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Cake day: Mar 23, 2022

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This. I want to believe that they adopt this relatively non-committal position so as not to alienate the “normies” who they hope to draw in and convert to communism, and that if they didn’t think it would put off these people who they hope to “deprogram” as it were they would adopt more openly unappologetic pro-AES and anti-imperialist positions. But frankly it bothers me, i find it very distasteful and at times i think it borders on opportunism.

One minute they are excoriating NATO and pointing out how the Ukraine war is a US proxy war and that we should not be continuing to arm them, the next they say that they don’t support Russia in this conflict and that Russia shouldn’t have launched their intervention and Ukraine has a right to defend itself. Which is it? Do you recognize that it was actually the US and its Nazi proxies that started this war or don’t you? Are you really opposed to NATO and US imperialism or are you just saying that but are too cowardly to support a country that has said enough is enough and is now actually fighting back and giving their lives to defeat the imperialists and their Nazi proxy army.


How are the central government tools of same West that has been funding, arming and backing the TPLF (which by the way started the conflict and has been committing most of the massacres)? Maybe at one point the West were hopeful for the new government being yet another one of their puppets and tried pre-emptively bribing them with awards, but it is clear they have long since turned on them. And please tell me when has Balkanization ever benefited a country?

This is just more divide and conquer by the imperialists. If Ethiopia is fractured along ethnic lines like Yugoslavia the result will be equally disastrous, devastating for the economy, triggering decades of conflict and ending with a bunch of Western puppet regimes/military bases like the Balkan pseudo-statelets surrounding and choking the core of the old multi-ethnic state to ensure it never re-constitutes itself.

Currently Ethiopia is big enough to be a significant regional power and a great economic partner for China in the region, hence why the US wants to destroy it or bring back the divisive and totally US subservient TPLF to power. A strong central government in this case is a good thing, it means less chances for the US to drive a wedge between the regions, playing them off against each other and weakening the country as a whole.

There is not and there will never be a legitimate reason to break up Ethiopia, it is the only African country whose borders are (mostly… the European colonialists still managed to steal their coastline and turn it into protectorates and colonies that they could control) not a result of European colonialism. It is one of the only non-artificially constructed states on the continent with a history going back more than a thousand years.


Of course they want to balkanize Ethiopia. Their TPLF puppets failed to get this done for them but they still can’t let go of the obsession with destroying the one African nation that defied European colonialism.


Yeah what’s up with Ben Norton renaming Multipolarista? The new name sucks, it’s boring and over long and not memorable at all… Really bad branding. Did he not have anyone with some understanding of basic marketing to tell him not to do it? Multipolarista was way more inspired.



The Chinese MFA has also posted this same piece on its website: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/202303/t20230329_11050809.html

Along with another good one: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/202303/t20230320_11044481.html

In addition China has released this comprehensive report on the deplorable state of human rights in the US: http://ge.china-embassy.gov.cn/eng/xwdt/202303/t20230328_11050361.htm

And of course remember the famous report on US hegemony: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/202302/t20230220_11027664.html

They have definitely been getting more vocal about exposing the US’s hypocrisy lately and i am loving it.


However many they had at the beginning of this year, they will start having a whole lot more now after the Xi-Putin meeting where i am almost certain that unofficially they discussed military technology transfer from Russia to China in particular in fields like hypersonic missiles, air defense and submarines where China is comparatively lagging behind.


For what it’s worth, Lenin calls the “Glass of Water” theory “completely un-Marxist”: https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1920/lenin/zetkin1.htm

I think he comes off as a bit of a prude in this. Maybe Kollontai sometimes goes a little too far but on the whole I think she has a much more progressive position on the topic of sex than Lenin does.



I especially appreciate comrades from outside the collective West since they help us break out of the Eurocentrism that infects virtually all anglophone spaces online.



I don’t think MLMs would have been familiar with Narodnik literature, it would have been way before their time and far too niche a subject to become widely known about outside of Russia. Also i get the impression that they didn’t really read all that much, otherwise they would have read Lenin’s scathing critiques of that sort of utopian peasant socialism.

