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TIRANA, Aug. 10 In May 1987, Dutch photojournalist Piet den Blanken visited communist Albania as part of a travelgroup of fellow comrades.

Despite the prohibition on contact between Albanians and foreign visitors and the ban on taking streetphotos, he managed to take many pictures of Albanians and their daily life under the communist regime.

Thirty years later, his pictures are back to Tirana as part of a travelling exhibition featuring twelve Dutch photographers looking back on the work they made in Central and Eastern Europe between 1979 and 1991.

Albania was one of the most closed countries in Europe until 1990. It was difficult to travel to Albania, similar to the way it is difficult for travel to travel to North Korea. The only way to photograph in Albania was to visit the country as a tourist with a group tour led by an Albanian guide, says photographer Piet de Blanken as quoted by the exhibitions organizers.

De Blanken, now in his 60s, photographed especially early in the morning and late in the day.

During the day, he followed the official group program. In this way, he tried to get another image of the country, an image that was not shown in the official group program. In addition, he was repeatedly brought back by the police to a group and guide because it was not the intention of a westerner to explore and photograph the environment alone.

By the end of the trip, his films and stuff were seized. The Whites were already prepared for the various incidents with the police, so he had given his full shot of precautionary films to a group member. Johan Janse hid the movies in his luggage and took out the country thanks to him to see these photos here.

The 12 Dutch photographers showcased in the travelling The other side exhibition were witnesses of historical moments, such as the emergence of the Polish trade union Solidarnosc in Gdansk in 1980, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Romanian revolution of 1989.

Supported by the Dutch embassy in Tirana, The other side of Albanian communism exhibition will be open at Tiranas National History Museum from August 17 to 30.

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'The other side of Albanian communism' - Tirana Times (subscription)

by Rob Harding

Lets leave the sordid world of Earth behind for a bit, and explore the potential of a concept thats kind of easy to dismiss out of hand.

In his venerable Culture series, Iain M Banks describes a future society based around Minds, unimaginably super-intelligent AIs that control vast ships and space-going habitats, on which a massive collection of alternately hedonistic and depressed lesser-biological beings (assumed to be human, although its never made explicit) live pampered and comfortable lives. The Culture is semi-utopian, although, if it resembles any society, it resembles the US in its relations with other civilisations, The books frequently focus on both the skulduggery necessary to keep the civilisation running and the injustice of being born outside it. Nonetheless, it is a portrait of a society in which humans (probably) are protected, cared for and treated equally through advanced technology.

Because utopias arent easy or fun to write, few societies like the Culture have appeared in fiction before or since. There is one notable version, however, in the form of an oddly idealistic leftie meme: Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.

FALGSC (Sometimes just called FALC, because space is admittedly unlikely and gays apparently arent allowed to be involved in these things) is often an expression of frustration, tempered (especially recently) with a fatalistic sense of humour and understanding that well never get there. In a world that sees Trumps and Assads, Dutertes and Al-Baghdadis, in a world where petty fascist shitheads are coming out of the walls on every continent and fundamentalists grow louder with every day, something as optimistic is impossible. More knowledgeable people scoff that Communism is a flawed system vulnerable to human nature, they delicately refuse to engage with the Gay part and make accusatory comments about entitlement because of the Luxury bit.

However you parse it, FALC and FALGSC are envisaged as post-capitalist utopias.

However you parse it, FALC and FALGSC are envisaged as post-capitalist utopias. As is pointed out in this video, capitalism as a civilisational operating system is starting to run into serious and systemic problems. As such, its time to start planning what society could evolve into, because there are some nasty failure stakes. Traditional extinction is on the table, of course. But, worse, we could end up with a capitalist kleptocracy, like that envisioned in William Gibsons The Peripheral, where only the rich survive the near-apocalypse, or else either a hideous famine-stricken fascist dystopia ruling the starving masses, or a segregated post-oil nightmare.

FALGSC provides an alternative to all this. Its not going to be easy to get to vested interests, human nature and conservatism all stand in the way

Bots are getting smarter and more numerous every day, and, in recent years, even self-taught neural networks have started development a huge step on the road to a self-sustaining AI. Capitalist systems almost always automate to improve efficiency from the stone-age woodcutter assembling an axe to cut more wood, to the self-service checkout in Tescos, theres always a machine to help fewer people do more work. Under a capitalist system, this process is focused on profit. This is a problem our unemployment crises worldwide are bad enough, and in many countries birth rates are still increasing. People are living and working longer, making it harder for the generations after them to get jobs, even without the economic inequality thats developed alongside that. Unemployed people can create big problems even if youre the kind of heartless Tory bastard who doesnt care about humans being starving to death the Arab Spring is partly attributable to massive unemployment rates and stunted labour markets in many Middle Eastern countries.

