What I Will by Suheir Hammad

 

What I Will
by Suheir Hammad

I will not  dance to your war drum. 
I will not lend my soul nor my bones to your war drum. 
I will not dance to your beating. 
I know that beat.
It is lifeless.

Secret Exemptions Allowed Speculators to Distort Futures Markets

Communism, Capitalism & Choice: Does our preoccupation with consumer choice obstruct social change?

Haryana - Production stops at Maruti after 21 workers are terminated and suspended

August 29, 2011
Received from Nayan Jyoti

This morning, 29th August, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, IMT Manesar (Plot 1, Phase 3A) terminated 11 workers and suspended 10 more, on flimsy and distorted (read: vengeful and punitive) grounds of ‘indiscipline’ and a supposed go-slow action in production by workers. The company has also imposed a ‘good conduct bond’ (read: humiliation ‘by law’), only after signing which, workers can enter the factory premises. Meanwhile around 500 policemen of Haryana and riot-police have occupied the factory since yesterday evening, with the excuse of ‘preventing violent actions’. This preemptive action totally exposes, again, whose police the state forces are. Accompanying and reinforcing the police, are ‘bouncers’ on the company’s employ, and some 8-10 tough-men who have been bought over by the company from the surrounding village being used to threaten the workers. Apart from the 21 permanent workers, terminated and suspended, everyday around 2-5 casual and contract workers have been terminated since the agreement on the 16th of June.

Tired Of Democracy?

By Gail Omvedt

26 August, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Why are such masses of people (apparently: in our village some came out for a morcha organized by the Maharashtra Navnirman Samiti) following Anna Hazre, when it is now clear that his Lokpal is an authoritarian, centralized and undemocratically pushed proposal?

Several articles, including those by Arundhati Roy and Aruna Roy, have made this clear by now. I can find only one point to disagree with in the otherwise excellent article by Arundhati: that, like the Maoists, the Jan Lokpal Bill seeks the overthrow of the state. It does not. The movement wants to keep the state, in an even more centralized form, but replace its current rulers with a new set. And Ranjit Hoskote’s comment that “Anna Hazare’s agitation is not a triumph of democracy [but] a triumph of demagoguery” deserves to be remembered. The increasingly authoritarian, even fascist forms of activities are disturbing even many of its supporters.

The Rape Of Libya

By Bill Van Auken

26 August, 2011
WSWS.org

Five days after “rebels” entered Tripoli, under the cover of NATO bombing and led by foreign special forces, the abject criminality of imperialism’s takeover of Libya is becoming increasingly evident.

Fighting continues to rage throughout the Libyan capital, whose two million residents have been made hostages of the armed gangs and Western special forces troops that have seized control of the city’s streets.

EROL: Maoist critique of Hoxha’s Comintern orthodoxy

Posted by Mike E on August 28, 2011

Mao Zedong's road of protracted peoples war emerged in opposition to the Comintern's strategy of basing revolution on urban workers and using rural base areas to seize urban areas.

In the last months the EROL archives has posted a rich new body of past communist writings. (EROL is the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-line)
We wish to extend special thanks to Paul Saba, whose work has been tireless and extremely important to both our common ongoing project of communist summation and coming project of communist regroupment.

In the next few days, we will point out some of the remarkable documents now available online.But for the moment we will start here:
Over and over, we have received requests (on Kasama) for reposting a particular document: the Revolutionary Communist Party’s sharp and extensive critique of Hoxhaism.
This 1979 piece on Mao and Hoxha was one of the more effective and powerful polemics made on a number of key questions dividing the international communist movement in the late 1970s — in the wake of the counter-revolutionary events engulfing China after Mao’s death.
We have gotten these requests because the dispute between Maoism and Hoxhaism is one of the sharp historic collision points between creative Marxism and dogmatic Marxism — and because Hoxhaism concentrated a number of arguments for Comintern-era thinking that have maintained power within parts of the international communist movement.
This document is extensive, and we will simply make it available here. It was first published in the RCP’s theoretical journal The Communist #5.
For reasons unknown to us, the EROL chose not to reproduce the section of “Dialectics” — which we regret given the importance of philosophy for our efforts to rebuild a communist movement. (Send us a pdf of this post, and we will make it available here for printing and study.)

* * * * * * * * * * *

Beat back the dogmato-revisionist attack on Mao Tsetung Thought

Comments on Enver Hoxha’s Imperialism and the Revolution

by J. Werner

Introduction

Upon first examining Enver Hoxha’s new book, Imperialism and the Revolution, one is tempted to dismiss it as a petty and shallow hatchet job and refer the reader to the works of Mao Tsetung, which make clear that most of the charges hurled at Mao are simply the worst type of blatant misquotations, distortions and downright lies, and also refer the reader to the many Soviet criticisms of Mao which, while sharing the same method and most of the same arguments as Hoxha, at least have the virtue of a more systematic and well-rounded presentation of the revisionist line.

Enver Hoxha (right) with Joseph Stalin (left) and Molotov (second from right)

However, the current situation in the international communist movement makes such a course impossible to follow, no matter how tempting. The capture of revolutionary China by the capitalist-roaders led by Hua and Teng has led to the capitulation of some erstwhile Marxist-Leninists and the demoralization of many more. The eyes of the international movement have focused on Hoxha and the Party of Labor of Albania in the hopes that amidst the turmoil and confusion in the ranks of communists the PLA would continue to play a leading role in the fight against revisionism. Indeed, Albania’s initial response to the coup in China, riddled though it was with eclecticism and contradictory theses, gave cause for such hope.