Now personally i tend to be more sympathetic toward the Narodniks than i am toward MLMs because at least back then you could argue they didn’t know better. Leninism didn’t exist yet, and in a way they were an important precursor to Russian communism. Even Lenin’s brother i believe was associated with them.

Lenin and other like-minded Russian revolutionaries ended up embracing Marxism and scientific socialism after analyzing and coming to terms with why the Narodniks failed. It was an important learning experience. The problem with MLMs is that they don’t learn from past mistakes, they are too dogmatic, refuse to adapt and instead keep reinforcing failure.

They, like the Narodniks before them, have more in common with anarchists than with Marxist socialists.


It’s already being used to further attack and dehumanize trans people. We are now firmly in an equivalent to the satanic panic of the 1980s.

Where are all the human rights organizations that love to bash non-Western countries now that entire states are becoming physically unsafe for trans people? Not to mention the regular occurrence of mass shootings that everyone for some reason has gotten used to as the new normal? If this was happening in Russia or China we would never hear the end of it.

American society has become psychopathic. The Marxist concept of alienation isn’t just academic/theoretical, it does real world harm!


The reactionary segment of the peasantry maybe? Lenin pointed out that the peasantry unlike the proletariat was not inherently a progressive class and thus needed proletarian leadership. The closest comparison i can think of considering the very ideologically confused nature of the Khmer Rouge: they remind me of the Russian Narodniks of the late 19th century. Democratic Kampuchea probably resembles the kind of society they would have built had they succeeded in overthrowing the Tsars and then having no scientific socialist ideology to guide them. But i admit this is a subject that i am not too well versed in.


“Asteroid impacts are the market’s universe’s way of correcting imbalances.”



From a purely aesthetic point of view i would prefer it if the blue carpet strips were rotated 90 degrees to go from front to back instead of side to side, but i understand that that would conflict with their actual practical function.


Your best bet is probably to search for a Soviet made documentary and hope you can find subtitles for it.


We are going to see more disparaging accusations and mudslinging leveled at anyone who dares challenge the war propaganda as the imperial decline progresses and the desperation sets in. They will try to discredit anti-imperialists with whatever spurious claims they can cook up. They will try to divide the anti-war left and have us turn against each other, taking out first and foremost those who are the most effective at advocating for the anti-imperialist position, those who pose the biggest danger to the mainstream propaganda narrative’s mission of getting the people on board for a world war with China and/or Russia.

And yes they will use ostensibly “leftist” even “Marxist” groups or individuals to do this. Cointelpro has never stopped operating, and now it is ramping up again.


Thank you for this rant, i could not have expressed it better myself!


Vertical farming is more energy intensive because it requires artificial light and vertical water transport. There is also the question of acquiring sufficient fertile soil and nutrients. Fertilizer takes energy to produce. Ultimately this becomes not a question of surface area but of sustainable and large scale energy production. If you have sufficient energy and enough raw materials you can expand farming by many orders of magnitude. Without those things you need to keep clearing more and more land and rely on sunlight which is not as dependable at higher latitudes.


I have always liked the idea of communal child rearing from a rational perspective, but even in the early USSR at a time when the revolutionary enthusiasm was at its strongest that was seen as kind of a radical proposal. A lot of people, even many who are otherwise solid communists and devoted to the socialist project will have a visceral resistance to the idea of replacing the traditional family with a fully communal model.

You need to think about how such a transition would be achieved and how to convince people to adopt it. I’m not saying it can’t be done or that it shouldn’t be done, but that it’s something that probably only a very stable communist society can achieve where the people have a great degree of trust in the communal way of doing things are are prepared to make a radical break with the traditional concept of the family.

Historically this was seen as an ultra-left idea and eventually fell out of favor entirely in all socialist states. It would have been too destabilizing politically as trying to make it happen would have provoked much resistance at a time when the situation was precarious enough already. Sometimes revolutionary enthusiasm gets ahead of what is possible given current conditions, and that is counterproductive and dangerous.