If you think robots cant do your job, youre being naive. Yes, even repair other robots. Even create art. All of it. Image credit: Wikipedia Commons.

Traditional capitalist automation only makes this much worse robots and bots are much cheaper to run than humans, so even businesses that want to reject them and hire only humans are dooming themselves to obsolescence and rapid undercutting. Automation hasnt started to bite properly yet, and already its predicted that one in three jobs are at risk within the next twenty years. Within my lifetime, we could be looking at a society where its no longer economical to hire human workers for 90% of the jobs out there.

Universal Basic Income is a potential patch to this problem, but its a limited one and its unaffordable for many of the economies where mass automation will bite hardest the manufacturing-heavy developing countries and the industrialising third world. What happens when a third of a billion Chinese workers are out of a job thanks to automation? What happens to Indias already high unemployment rate when the robots come for everyones jobs?

Tarir Square, February 2011. Economic problems are believed to have played a key role in the Arab Spring. Image credit: Wikipedia Commons.

Worse still, under a capitalist system, those that own the machines (free of the constraints of having to support a workforce) will be able to become extremely wealthy. With the natural tendency of the wealthy to want to pay as little tax as possible, and with nearly everyone else relying on universal basic income to survive (assuming a fully functional semi-universal UBI system can be implemented at all, against heavy ideological opposition from hidebound conservatives the world over), taxation becomes almost useless. We then end up in a situation where governments cant pay for themselves, or the potentially billions of unemployed, because no-ones hiring any more and the hyper-efficient automated industrial base cant sell its products because no-one can afford them. (Or maybe the new auto-industrialists will consent to paying 95% taxes and somehow keep the whole system afloat by themselves which would raise a dozen ethical questions if it wasnt blatantly unrealistic.)

FALGSC provides an alternative to all this. Its not going to be easy to get to vested interests, human nature and conservatism all stand in the way (and what the hells their plan for this? I suspect it runs along the lines of fuck you, got mine, like it usually is.). Join me next week to explore some of the winding, difficult roads that might lead to the promised land of Fully Automated Luxury Gay (Space) Communism. Its more practical than youd think.

Featured image credit: James Vaughan, Flickr.Text reads Soviet anthem is our triumph in space!

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THE ROAD TO FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY GAY SPACE COMMUNISM: PART 1 - Norwich Radical (blog)

Chinese boyband TFBoys' song "Go!AMIGO" is a big hit in China this summer. VCG/VCG via Getty Images hide caption

Chinese boyband TFBoys' song "Go!AMIGO" is a big hit in China this summer.

The first words of the hit song "Go!AMIGO" are sung in three languages: English, Spanish and Chinese. Its music video shows the three teenage members of TFBoys China's hottest boy band gathering friends for a game of baseball.

It all seems pretty innocent. But there are calculated reasons behind the song's linguistic flair, the video's focus on baseball and even the band itself: "This video is proof that Communist Party propaganda is evolving," says cultural critic Zhu Dake, who teaches at Shanghai's Tongji University.

He says the TFBoys are the latest example of a pop group engineered by a company whose aim is to champion the values of China's Communist Party. The "TF" in the band's name shares an acronym with Time Fengjun, a Beijing entertainment company that selected the boys for the group, writes its songs and produces its videos.

"This video is interesting," says Zhu as he watches the video for "Go!AMIGO." "It features baseball, a sport we don't play. It's American, so it's aspirational. But the song's message is about teamwork and serving the collective communist values. Usually, China's state propaganda is filled with dreary platitudes concocted by government workers with low IQs. But this is very clever."

"We rely on each other," the TFBoys sing in "Go!AMIGO." "It's so magical to have you along the way. We'll soon reach our glittering dreams."

TFBoys fan Ren Jiaying, a 16-year-old high school junior, says the song speaks to her. Attending Chinese high school is full of pressure, she says, and the band's music reminds her that she's not alone.

"They're the same age as me, and I feel like they're with me no matter what I do," she says of the members of TFBoys. "I'm not good at chemistry, but then one day I saw a video of them reciting periodic tables between photo shoots. I feel like we're making progress together."