But Hoxha and the leadership of the PLA chose a different course–lending the prestige of the PLA (a prestige that, ironically, was gained in large degree because Hoxha had united with Mao and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution at a time when it was under attack from revisionists everywhere) to those who would retreat from the advances forged in the battle against modern revisionism in the past two decades and erect a revisionist political and ideological line based upon sanctifying and raising to the extreme, errors of revolutionaries since the mid-1930s. And all this is done in the name of the “purity” of Marxism-Leninism.

Maoists Return to Power in Nepal

 Barburam Bhattarai  vice Chairman of Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), was on Sunday elected Nepal’s 35th prime minister. The 57-year-old former finance minister defeated his Nepali Congress rival Ram Chandra Poudel by a margin of 105 votes.

Activists Plan Oct 6th Occupation in DC

Gilbert Achcar Asks: Who Are the Libyan Rebels? This is the $1 Billion Dollar

US Libya Intervention Is Aggression

Uprisings in Africa

May 1st, 2011 - Brazilian protest against the Indian State and in solidarity to Indian People

NYC Protest Against Operation Green Hunt and Kashmiri Oppression

FIRE on GreenWatchTV: On the Revolutions in Nepal and India

FIRE Collective on GreenWatch TV from FIRE Collective on Vimeo.

Fast unto Death

Posted by parisar on August 22, 2011

Chile: From Student Protest to National Strike

Posted by onehundredflowers on August 25, 2011

 
This piece comes from Global Alternatives.

The students are part of a broader movement that is calling for the transformation of Chile. In recent months, copper mine workers have gone on strike, massive mobilizations have taken place to stop the construction of a huge complex of dam and energy projects in the Bio Bio region of southern Chile, gay rights and feminist activists have marched in the streets, and the Mapuche indigenous peoples have continued to demand the restoration of their ancestral lands.

An unprecedented and historic movement of citizens is questioning the bases of the economic and political order that were imposed in 1980” by the Pinochet constitution.

Chilean Student Movement Leads Uprising For Transformation of the Country

By Roger Burbach
August 13, 2011

Chile is becoming a part of the global movement of youth that is transforming the world bit by bit—the Arab Spring, the sit-ins and demonstrations in the Spanish plazas, and the rebellion of youth in London.

Weeks of demonstrations and strikes by Chilean students came to a head August 9, as an estimated 100,000 people poured into the streets of Santiago. Joined by professors and educators, they were demanding a free education for all, from the primary school level to the university.

youth riots (rap)

LONDON RIOTERS MENTALITY: 'HUNGER PAINS'

LONDON RIOTS: 'IGNORANCE IS BLISS'

Maoists call for 24-hour shutdown to protest police atrocities

People Of The World, Unite And Defeat The U.S. Aggressors And All Their Running Dogs

Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung

May 23, 1970

[SOURCE: Peking Review (23 May, 1970).]

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A new upsurge in the struggle against U.S. imperialism is now emerging throughout the world. Ever since the Second World War, U.S. imperialism and its followers have been continuously launching wars of aggression and the people in various countries have been continuously waging revolutionary wars to defeat the aggressors. The danger of a new world war still exists, and the people of all countries must get prepared. But revolution is the main trend in the world today.

Revolutionary Sounds: Naxalite by the Asian Dub Foundation

Harpal Brar on Libya

We do not endorse Harpal Brar's viewpoint. But we are posting it because it is worth pondering over.

Where are the Popular Classes and How can the Anti-Corruption Movement be Radicalized?

August 23, 2011


This portmanteau article consists of two contributions on the anti-corruption issue:
1. Where are the popular classes? - Saroj Giri
2. How the Anti-Corruption Movement can be Radicalized - Deepankar Basu
*********

Where are the popular classes?
In Venezuela, when the right-wing upper middle classes attack the progressive government, the popular classes come out in militant defence. Why is this not the case in India?
By Saroj Giri
The ongoing anti-corruption movement is dominated by social-network yuppies, YFE kind of rightist caste-supremacist anti-reservationists and Muslim-haters, Ramdev-Ravishankar followers, people who don’t vote and want Modi’s rule. Right or wrong? Right. It has touched a deep chord with vast sections of the popular classes. Right or wrong? Right.

A Great Opportunity, A Serious Danger

August 24, 2011

The Anna Hazare situation invites two common reactions: many dismiss it as a middle class driven “urban picnic”; and others, notably the mainstream media, describe it as just short of a revolutionary movement to establish “people’s power.” The same divide exists among progressives and those concerned with social change. Strategies differ on the basis of where one stands on this divide. The problem, however, is that neither of these reactions fully reflects the reality of what is happening.

Nepal: Maoists Revive United National People’s Council

Posted by Harry Sims on August 23, 2011

The following is from Republica.

Maoists revive political front, C P Gajurel is head

KATHMANDU, Aug 23: The Maoists have activated their joint political front — United National People’s Council (UNPC) — with CP Gajurel as its head, to mobilize the masses.

The last central committee meeting of the party decided to activate the front that had been lying defunct for the past one year due to internal disputes.