Phobias are not rational. You can’t just tell someone who probably has some sort of fear of heights to just “get over it”.



This is an admission that the so-called “progressive movement” is in an absolutely pathetic shape.

But we already knew that. The final nail in its coffin was when Bernie betrayed the workers and sided with the warmongers in the liberal establishment.

In a way this is a good thing because it opens up space for a real anti-imperialist left to emerge. The socdems have let down their masks and everyone can see them for who they really are.


Anyone who still thinks the Iraq war was a real war needs to read this.



Yeah, what happened to his daughter is awful, she was actually doing some really good work as a journalist, advocating for and helping the people of the Donbass.


I agree about the “heartland” theory being silly, it seems too ad hoc and esoteric. I don’t see any materialist justification for it.

The funny thing about it is that despite a lot of Russian nationalists having picked up on it (because as you say it strokes their egos), it actually originated in the West and has been used by Western imperialists to form their agenda. I find that quite amusing.

As for Dugin, i think you’re spot on about his irrelevance and about comparing him to Jordan Peterson. I personally just can’t take anyone seriously who claims to have invented a “fourth political theory” when there isn’t even a third, despite what fascists like to claim. The simple fact is that there can only be two “political theories” because there are only two classes, the bourgeois and the proletarian. Fascism and liberalism are just different manifestations of the same bourgeois ideological framework.


What would you criticize about this article, if anything? It is too conspiratorially inclined or is it mostly correct? I have always been somewhat skeptical of the "heartland" theory, and i am wary when it comes to analyses by non-Marxists, especially when the focus is on individuals and shadowy groups rather than systems. Something here bothers me... but i can't quite put my finger on it.
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That is true but since there is no way to turn back the historical clock on this we may as well just call it all capitalism, albeit having went through different phases of development, each one being the logical and inevitable outcome of the social and material conditions and contradictions created by the previous one. Barring some kind of catastrophic global societal collapse the general trend of development in the world can only be forward towards higher forms of social and economic organization. And the only step forward from capitalism is socialism.


If there is such a thing as “whataboutism” then it would be bringing up something entirely unrelated to the topic of discussion. It is not “whataboutism” however when you point out rampant hypocrisy and how they are guilty of much worse instances of the exact same thing they are accusing others of. That shows that they are entirely engaging in bad faith and that they do not really care about the issue. In which case there is no point in continuing to argue with such a dishonest interlocutor.


My position is that we need not necessarily participate in anti-war initiatives organized by reactionaries, but we also should not oppose or denounce said initiatives (of course in all other contexts we should continue to ruthlessly criticize and fight against those reactionaries!) since that does not benefit us in any way. We should build and organize our own anti-war front just as Lenin advocated for communists to build their own party and not join bourgeois ones. Communists must not allow themselves to be subsumed into either liberal or reactionary politics, we must remain separate and advance our own revolutionary and unapologetically proletarian, class conscious views and agenda because no other groups will. Occasionally we can work with non-communist groups on an issue by issue basis but that is purely tactical.


The worst part is where he says women should not do a man’s job or even receive a man’s education. That goes totally opposite to what Lenin and the Bolsheviks were saying. One of the most famous phrases the Bolsheviks used to advocate for women’s equality was: “Every kitchen maid must learn to run the state.” Obviously Gaddafi’s views on gender/family policies are not acceptable for a communist.


I think we shouldn’t reject any anti-war initiative no matter which side it comes from. Ultimately anything that weakens and discredits the imperialist war machine is beneficial to the revolutionary cause. This doesn’t mean we join forces with reactionaries, but that we don’t actively fight against any initiative that for whatever reason advocates against NATO and its global warmongering, even when some very shitty people are involved who have a much different agenda than ours. Let them do their thing while we focus on our task which is to build our own principled working class anti-war, anti-imperialist movement. Wasting our energies denouncing reactionaries who are cynically trying to co-opt popular anti-war sentiments not only weakens the anti-war cause, it also discredits us in the eyes of the masses and is a boon to the reactionaries. If we think we can do better than them and build a more effective anti-war front (and i think we absolutely can because we are coming at this from a principled perspective and not from political opportunism) then we should just do it and not knock other anti-war voices down.