Ren is among tens of millions of young fans who follow the TFBoys' social media feed religiously. It's an enormously popular feed: When bandleader Wang Junkai posted a note to fans on his 15th birthday to Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media platform, it was shared more than 355 million times the most of any Weibo post ever.

Zhu says most of these fans live in the hundreds of cities that make up rural China. "Kids in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai dream of leaving China for America or Europe they don't care about this kind of band," says Zhu. "But rural kids won't ever get that chance, so this song provides them with dreams of playing a foreign sport in a modern, fashionable China. But who's going to play baseball with them?"

Zhu points out that other TFBoys songs including a modern revamp of the 1960s communist classic "We Are The Heirs Of Communism" show how the band is being used to promote the government's agenda.

Gao Ling, the 31-year-old manager of the TFBoys' Shanghai fan club, admits the band is promoting communist values to young people in a new, fashionable way. "But Chinese society is like this," Gao says. "We need to support our government, and these boys have been taught to be patriotic in school, so they naturally promote communist ideals. There's nothing wrong with going with the flow that's perfectly normal. They're showing a positive and bright path. They would never criticize society or government."

That's because, Gao points out matter-of-factly, "China doesn't yet have freedom of speech."

Original post:
TFBoys' 'Go!AMIGO' Is A Summery Slice Of Pop Propaganda - NPR

True socialism has never been tried. That would kill a country instantly instead of slowly weakening it.

Could someone very slowly and carefully explain to me what a buttered roll is?

Coconuts grow on deserted islands because thats the only place anyone would be tempted to eat one. So what kind of fruit does this tree have? Its a brown hairy ball full of wax. Can can trees have mental problems?

So before today, did anyone else know you could put butter on a roll and eat it? I just used rolls as something to chuck at squirrels.

Most action movies are cheering on bad guys getting shot. I guess the more grounded in reality, the more problematic that becomes. Taken was kind of in that mold, and it was very popular. At the cinema, we tend to like the simple, unapologetic solution to evil.

Is a poem written on a statue binding law? Before you answer, know that the statue is very very big.

Hes a father who after an unspeakable tragedy no longer cares if SJWs come after him en masse. Its Bruce Willis in Problematic Wish. You cant just gleefully gun down thugs without being contemplative about the underlying socioeconomic concerns! Try and stop me.

Considering the record, if you still support Communism over Capitalism, you absolutely, positively do not care about famine or the poor. With the record of Capitalism versus Communism on famine, thats like comparing a prime rib dinner to a shotgun to the groin.

Difference between Nazi and Communist is when you say how horrible Nazis have been, they dont say, Well, real Nazism has never been tried

Really, though, who cares about the NYT? When was the last time they influenced anyone who wasnt already a mindless left-wing partisan?

The difference between a prophet and a scientist is that there are more specific qualifications to being called a prophet. Wed all be much smarter if journalists were required to replace scientists say with some guys say. Then youd ask, Who are these guys and why should I believe them? Questions some people think the term scientist answers when it doesnt.

Guys, come on. Keep quiet on spoilers for the next 40 years while Im waiting for George R.R. Martin to finish the books.

NYC having best pizza sounds like a dumb urban legend. You can just copy whatever recipes they have and make it the same in any other city. Same for bagels.

Isnt limiting the acceptable areas of discussion more anti-science than anything else?

So is Google even going to attempt to refute what the guy said or are they just going to fire him?

Whoever thought promoting diversity and tolerance would so often involve screaming, Burn the witch!?

Looking like 2020 will again be an easy choice between a cartoonish, moron buffoon and people who will constantly lie and try to destroy you.

Theres a hotline to call to report any nuclear wars you see.

The North is definitely my least favorite of the Koreas.

Im all for tolerance as long as its for things I approve of.

What struck me about the Google memo was how earnest it was. He honestly thought he was going to foster a discussion. He thought response would be Heres where youre wrong and where your biases are blinding you. Instead it was You hate diversity! Fired! He comes off as this poor, naive guy who foolishly believed people who disagreed with you had other settings than Crush! Kill! Destroy! Lesson learned for other Google employees: Stick to quietly seething.

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Random Thoughts: Socialism, Communism, and Google - IMAO (satire)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Neglecting the evils of communism? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Has anyone else observed a striking pattern in The New York Times recently? The newspaper has hosted a series of fond, nostalgic recollections about the good old days of 20-century communism the optimism, the idealism, the moral authority. and more »

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Neglecting the evils of communism? - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette