jing Zhao,
Thank you for your letter of support which Kirk Masden has forwarded to us. We are sorry to hear of your experience at Osaka University and admire your courage. We would he honoured if you would accept to become a sponsor of the appeal rather than a signatory. You would be the first sponsor from China and would add significantly to the international weight of the appeal.
Yours sincerely,
Farrell Cleary.
Vice-President,
Kumamoto General Union.
From Ioan Davies, idavies@YorkU.CA
Thanks for your interest & support. Will update my web-site soon. Was in Japan for six months this year, so let the site lapse a little.
Your H-site is really important.
Professor Ioan Davies,Sociology and Social/Political Thought, Founders College, York University, Toronto, Canada, M3J 1P3
Phone: 416 736 5148.
Web: https://members.tripod.com/~IoanDavies/
From: Alan Thomas Harrison, Alan.Thomas.Harrison@brunel.ac.uk
> 1. I read a Jewish ad. which says "there is no such a people as Palestine, this word has only fourty-years history." Curiously enough, I feel that I don't know the answer.
This is a lie. "Palestine" is etymologically the same word as "Philistine", and long predates the post-war establishment of the Zionist entity. It sounds to me like an attempt to ignore the existence of the indigenous population, who are being made foreigners in their own land by European immigrants on the basis of a specious claim to descent from earlier inhabitants.
From: Heiko Khoo, heiko@easynet.co.uk
... We are called the Committee for a Marxist International and originate from the world Communist Parties of the Third International which expelled or killed our comrades in the 1920's and 1930's for their opposition to Stalin and the Bureaucracy. In China after 1929 our General Secretary was Chen Duxiu but after his death and the revolution, our comrades were expelled from China and the most of the remaining comrades from that time are dead.
There are many groups internationally claiming to be the 4th international we do not make this claim, we hope to create a Mass Marxist International through work to create mass revolutionary tendencies inside the existing Workers Organsiations (Labour party in Britain, Communist and Socialist Party in France, the main Communist parties in Russia, etc.) we have recently produced a great deal of material on Russia, on Science and Marxism and a Major new book is due out in the next weeks on the history of Bolshevism.
warm regards
From: Hong Kong Alliance, alliance@enmpc.org.hk
HONG KONG ALLIANCE IN SUPPORT OF PATRIOTIC DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENTS OF CHINA 9/F., GOOD HOPE BUILDING, 618 NATHAN ROAD, KOWLOON, HONG KONG
TEL:852-27826111 FAX:852-27702209 E-MAIL:alliance@alliance.org.hk HOMEPAGE:http://www.alliance.org.hk
From: "HKPRI" hkci@hkpri.org.hk
Hong Kong Policy Research Institute is going to publish a report entitled DSurveys on Political, Economic and Social Confidence in Hong Kong, 1998 ReportE. The report is available to subscribe now and the price is HK Dollars 80 (Overseas subscription : 15 US Dollars). Hong Kong Policy Research Institute Ltd. 6/F., 10 Yuen Shun Circuit, Siu Lek Yuen, Shatin, Hong Kong
Dr. Jane C.Y. Lee
From: Dheeraj Jagadev, comrade01@yahoo.com
Dear Comrade Jing Zhao, I'm Comrade Dheeraj, a moderator of the CCP mailing list along with Comrade Brown, with whom you're in contact with. I would encourage you to join the CCP and enrich our debates with your thoughts. To tell you a little more about my background, I'm originally from India. I hope you make the decision to join the CCP.
In solidarity, Comrade Dheeraj
Japan Guide, jguide@kiku.Stanford.EDU
You have been added to the J Guide. Sorry for the delay.
J-Guide
US-Japan Technology Management Center , Stanford University
jguide@fuji.stanford.edu
From masden@kumagaku.ac.jp (Kirk Masden)
Thank you for responding! Please type in you name, job, postal address in response to this mail.
Also if you would be willing to help with some translation for our homepage that help would be appreciated as well. The main request, however, is merely for "signatures" (name, job, postal address) on people who support the cause.
Thank you,
Kirk Masden
P.S. I admire your work. I have read much of what you have written on H-JAPAN.
From: David Olson david@thirdculture.com
Greetings Jing Zhao ! ! !
This evening I had the pleasure of reading your review of _Nihon Keizai no Kozo to Bunseki]_, cross-posted by Yone Sugita to the DFS list. Some comments:
1. I never knew about the 200 million liang indemnity (silver) allowing Japan to go on the gold standard. Who converted the silver to gold?
2. There is another episode of Japanese monetary history missing from many English and Japanese books. I have only read about it in one place: Shimazaki Touson's novel _Yoake Mae_ ("Before the Dawn?).
Namely, the plundering of Japanese gold c. 1860 caused by foreign traders exploiting a discrepancy in internal Japanese exchange rate (1:1 :: gold:silver), the Chinese rate (1:16) and the world rate (1:8). In this exchange, Japanese gold was purchased with silver, sold in China for silver, which was used to purchase more Japanese gold.
Do you have any facts about this? Any books in English or Japanese? In case you are unfamiliar with Shimazaki's novel --- it is thinly disguised biography about his father, a Bakufu official at a post-station on the Nakasendou highway.
On an unrelated subject --- but relating to Chinese-Japanese relations. It is often asked whether Japan has adequately apologized for the Fifteen Year Showa War (1931-1945). I asked myself the question --- Has anyone ever apologized for the Opium Wars?
From Steve Rosenthal, smrose@exis.net
The real issue in all this is reformism. Andy thinks that Marxists should support reformist "communists" in Russia and reformist "Democrats" in the US in a period of deepening international capitalist crisis. But Remy Velasquez correctly pointed out that Russian reformists have for some time been owned by "political gangsters" and the "financial and industrial lobbies" of the oil and gas industries. And Jing Zhao pointed out that Chinese "communists" today are more capitalist than capitalists! There is no reformist solution to capitalism in Russia and China. They need new political parties committed to leading working class revolutions.
Yoneyuki Sugita
Department of Area Studies, American Studies Osaka University of Foreign Studies 8-1-1 Aomadani-Higashi, Minoh-City, Osaka 562 JAPAN
sugita@post01.osaka-gaidai.ac.jp FAX/TEL: +81-727-30-5416
ED-USJP@H-NET.MSU.EDU
If you would like to get information who subscribe the list, here is how to do: send to: listserv@h-net.msu.edu command: review H-US-Japan
If you would like to see who subscribe ED-USJP send to: listserv@h-net.msu.edu command: review ED-USJP
Ryuji Urata, yufukiri@fat.coara.or.jp
Dear Mr.Jing Zhao
I'm Ryuji Urata, an office stuff of Japan Coalition on the U.S. Military Bases. Thank you very much for your writing on our bulletin board on our homepage. We ran our opinion ad "It's Time to bring the U.S. Marines Home" on New York Times dated Nov. 23rd. http://www.coara.or.jp/~yufukiri/e-index.html
We'd like to let the U.S. (and other countries') citizens know about the problems caused by U.S.military force and pesonnel in Japan. And at the same time, we want to inform Japanese of American (and other countries') citizen's opinion after reading our ad. We also expect to built up the way of exchange information and opinions each other among U.S., Japan and others not through mass media but the direct way of our own.
And we hope that it will lead to stir up people's interest and discussion about these problems of foreign military force. So we'd like to inform our ad and our homepage to a lot of civil movement groups in America (and other countries). And we would also like to correct any response to our assertion. Please give us your thoughts and opinion about our ad or this problem. We are also very glad if you inform your acquaintance of our ad or homepage and tell them to give us some response.
Japan Coalition on the U.S. Military Bases
1525-12 Kawakami, Yufuin-cho, Oita, JAPAN
TEL/FAX 81-977-85-5003 E-MAIL: yufukiri@fat.coara.or.jp Home Page: http://www.coara.or.jp/~yufukiri/e-index.html

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