This might be an unpopular opinion but i say it because i really think we have to learn to think and act more strategically and resist the liberal impulses we may have for virtue signaling and purity tests. It is to the benefit of the class enemy that we waste our time constantly criticizing but never actually doing.



See the links in my comment on your other post about this. Watch the coverage that the NewAtlas channel has done on the subject. It is some of the most thorough that you will find out there.


TheNewAtlas channel has done good coverage of the Myanmar crisis going on since the NED backed US puppet government was overthrown. Here are just a few of their videos on the subject:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6DMNwyq_C0A https://youtube.com/watch?v=pHIVwGOj0Vw https://youtube.com/watch?v=AOf7ShaDUc4 https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y9h6L1pRR8w https://youtube.com/watch?v=hR5nvrPPRSM https://youtube.com/watch?v=VfxfIXGmY8o https://youtube.com/watch?v=DaOd7UaJ5FY

In particular you should watch the last two since they explain how this fits in the bigger picture.

From a Marxist perspective the military government is not ideal, but if it does not let itself be turned into a proxy against China it is preferable to the “liberal” opposition.


I was thinking more like they would plant bombs in the factories and detonate them if PLA troops try to take them.


Excellent critique. I had some of the exact same thoughts. Of course the comments about Stalin immediately threw up red flags for me that this author is still buying into a fair bit of anti-communist propaganda. Also, thank you for finding the right words to describe what was bothering me so much about the underlying assumptions of this article. I called it idealism but really it’s more like you said a sort of “benign” orientalism or liberal racism. What is entirely missing from it is proper class analysis.


Russia was unprepared both economically and militarily in 2014 for a full scale confrontation with the collective West. And it was still holding out hope that the Minsk agreements would be fulfilled. Both of those factors had changed by 2022.

I hope you’re right about Taiwan. I for one don’t see the US giving it up without a fight. At minimum i believe they will try to destroy as much of Taiwan’s economic potential as possible if it becomes clear that reunification is inevitable.

The Banderites are doing the same to the parts of Eastern Ukraine which it is clear they cannot hold on to: they are demolishing everything that they can’t have. The US will likely destroy Taiwan’s semiconductor industries one way or another before they fall into Beijing’s hands.

Not that that will matter. Mainland China’s own semiconductor manufacturing will by then have already caught up with or surpassed Taiwan’s.


Have you read Gaddafi’s Green Book? It’s not Marxist socialism and there is a fair bit in it that is idealistic and even reactionary at times, but it is interesting nonetheless.


