David > Recent Status Updates

"I suggested Malcolm Caldwell [who later disappeared in Cambodian custody] get a list of members of the CPK Central Committee, and asked him to enquire about the whereabouts of my Cambodian in-laws.*

*All nine members of my wife's family, we later discovered, had already been killed."

It's not unusual for communists to die at the hands of their own state, but Cambodia was by far the most wanton self-destruction.

The more I read, the less I understand. Michael Vickery embedded the Khmer revolution in a history of rural jacqueries; Kiernan goes out of his way to debunk this interpretation. Successfully so, but he puts nothing in place. Persecution and murder seem like the only actionable courses that made sense to Angkar. But why? No clue.

I have definitvely lost track of who is killing who here. Even in the early days of Nazi Germany, you have a sense that there is a plan the killers have to take into account; here, there isn't. City people, former soldiers, peasants, communists of a different denomination, communists from the same party ...

His devil's dead. And now he's empty, poor fellow, completely empty, finished! He will be just like everybody else from now on!"
...
"I think you're right, boss! I think I must have five or six demons inside me!"
"We've all got some, Zorba, don't you worry. And the more we have, the better. The main thing is that they should all aim at the same end, even if they go different ways about it."

Because you're like me, too, only you don't know it. You've got a devil inside you, as well, but you don't know his name yet, and, since you don't know that, you can't breathe. Baptise him, boss, and you'll feel better!

This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition.

'How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink! In that day of separation, my friend had helped me to see clearly. I was relieved.'

auteurs 😒😒🙄🙄👉🫩

"In the late 1980s two Marxist regimes, those of Cuba and Seychelles, were still actively collectivizing."

To be a traveling scholar of socialism in a time when the marxist bonafides of the Seychelles were an unquestionable fact...

Bekend verhaal, klungelig gebracht

Nog eens een poging om geschiedenis van eigen bodem te lezen. Maar het feit dat de auteur in haar inleidende oplijsting van slachtoffers van WO2 geen enkele vermelding maakt van bewoners van de Sovjet-Unie geeft me al kriebels.

rip de steur :/

No, sure, it's fun, I just didn't expect it to be Chinese

VAN CAUWELAERT: Ludo De Witte's Lumumba-boek is natuurlijk een PVDA-boek. Er zijn een aantal figuren van wie al op voorhand geweten was dat ze schuldig moesten zijn. Lumumba is uiteindelijk wel een iconische figuur geworden, maar hij was totaal ongeschikt om premier te zijn.

"Wij hebben die raketten toen geplaatst en zes maanden later wonnen we glansrijk de verkiezingen. Dat is dus een les die ik heb geleerd: overschat het ook niet. Diegenen die er echt mee begaan zijn, gaan betogen. Op mij maakt een betoging op zich dan ook niet zoveel indruk. Ze staat vaak helemaal los van een brede opinie in een samenleving, ook al brengt ze veel volk op de been."

Van Cauwelaert: Er zit inderdaad een enorme machtsconcentratie bij de Franse president. De nieuwslezer op TF1 verandert als de president verandert.

VAN ROMPUY: Uiteraard had die recessie ook grote gevolgen voor het politieke werk. We wisten vaak echt niet waar we stonden. De begroting ontspoorde volledig in '75 en '76. Tindemans lanceerde vervolgens het herstelplan ... "De regering voert een keynesiaanse politiek", en dus mochten er begrotingstekorten zijn... terwijl we feitelijk compleet onmachtig waren om te saneren. Keynes was een intellectueel vijgenblad!

Wat cijfers: zestien van de negentien Brusselse gemeenten krijgen bijstand vanuit de Brusselse regering, want anders zijn ze failliet. Extra bijstand dus, boven op de toelage die ze normaal krijgen. Daardoor ziet ook de Brusselse regering haar schuld enorm oplopen.

VAN CAUWELAERT: Toen de socialisten en de liberalen vervolgens [1954] samen een regering vormden, met Achiel Van Acker als premier, ging er toch een lichte paniekgolf door de katholieke rangen. Die paarse regering werd echt als een bedreiging gezien. Maar toen beging die regering de fout van haar leven door de schoolstrijd te beginnen.

very normal

"Write very long concatenated sentences" sounds like an absolute gimmick, but man does it resonate. Really unique tone of voice, almost like very distorted shoegaze but for words.

First read failed miserably because having your phone in the room when each sentence runs on for 2 pages is deadly. This time, phone safely locked away, I'm having a blast.

Unlike the United States, Russia even made the first step towards liberating its unfree population the legal abolition of serfdom peacefully and through legislation. ... The Russian empire had to cope with freeing almost 22 million serfs belonging to the nobility and 25 million serfs belonging to the tsar's family and the state.

A Croatian once described to me "protestants" and "ISIS" as cut from the same cloth. Here Carola Dietze is confirming it, John Brown being a very devoted calvinist Atta.

The British abolitionist movement reached a hitherto unknown degree of social engagement. In 1792, the British government received 519 petitions bearing the signatures of 390.000 people, or 13% of the adult male population. In 1833, Parliament received about 5.000 mass petitions signed by nearly 1.5 million people, including a petition that was a mile and a half long and signed by 350.000 women.

"Felice Orsini and John Brown had the French and American environments of transport, communication and media at their disposal, which were quite advanced compared even with other countries in Europe and with Russia. Their emulators would develop terrorism further, but they would not achieve any immediate success using this tactic. No comparable media and communication environment existed where they operated."

The various attempts to officially promote colonization in Africa did not meet with great success. Emigrants preferred Brazil or the United States, where well-organized societies needed them and promptly provided them with jobs and high salaries. By the early-19th century, there were, throughout the Portuguese «empire», less than 10.000 Europeans. Cape Verde, Angola and India absorbed the largest number.