Arundhati Roy: On the Forces Against the Indian State

Posted by Harry Sims on August 23, 2011

The author Arundhati Roy has described herself as "Maoist sympathizer, not ideologue."

Arundhati Roy, noted author of works like the God of Small Things and Walking with the Comrades shares this opinion piece regarding the two forces working to depose the cruel Indian central government: the first a people’s army waging a liberating armed struggle movement with the support of the poorest of the poor and the other a Ghandian moralist movement led by privileged sectors. Posting here is not an endorsement of the views presented.

“you could say that the Maoists and the Jan Lokpal Bill have one thing in common — they both seek the overthrow of the Indian State. One working from the bottom up, by means of an armed struggle, waged by a largely adivasi army, made up of the poorest of the poor. The other, from the top down, by means of a bloodless Gandhian coup, led by a freshly minted saint, and an army of largely urban, and certainly better off people.”

I’d rather not be Anna

While his means maybe Gandhian, his demands are certainly not.

If what we’re watching on TV is indeed a revolution, then it has to be one of the more embarrassing and unintelligible ones of recent times. For now, whatever questions you may have about the Jan Lokpal Bill, here are the answers you’re likely to get: tick the box — (a) Vande Mataram (b) Bharat Mata ki Jai (c) India is Anna, Anna is India (d) Jai Hind.

Is NATO Intervention Illegitimate?

Exposed: MI6 spies paved rebel path to Tripoli battlefront

Lode Vanoost: 'Second colonization of Africa begun, Libya to see sectarian war' [Belgium, RT]

"Real Revolutionaries" Official Video from AP2P (M-1 and Bonnot) feat. General Levy and Paolo Fresu

Sanhati statement on the repressive situation in Jangalmahal

August 21, 2011

We strongly condemn the recent arrests of activists by the central and state government joint security forces in the Jangalmahal region of West Bengal and express our deep concern at the renewed attempt by the state government to prevent access to this area. In the space of the last two weeks two such incidents have taken place: first the arrest in Belpahari of Arun Chakrabarty, an activist associated with the Bandi Mukti Committee and two medical students on 7th August while they were collecting data on adivasis who are imprisoned under various political charges in West Bengal prisons and then that of Dr. Siddhartha Gupta and Abhijnan Sarkar on 14th August while they were returning from attending a medical camp at Patharchakri village. Incidentally, Siddhartha Gupta and Abhijnan Sarkar, who had treated 140 poor adivasi patients in the medical camp the previous day, have been charged under Sec. 151 of the CrPC which is purportedly to “prevent the commission of cognizable offences”.

Regime change by bomber: NATO’s victory in Libya

Posted by Mike E on August 22, 2011

 
by Mike Ely
It has become increasingly likely that the Gaddafi family will now be pried out of power in Libya — as their carefully-constructed apparatus of military and patronage power “attrits.” The key element in their overthrow has been the massive deployment of aerial power by major imperialist countries (including the U.S. and its European NATO allies). It destroyed the Libyan government forces, and increasingly picked off, one by one, any concentrations of military forces willing to stand and fight.
A war of craters

Needed in China: Another revolutionary long march

Posted by Mike E on August 22, 2011

Children at school in a Chinese village. photo taken this year.

We have published previous reports from our correspondent (who half-jokingly adopts the title of Kasama South China Bureau) — those previous reports touched on prostitution, capitalism, and anti-government sentiments.
by Kasama reporter in South China

As they passed through Sichuan province on the Long March, the First and Fourth Front Armies could well have seen schools like the ones shown above in a photo taken this year near Xichang.

China is an enormous country and there are enormous areas of isolated, rural communities of very poor people. The days of mass campaigns to serve the people and send teams to learn from, and help the peasants are long gone.

The particular irony of this impoverished school is that Xichang is also known as “Space City” because of the nearby launch facilities for the Long March rocket.

Condemn the fake encounters carried on by fascist Raman Singh government! Stop Operation Green Hunt - the War on People!

COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MAOIST)

DANDAKARANYA SPECIAL ZONAL COMMITTEE

Press Release

August 20, 2011

Even before the gruesome killing of an adivasi girl Meena Khalkho in a fake encounter gone off from the minds of the people, Raman Singh's fascist government of Chhattisgarh state has carried out one more fake encounter thereby exposing its anti-adivasi face once again unmistakably. Madkami Maasa, the patel (village head) of Chikpal village in Kerlapal area of South Bastar region was picked up by the armed forces from his house and was shot dead on August 6, 2011. Police announced the killing of an unknown Naxalite in encounter and buried his body. Exactly one month prior to this, police had murdered a 16-year-old girl named Meena Khalkho in Sarguja district. She was subjected to gang rape before being killed cruelly. Later, police had claimed as usual that 'a woman Naxalite was killed in encounter'. Earlier in March, the gruesome terror campaign of killing, looting, village-combustion and rape by the state armed forces in Chintalnar area of Bastar region is still fresh in everyone's mind. These acts of terror were widely condemned by the various sections of people of Chhattisgarh and all over India. Supreme Court has ordered the CBI probe into Chintalnar carnage. Despite all of this, the Chhattisgarh government has been carrying on the campaign of murdering adivasis in fake encounters unabatedly.

Throw into the dust bin all the vicious propaganda carried on by the ruling classes and corporate media against the Maoist leadership!

COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MAOIST)

CENTRAL COMMITTEE

Press Release

August 19, 2011

At present the Indian revolutionary movement is facing many hard challenges and advancing through the process of victory-defeat and victory. With the aim of completely wiping out the revolutionary movement, the ruling classes are carrying on a cruel war of suppression with the full support of the imperialists. Particularly by following the LIC strategy formulated by the US imperialists, these fascists are carrying on this counter-revolutionary war. Particularly from 2009 onwards the UPA government in coordination with the state governments is carrying on a countrywide suppressive war in the name of OGH. In this unjust war carried on against the people under the leadership of the Sonia-Manmohan Singh-Chidambaram-Pranab Mukherji gang, their strategy is said to be ‘suppression and development’ (read suppression of the people and development of the corporate houses). As part of this they are using psychological warfare as a strategic weapon and vicious propaganda on revolutionary leadership is a key component in this. Media is being used as one of the main instruments in this psy-war. Media persons who represent corporate sector and pseudo intellectuals who are apologists for the ruling classes' ideology are participating actively in this psy-war through foul-mouthed propaganda.

System Lashes Back Marissa Brown, Witness to Police Murder, Found Guilty of Three Felonies

After an 18-month vendetta by the Winnebago County State's Attorney against Shelia and Marissa Brown—the brave witnesses to the Rockford police murder of Mark Anthony Barmore—the State's Attorney got a conviction against Marissa Brown. On August 17, a jury found her guilty of three felony counts of lying to police in an unrelated case in which she was charged with filing a false report. This case stemmed from an incident when Marissa was in high school and reported that she was held at gunpoint by a man who came into the school bathroom.

Operation Green Hunt

George Jackson: Eyes on Communist Revolution

Posted by onehundredflowers on August 21, 2011

George Jackson was first known nationally through his book of letters  Soledad Brother –  a searing indictment of capitalism and U.S. prisons. However, he felt that his edge had been blunted (i.e. revised away) at the editorial stage. And so he wrote Blood in My Eye — a revolutionary and communist manifesto that defies anyone to misunderstand its purpose.
These works deserve to be engaged by everyone serious about ending forever the criminal  rampage of U.S. imperialism. Here are  a few  quotations from  George Jackson followed by a brief biography. We publish this  in memory of George Jackson’s assassination by prison guards in San Quentin prison, August 1971.
“[The system] also breeds contempt for the oppressed. Accrual of contempt is its fundamental survival technique. This leads to the excesses and destroys any hope of peace eventually being worked out between the two antagonistic classes, the haves and the have-nots. Coexistence is impossible, contempt breeds resistance, and resistance breeds brutality, the whole growing in spirals that must either end in the uneconomic destruction of the oppressed or the termination of oppression.” (Jackson 1972: 182).
“Our purpose here is to understand the essence of this living, moving thing so that we will understand how to move against it.” (Blood in My Eye)

“Revolution is against the law….. I am an extremist, a communist (not communistic, a communist), and I must be destroyed or I will join my comrades in the only communist party in this country, the Black Panther Party. I will give them my all, every dirty fight trick in the annals of war.”  “Classes at War,” Blood in My Eye

“To the slave, revolution is an imperative, a love-inspired, conscious act of desperation. It’s aggressive. It isn’t `cool’ or cautious. It’s bold, audacious, violent, an expression of icy, disdainful hatred! It can hardly be any other way without raising a fundamental contradiction. If revolution, and especially revolution in Amerika, is anything less than an effective defense/attack weapon and a charger for the people to mount now, it is meaningless to the great majority of the slaves. If revolution is tied to dependence on the inscrutabilities of `long-range politics,’ it cannot be made relevant to the person who expects to die tomorrow.” (blood in my eye)

Janamaitri Hospital: A Model for Healthcare in a Future New Nepal

Posted by Rosa Harris on August 20, 2011

Intensive care in Janamaitri Hospital, photo credit: Eric Ribellarsi

From Winter Has Its End
The following is a report about the radical model hospital, Janamaitri. Janamaitri is a model of a new socialist healthcare system in Nepal, and what could become possible throughout the country if the old exploiters and oppressors are overthrown.
By Eric Ribellarsi

Janamaitri Hospital has a way of catching ones attention. It stands as a six-story tall glass building, one of the nicest looking buildings in all of Kathmandu. This is the second time I have visited this hospital.

When I stepped into a clean marble entry-way last year, and explained I was a journalist to the reception, I could tell the receptionist had mixed emotions. Clearly, there was excitement that journalists wanted to talk about this hospital, but there was also a fear. I would later learn that this sprang from a number of attacks by right-wing press on the hospital, claiming the role that the Maoists had in initiating the hospital was a reason to suppress its ability to get funding.

Aug 21: Fight against corruption, Moaist rebels ask Team Anna to join them

August 21, 2011
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/story/fight-against-corruption-maoists-ask-team-anna-to-join-them/1/148641.html

Observers of the Maoist movement said there are serious lessons to be learnt from Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption campaign that has pushed large sections of urban India on to the streets.

They point out that the government’s kneejerk attempt to suppress Hazare’s non-violent agitation through ‘force and deceit’ vindicates the Maoists’ stand on the nature of the Indian state. “If this is how the government handles a peaceful protest, imagine what a sham its offer of peace talks with the Maoists can turn out to be,” G. Hargopal, the Hyderabad University political scientist who was an interlocutor when Maoists had abducted Malkangiri collector R. Vineel Krishna.