What do you think of this essay? For me personally on the one hand i can see it contains a lot of idealism and is not exactly written from a Marxist materialist perspective, but on the other hand i think there is a lot there that westerners, especially liberals and ultra-leftists, would do well to start thinking about more.
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When I was little I went to school and I learned what’s mine and what’s yours. And when all had been learned, it seemed to me that wasn't all. For I had no breakfast myself, but others they had plenty to eat, And thus in the end I did learn why they call him the class enemy. And I learned why and how come there’s a rift throughout this world. And it stays between us as rain falls down from the sky to the earth. And they told me: if I am good, then I’ll soon be just like them. But I thought: If I’m their sheep now, a butcher I’ll never become. And I saw that some among us took and swallowed their bait. And when theirs was the lot that was mine and yours, they wondered at their fate. As for me, I wasn’t astonished, I’d realized it early on: The rain flows downward in torrents and doesn’t flow skyward at all. I heard the drums beat in nineteen-fourteen and all of them spoke as one: "Now’s the time to be waging wars for a little place in the sun." And many hoarse voices promised us heaven and earth in good time. And fat-bellied bigwigs shouted: "Don’t give up the fight now!" And we thought: it’s a matter of hours, then we’ll have this and that. But the rain once more fell downwards, and for four years we bit the dust. And suddenly they told people: "We're going to have a Republic! And in it all men will be equal, no matter if they’re thin or fat." And those feeble from hunger and ill were never as hopeful as then. But those who’d eaten their fill, were full of hope like them. And I said, "something's not right here" and was filled with dismal doubts: It doesn’t add up that the rain is supposed to flow up, not down. They gave us ballots for voting, we turned our weapons in. They gave us words of promise, and our rifles we gave them. And they said: "those who understand it, they will now help us and assist." We should just get to work and they would take care of the rest. I let them move me again and stayed quiet as they had asked and thought: that’s so nice of the rain that it wants to flow upwards now. Not much later I heard it said that now all is put right and done. If the lesser evil we now supported, The greater good would soon come. And we swallowed that cleric Brüning, as Papen filled us with concern. And we swallowed the Junker Papen so it wouldn’t be Schleicher’s turn. And the cleric gave it to the Junker, and the Junker to the general. And the rain was falling downward, and the flood was biblical. While our ballots we were clutching, they closed down factories. While outside the dole office sleeping, we left them all in peace. We heard such promising phrases: "Keep calm! Be patient and wait! After a big downturn comes an even bigger boom!" And so I told my colleagues: "Thus speaks the class enemy! When he speaks of a good time, it’s his time that he means." Rain can’t suddenly fall up, being benevolently inclined, but what it can do is: it can stop once the sun comes out and shines. One day I saw them marching, with new flags, intrepidly. And many among us saw and said: "There’s no more class enemy." But I saw in their vanguard many a familiar face and I heard them once more, yelling in that old drill sergeant voice. Still, through the flags and the festivities, day and night the rain poured down. And those who could all feel it were those lying on the ground. They diligently practiced shooting and spoke loudly of enemies. They pointed wildly across the border But who they meant was you and me. For us and they, we are foes and only one of us can win this war. For they live off of us and will die if we don’t slave for them anymore. And it is for that very reason you mustn’t let it astound if they throw themselves at us, like the rain does throw itself upon the ground. Those of us who starved to death, It was in battle that they died. And for those who died in our midst, the word murder can be applied. The one who was taken by gunmen had not liked starving to death. The one whose jaw they kicked in had asked for a piece of bread. The one whom they promised the bread is now hunted as their prey. The one they bring in the coffin had dared words of truth to say. And all who believed when they said they were friend and not foe had thus also expected rain to fall up from below. For we are class enemies, whatever they all may say: Those of us who didn’t dare to fight dared to starve another day. We’re class enemies, drummer! This can't be covered up by your noise! Factory owner, general and junker — our enemy, that’s you! None of this will be made right, and none of it repaired! The rain doesn’t fall to the sky, we don’t ask it to rise through air. Your painter may ceaselessly paint, this rift won’t be painted over! One must yield and the other one stays, it is either me or you. And whatever I have yet to learn, these are my ABCs: Nothing I’ll ever have in common with the cause of the class enemy. No word you will ever find that can unite both you and me! The rain falls down from on high. And you are my class enemy. [Original German lyrics by Bertolt Brecht]
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Thesis: Belief in white European supremacy is part and parcel of the critique of the USSR/socialism.