Hot August in London: Youth Revolt Shakes England

Revolution #243, August 21, 2011

For four days and nights starting on Saturday, August 8, massive unrest swept through many areas of London and a number of other cities in England, shaking that imperialist country to its foundations. This year has already seen mass uprisings and societal upheaval across the world—in Egypt, throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Spain, Greece, Chile, and elsewhere. Now, images flashed across the globe of hundreds of thousands of youth and others taking to the streets of Britain, exploding in rage at a society that offers them no future except deprivation, brutality, and hopelessness.

Massacre in Norway, and the Rise of Fascist Forces in the Ruling Classes of Western Imperialist Countries

Revolution #243, August 21, 2011

On July 22, Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Christian fascist who described himself as "one of several leaders of the National and pan-European Patriotic resistance movement," set off on a brutal killing spree in the country of Norway. By the end of the day, 77 people were dead, and Breivik was in police custody, reportedly looking forward to the next phase of his "project"—using the killings to publicize and organize around his extremely reactionary ideology.¹

"Radical Revolt" Against a Revolting Culture

Revolution #243, August 21, 2011This is correspondence received from one of a group of the young revolutionary communists who are organizing "Radical Revolt" Against a Revolting Culture, Tuesday, August 30, 4-8 p.m. at the Shrine World Music in Harlem, 2271 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd., New York.

I was very excited to read "A Plan to Shake Up and Wake Up the Campus" in Revolution #242. I would urge anyone who has not yet read this article to do so and anyone who has to re-read it, and people in both categories to study it. I can't nearly do justice in this correspondence to everything that struck me about that piece, but here are a few key things that stood out: I thought the piece spoke with a lot of radical simplicity to the nightmare that humanity is up against and the liberating pathway out of that nightmare that has been carved by Bob Avakian. I felt the article powerfully captured the "agonizing irony of the time we live in": namely, that communist revolution is largely off the map and absent from people's thinking at a historical juncture in which the necessity and possibility of this revolution has never been greater and the leadership for this revolution is there. Very much intertwined with that point, I thought the article really drove home the urgency and stakes of introducing Avakian, his work and leadership to millions of people now as a decisive element in building a movement for revolution, and to the particular role that the new book BAsics—a powerful concentration of Avakian's entire body of work—can play in putting this revolution and its leadership on the map and bringing forward and training a new generation of revolutionaries. And of course, flowing from all this, I thought the piece laid out some really crucial and exciting plans for getting BAsics out into society in a huge way, especially among the youth, starting with the special issue of Revolution on BAsics that comes out August 23 and the printing of 100,000 copies of that issue.

Correspondence from a reader who took part in organizing a Forum on the California Prison Hunger Strike & Torture in U.S. Prisons

Revolution #243, August 21, 2011

Taking inspiration from the courageous actions of the California prison hunger strikers, who came together across racial and other dividing lines from within the depths of the most dehumanizing and degrading conditions, and recognizing the moral imperative to take urgent action commensurate with the heroic stand of the hunger strikers, I took the lead in organizing a Forum on the California Prison Hunger Strike & Torture in U.S. Prisons, held in Chicago on August 4, 2011. Sponsored by the Chicago and Evanston Chapters of World Can't Wait and the Prisoners Revolutionary Literature Fund, and endorsed by the Chicago Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, the Forum brought together a broad range of people deeply concerned about and actively involved in opposing torture in U.S. prisons.

Dalit Dreams of a New Nepal

Posted by enaadoug1982 on August 18, 2011

Tilak Pariyar sits before the faces of martyred Dalits, photo credit: Eric Ribellars

From http://winterends.net/


The following is an interview with Tilak Pariyar, Chairman of the Dalit National Liberation Front of Nepal, an organization associated with the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). We are also attaching the 31 demands of DLF, which were delivered to the interim government in 2007. They give a sennse of the concrete steps that the Maoists plan to take to end the oppression of Dalit people in a New Nepal.

Interviewed by Eric Ribellarsi and Jim Weill
ER: Can you start by explaining what it means to be a Dalit in Nepal?
Dalits are a community within the Hindu religion, based off of the caste system. The caste system was brought here by India, and it has been spread all over the South Asian countries. People have been divided up into castes. The laboring classes have been treated as lower class people.
Laboring people have been called “untouchables.” It means that if you touch a laboring person, you will become impure. This system was adopted by the government , as well, which created all of these laws based off of the caste system. And this has been continuing in our society for about 3000 years. The laboring people are forgotten by this system. For this reason the Dalits have gathered in one party, the Maoist Party, the one party that wants to change the society.

ER: Can you tell us about your program for Dalits in a New Nepal?

San Francisco cell phone net shutdown

London riots coming to the US?

August 2011 Uprising in England - Politicians want peace without justice

Democracy and Class Struggle is pleased to publish this contribution from Comrade Emma Lewis from Brixton.

The uprising which began on the 6thAugust represents the rage of the poor against decades of police violence/racism, unemployment, and poverty.
Tottenham has a long history of police killings (Mrs. Aseta Simms, Colin Roach, Mrs. Cynthia Jarrett, Joy Gardener) and struggle against police violence.

Issues of the Rights Movement in West Bengal: An Insider’s Report

http://sanhati.com/articles/4009/August 15, 2011
By Ranjit Sur

Today is 15th August. India’s Independence day. Today’s news papers have reported an incident from Junglemahal of West Bengal. Two Kolkata-based rights activists, Dr S. Gupta - a MBBS doctor and A. Sarkar- a Research Scholar with Jadavpur University, were arrested in Belpahari area of West Medinipur. They were going to attend the inauguration ceremony of a Health Centre to be run by the Peoples Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA).

On 7th August, in a similar incident, a Kolkata-based Bandi Mukti Committee activist, A. Chakraborty, and two medical students were arrested in Belphari while collecting data on political prisoners to help them move their bail applications.

The Red Pamphlet [A]

Date: April 8, 1929
Transcription/Source: www.shahidbhagatsingh.org
HTML Markup: Mike B. for MIA, 2006
Copyright: © Shahidbhagatsingh.org. Published on MIA with the permission of Shahidbhagatsingh.org and Shahid Bhagat Singh Research Committee.

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On the 8th April, 1929, the Viceroy's proclamation, enacting the two Bills, was to be made, despite the fact that the majority of members were opposed to it, and had rather rejected in earlier.

THE HINDUSTAN SOCIALIST REPUBLICAN ARMY (NOTICE)

It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear, with these immortal words uttered on a similar occasion by Valiant, a French anarchist martyr, do we strongly justify this action of ours.

Without repeating the humiliating history of the past ten years of the working of the reforms (Montague-Chelmsford Reforms) and without mentioning the insults hurled at the Indian nation through this House-the so-called Indian Parliament-we want to point out that, while the people expecting some more crumbs of reforms from the Simon Commission, and are ever quarreling over the distribution of the expected bones, the Government is thrusting upon us new repressive measures like the Public Safety and the Trade Disputes Bill, while reserving the Press Sedition Bill for the next session. The indiscriminate arrests of labour leaders working in the open field clearly indicate whither the wind blows.

In these extremely provocative circumstances, the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, in all seriousness, realizing their full responsibility, had decided and ordered its army to do this particular action, so that a stop be put to this humiliating farce and to let the alien bureaucratic exploiters do what they wish, but they must be made to come before the public eve in their naked form.

Let the representatives of the people return to their constituencies and prepare the masses for the coming revolution, and let the Government know that while protesting against the Public Safety and Trade Disputes Bills and the callous murder of Lala Lajpat Rai, on behalf of the helpless Indian masses, we want to emphasize the lesson often repeated by history, that it is easy to kill individuals but you cannot kill the ideas. Great empires crumbled while the ideas survived, Bourbons and Czars fell, while the revolution marched ahead triumphantly.

We are sorry to admit that we who attach so great a sanctity to human life, who dream of a glorious future, when man will be enjoying perfect peace and full liberty, have been forced to shed human blood. But the sacrifice of individuals at the altar of the 'Great Revolution' that will bring freedom to all, rendering the exploitation of man by man impossible, is inevitable.

"Long Live the Revolution." ^[B]

Signed,
Balraj ^[C]
Commander-in-Chief

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Transcriber's Notes

[A] This document was primarily written by Bhagat Singh. On April 8, 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt showered copies of the leaflet on the floor of Central Assembly Hall in New Delhi after tossing two bombs into the Assembly Hall corridors.

[B] This phrase (translated from "Inquilab Zindabad!" )became one of the most enduring slogans of the Indian Independence Movement. Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutta repeated the slogan at their June 1929 trial on charges related to the bomb-throwing incident.

[C] "Balraj" was the pen name for the Commander-in-chief of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army, Chander Shekhar Azad.

Aug 15: Center challenges SC order on SPOs

August 15, 2011
http://www.hindustantimes.com/Centre-challenges-SC-order-on-SPOs-files-review-petition/Article1-732957.aspx

The government has moved the Supreme Court asking it to review and recall two crucial clauses of the July 5 order banning Special Police Officers (SPOs) in the anti-naxal operations in states like Chhattisgarh. In the petition, which was filed on Friday, the home ministry sought the
recall of the two paras, 75 (ii) and 76, on the ground that they were against the spirit of the Constitution.

London Youth Rebellion Interview

No Justice No Peace: The Riot is the Rhyme of the Unheared, Let us Begin to Listen by Javaad Alipoor

This article was published a few days ago 3000 people have now been arrested. Democracy and Class Struggle

Five people are dead, more than one thousand in jail and Reuters report that Gaddafi has recognized the Tottenham rioters as the legitimate government of Britain. What the hell is going on?

At the eye of this storm lies the body of Mark Duggan, murdered by the metropolitan police. In the past the cops have been careful to leave what they presumably fell is a “respectful” length of time between political and racial murders, at least so the last can drop out of memory, but the point blank shooting of this young man has come up straight between the beating to death of Ian Tomlinson, so that nicety even, seems of another time.

London's Burning—the revolt of the youth

Revolution #242, August 14, 2011

From A World To Win News Service

We received the following report from A World To Win News Service, and are posting it here because we thought it would be of interest to our readers.

"Mindless violence"—"pure criminality"—"monsters taking over our streets"—the British politicians and media, from the Tories and Murdoch's rabid tabloids to Labour and the liberal BBC, have closed ranks to denounce the tide of unrest sweeping the country's cities. But what is taking place on Britain's streets is a revolt against an oppressive state apparatus that is enforcing an unjust society, an apparatus that has lost much of its legitimacy in the eyes of millions. It is a revolt against state-backed racism and the colonial mentality of the British ruling class towards Black people. It is a refusal by hundreds of thousands of youth to accept a world where they are destitute, with no jobs and no future.