We all know that anti-communism is at the core of fascism. This short thread proposes an interesting corrolary: much of the anti-Soviet attitude found in formerly socialist Eastern European countries, and ultimately perhaps even the motivation of the significant section of the population that did not stand to gain materially yet still supported the restoration of capitalism and the fracturing of the USSR is resentment at having been excluded from the West's white supremacist global hegemony. This infatuation with the supposed "superiority" of the West, the internalized inferiority complex and desire to be included among the "white" Europeans as opposer to the "inferior, barbaric asiatics" is deeply embedded in the collective consciousness of especially countries like Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics, but also Romania and much of the Balkans. The author of the thread cites Georgia as an example with which they are personally familiar, and i can only confirm that i have experienced the same attitudes and self-hatred among Romanians. Would others who have experience with the cultural attitudes of these countries agree with this thesis?
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A timely article since there has been some confusion around here among some comrades as to what "Wagner" actually is
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A reminder that the term "totalitarianism" is nonsense, it is a liberal invention designed to propagate liberal ideology and discredit communism.
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Danny Haiphong and Radhika Desai discuss the state of the world economy, the history of neoliberal capitalism and more.
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How modern imperialism operates - a thread on debt, finance, the US, the Arab Spring and China
*In 1916, Lenin called imperialism the highest stage of capitalism.* *In 1965, Kwame Nkrumah said that neocolonialism is the last stage of imperialism.* *Both are obsolete. Since 1990, we’ve been in a new, even higher stage.*
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The End of Western Civilization | Michael Hudson
One of last year's best articles. Michael Hudson provides some much needed historical perspective.
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*By the results of 2022, Vladimir Zelensky has achieved some unique and mostly tragic milestones. He has succeeded in reducing the population of Ukraine to the level it had 100 years ago, placed his country in the status of indentured servant to the West, and deprived his citizens of the most elementary comforts of modern civilization. What further “successes” can we expect Zelensky to achieve in his current position?*
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Some machine translated quotes from the article: *The film "Red Project", released by the channel "Russia" for the centenary of the USSR, broke television ratings not just because it was perfectly made. It restored historical justice. For the first time in many years, the truth was clearly said: the USSR — is the greatest experiment of our people, the glorious pages of our history, our grand contribution to the development of mankind.* *Since the late 1980s, this idea has been consistently wiped, muffled, and taken away from the info-pol. All Soviet was accepted to be ashamed.* [...] *What was it for? To take away the most precious legacy from us: our great achievements of the 20th century. Plants went bankrupt, resources — were stolen, and at the same time the worst robbery was carried out, to which the defeated countries were subjected. The history of the people was stolen so that the people lost their will to accomplish.* *Inside the country, this propaganda has jammed one simple truth, which, no matter how you hide it, was obvious to everyone: in the Soviet Union, people lived much better than in the "holy 90s". And outside — was preparing the world community for future anti-Russian disinformation campaigns. Today's Russophobia — is an ugly child of anti-Soviet propaganda.* [...] *The paradox is that the more Stalin was scolded in the infopol, the higher his rating among the people grew. The more fiercely they scolded the USSR, the better people treated it.* *New generations — both in Russia and around the world — are all looking closely at the practices of socialism, studying our unique experience. The classic crisis of capitalism, of course, is growing the request for alternative models of state building.* *Today we can admit that anti-Soviet propaganda has failed, despite all the billions pumped there. It was another round of info-war, and we quite successfully survived it.* [...] *Because the USSR — is the source of our strength and inspiration. This is a rich inheritance that we do not have the right to surrender to the enemy. These are the titans on whose shoulders we stand: Gagarin and Kapitsa, Prokofiev and Eisenstein, Lenin and Stalin, Bulgakov and Mayakovsky.* *And these are the ideas of socialism, which are still resonating throughout the world. Our Soviet Union was the only country to be able to satisfy the eternal request for social justice. Today, when super-rich people purposefully doom billions of people to poverty, Soviet experience is simply invaluable.*
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This pretty much sums up where the Russian ruling class is at right now. Their analysis is still muddled mainly due to a lack of dialectical materialism and suffering from frequent bouts of idealism, but it seems at least they understand which way the wind is blowing: the west is in decline while the global south is rising. It remains to be seen how dedicated they really are to the de-nazification of Ukraine. [If you don't speak Russian, use a browser plug-in to translate the page]
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Deng Xiaoping Theory and the Historical Destiny of Socialism
Written at the end of what was in retrospect the height of US imperialist global hegemony and the lowest point for the world socialist movement in a century. Even as socialism suffered major setbacks in the 1990s Deng Xiaoping saw the path ahead clearly, he held true to Marxism-Leninism, set China on the course to becoming a powerful and prosperous socialist society, and explained that the historical destiny of humanity despite twists and turns still lies inevitably toward communism.
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Another older article, a retrospective on the history of the CPC, its trials, tribulations and successes.
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