London Events (The BBC will never replay this. Send it out)

Darcus Howe: "I don't call it rioting, I call it an insurrection...of the masses of the people. It is happening in Syria, it is happening in Clapham, it's happening in Liverpool, it's happening in Port-au-Spain, Trinidad, and that is the nature of the historical moment."

We Say NO MORE!

Revolution #242, August 14, 2011

Chicago Police on a Murderous Rampage: 42 people shot

Thirteen. Just graduated from sixth grade. Thirteen. A child becoming a teenager. Thirteen. Summer time fun with family and friends. Thirteen. An evening in the neighborhood, relief from the daytime’s horrid heat.

Thirteen. Shot eight times by Chicago police. Thirteen. Handcuffed at the ankle to a hospital bed. Thirteen. Awake in pain to see a cop there 24/7, the whole time spent recovering from the shooting. Thirteen. Questioned by police in a hospital room without parents or a lawyer there. Thirteen. Charged with felonies because the police shot you.

From Monarchist to Maoist Revolutionary: It’s Right to Rebel

Posted by Harry Sims on August 6, 2011

The following came from Winter Has Its End site. We highly recommend this site to our readers.

“But everyone in Nepal is political. They worry about politics more than they worry about their own bread. They fight all the time. I couldn’t ignore this.”

A member of Nepal's Young Communist League

From Monarchist to Maoist Revolutionary: It’s Right to Rebel

The following memories came from a young Maoist student, Abhik. Abhik rebelled against his father and his whole upbringing to rush off and join the Maoist revolution. This is his story.
My story began where I grew up, in the Terai [the flat plains at the south of Nepal]. Ethnically, I’m not Madeshi. My family came down from mountains when my father inherited property there and became a landlord. He hated communists, would shout slurs condemning them, and would tell me I could never spend time with leftists.
But everyone in Nepal is political. They worry about politics more than they worry about their own bread. They fight all the time. I couldn’t ignore this.

What kind of change will save the planet?

Posted by Harry Sims on August 8, 2011

This article originally appeared on AlterNet and raises important questions about how humanity can survive the looking ecological crises we face today and tomorrow, and what kind of movement will be needed to save the world – and humanity from the logic of capitalist production and consumption. Posting here – as usual – does not imply endorsement of any views presented in this article.

“Global warming is not the sort of thing where you can delay action and say, “OK, when it gets bad, we’ll stop burning fossil fuels,” because the planet’s climate just doesn’t work that way. If we pass certain tipping points that we’re already passing, then global warming will become irreversible even if we stop burning fossil fuels.”

 

Do We Need a Militant Movement to Save the Planet (and Ourselves)?

By Tara Lohan,
August 6, 2011 — Environmental groups are trying to build a critical mass around issues like global warming to inspire public action and encourage legislators to get their heads out of the sand. The Sierra Club is working to block new coal burning power plants, a new coalition is organizing actions against a tar sands pipeline, and folks in West Virginia are sitting in trees in an attempt to halt destructive strip mining. It’s great work, but what if it’s not enough? What if it’s too little, too late? What if we never get enough mass for it to ever reach that critical point?

From police killing to rebellion: Three days in Tottenham

Posted by Mike E on August 7, 2011

 

From BBC article.

London riots: Timeline of violence

People have been left homeless after a night of riots on the streets of Tottenham. Buildings were set alight and shops looted after a peaceful demonstration turned violent. Here is a timeline of what happened.

4 August

18:15 BST - Mark Duggan, 29, is shot dead by police at Ferry Lane, Tottenham.
The death occurs during an operation where specialist firearm officers and officers from Operation Trident, the unit which deals with gun crime in the African and Caribbean communities, are attempting to carry out an arrest.

Clash: London’s Burning (3 x Live!)

Mao Zedong’s philosophical talk: Taking off from the physics of Shoichi Sakata

Posted by kasama on August 6, 2011

 
Available online as pdf on marxistphilosophy.org. The original source is Long live Mao Tse-Tung Thought, a Red Guard Publication. “X’s” replace names and other information omitted original. Shoichi Sakata was a Japanese physicist sympathetic to by dialectical materialism. The article mentioned was a Chinese translation of one which appeared in a Soviet philosophy journal.
This talk is part of a ongoing communist discussion (including Engels’ Dialectics of Nature and Lenin’s EmpirioCriticism) in which developments in science are approached in terms of whether they confirm existing theses of materialist dialectics — i.e. focusing on the philosophical implications of science rather than its discoveries in their own right (including in cases where, like quantum physics, new scientific explorations challenge and potentially develop existing communist philosophy.)
This talk tool place in 1964 — almost half a century ago — so naturally reflects the scientific knowledge and assumptions of that time.

TALK ON SAKATA’S ARTICLE

By Mao Zedong August 24, 1964

Mao Zedong: I have asked you to come here today because I want to look into the article by Sakata [Shoichi]. Sakata says that basic particles are indivisible while electrons are divisible. In saying this, he is taking the stand of dialectical materialism.

The world is infinite. In both time and space, the world is boundless and inexhaustible. Beyond our solar system are numerous stars which together from the Milky Way. Beyond this galaxy are numerous other galaxies. Regarded broadly the universe is infinite: regarded narrowly, the universe is also infinite. Not only is the atom divisible, but so too is the atomic nucleus and it can be split ad infinitum.

China’s Revolution: The little-known history of bare-foot doctors

Posted by Mike E on August 5, 2011

 
Here is a revealing feature of revolutionary history — how socialist revolution made medicine available in a vast and impoverished countryside by relying on the people themselves. Kasama has covered this before, here are two additional pieces that deserve to be shared.
Source: Dunning, Brian. “Mao’s Barefoot Doctors: The Secret History of Chinese Medicine.” Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc., 24 May 2011. Web. 29 Jul 2011. http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4259
Today we’re going to take a look at how Chinese alternative medicine spread into the Western world. Promoters of alternative medicine claim that this ancient wisdom was (and is) in common use throughout China, and the Western world is becoming aware of its value. Skeptics of this position point out that alternative medicine was only used in Chinese rural areas where conventional treatments were not available, and it became popular because it was inexpensive, not because it was effective. The actual history brings some interesting perspective onto both of these points of view.

So let’s go back and visit revolutionary China, around the middle of the 20th century. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward was in full swing, precedent to the Cultural Revolution. At the beginning of this period, most Chinese were one of the world’s isolated populations, to whose doorsteps modern innovations had not yet arrived, much like many Africans, Indians, and Indonesians. They lived largely unaware of what was happening in science and technology, and their worldviews were dominated by local traditions. Medicine was rarely seen by any of these populations; when someone was ill, traditional treatments based on centuries of unscientific beliefs were what was known and applied.

Revolution Interviews Raymond Lotta:

The Debt Ceiling Debate, Global Crisis, and Savage Austerity

Posted August 1, 2011

Revolution: Raymond, we’re speaking just as President Obama and congressional leaders on the Democratic and Republican sides have reached a tentative agreement that would cut trillions of dollars in federal spending in the next ten years. Congress will soon vote on raising the debt ceiling. There are many important questions to get into, but let’s start with some basics. What is the debt ceiling?

Raymond Lotta: The debt ceiling is the limit imposed on how much money the federal government can borrow to finance its spending. Such spending includes military expenditures, programs like Medicaid and Medicare, government administration and salaries, and repayment of principal and interest on debt held by investors in U.S. Treasury securities. When the government spends more than it takes in as revenues, the difference is the deficit. 

Sangharsh : Thousands gather to demand National Development Planning Act

August 3, 2011
Sangharsh Unites Farmers, Labourers, Forest Workers and Adivasis
Thousands Demand National Development Planning Act
Call for a Reversal of 20 years of Failed Neo-Liberal Policies

New Delhi: August 3 – Over 4500 people from around 15 states univocally demanded immediate repeal of the archaic Land Acquisition Act 1894 (LAA) and replacement of it with a comprehensive National Development Planning Act. They vowed never to desert their land to the government or private builders.

They have joined the Sangharsh dharna at Jantar Mantar, where nearly 80 organisations from 15 states have come to raise their issues. They have invited Jairam Ramesh, the Minister of Rural Development, and the proponent the present draft of the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill to come to the dharna and hear firsthand what the farmers, adivasis, dalits and other sections of the people who are land-based have to say about their land.

‘Should not our chairman speak on this?’

Posted by admin on July 30th, 2011

 

(We have got two articles  from Comrade Indra Mohan Sigdel ‘Basanta,’ politburo member of UCPN (Maoist), entitled  ‘The question of building a new type of communist party,’ ‘The International Communist Movement and Nepalese Revolution’. He has focused on many burnings issues regarding to the International communist movement, as well as Nepalese communist movement, especially two line struggle within the UCPN(Maoist) and its consequences. The second one is very interesting. Following extract is very remarkable.

The words like RIM and CCOMPOSA might become today the words of terror for some comrades in our party. Fraternal parties have been raising a lot of questions with our party after we entered into the peace process. Our leadership does not think necessary to reply them rather he is fleeing away from the international debate. Why this? Why our chairman remains tight-lipped when one of the PBMs of our party, who claims ideologically and politically close to chairman, accuses in our party CC meeting that the RCP leader Bob Avakian is a CIA agent and another PBM writes in an article that Bob Avakian is a renegade? Should not our chairman speak on this?

 ’The Next Front’ will post in detail on this issue in the coming issues.  In fact, it is not only the question of  any  PBM and CCM.  We know in Palungtar extended meeting, Prachand himself had raised this issue of stupidity.  And it is not the matter of surprise that Prachand’s followers the stooges, are in the way of their master . The full text of Comrade Basanta’s article has given below:

The International Communist Movement and Nepalese Revolution
The world communist movement, which suffered a serious setback as of the counter-revolution in Russia in 1956, had to suffer another bigger setback of counter-revolution in China after Mao’s demise in 1976. While arriving at the counter-revolution in China, the proletariat that exercised at one time socialism in a one third of the globe reached to such a situation at which there was no single socialist country in the world. It was an awful defeat for the world proletariat. However, the communist revolutionaries, who believe Marxism i.e. the dialectical historical materialism is a guide to action, never got disappointed but taking lessons from such defeats advanced further. The proletariat, which had been struggling against counter-revolution, succeeded to realise two important achievements in 1980s.