Tuesday 31 January 2012

Matt McGinn - Ballad of John MacLean

Outrage over gallantry award for Chhattisgarh cop

This cop was rewarded for the "right" reason, that is , serving the reactionaries and that is what they are supposed to do!

Arundhati Roy, Anuradha Ghandy, and 'Romantic Marxism'

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/dmello250112.html
by Bernard D'Mello

This is the full-text of the introductory remarks made by the author at the Fourth Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Lecture delivered by Arundhati Roy on 20th January 2012 at St Xavier's College, Mumbai.

I woke up this morning to the chirping sounds of the swallows. Arundhati Roy seems to have brought in those love-birds that come in to Mumbai at this time of the year from the cold environs of the North. The lively spirit of Anuradha Ghandy (Anu, as she was fondly known) is all around us -- that picture of hers reminds me of one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs, "Forever Young". We have here with us Anu's mother -- comrade Kumud Shanbag. Parents abiding by Hinduism usually give their daughters away at the time of marriage in a ritual called kanyadaan. Comrades Kumud and Ganesh Shanbag, rational and progressive, broke with this humiliating tradition; they raised their daughter Anu (Janaki) to decide what she wanted to do with her life and she joined the Revolution (Kranti). One might call what she didkranti-daan, though, I think, daan (donate) is not the right word for it. TheKrantikari Adivasi Mahila Sanghatan (KAMS) is justifiably proud of Anu (Janaki). Not long ago, when Arundhati Roy was walking with these comrades, they proudly showed her a photograph of Anu that they were carrying -- she's dressed in fatigues, an olive green cap with a star on it, rifle slung over her shoulders, and smiling, as always.

TIPS FOR TIM TEBOW

tips-for-tim-tebow-en.html

By Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

DOWNLOAD POSTER OF THIS ARTICLE (PDF, 17x22")

Tim Tebow, quarterback for the Denver Broncos in the National Football League, is being widely, and seemingly endlessly, promoted—as an icon not only in the realm of sports but much more broadly. I have followed sports, including football, for many decades now, and I cannot recall ever witnessing anything like this. In a highly orchestrated and concentrated campaign, Tebow is being held up as a “worker of miracles” on the football field but, more than that, as a “role model” and moral standard-bearer.

TIM TEBOW AND THE "TUCK RULE"

http://revcom.us/avakian/tebow/tim_tebow_and_the_tuck_rule-en.html

by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

Editors' Note: The following is part of a major interview that was recently conducted with Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Given its timeliness, this part of the interview is being published now (see also the article in this issue, "Tips for Tim Tebow," written by Bob Avakian to accompany this excerpt from the interview). We are looking forward to publication, in the near future, of other parts of this interview, and the interview in its entirety.

Q: One aspect of the new synthesis that you were just talking a little bit about—and it's obviously a key aspect of the new synthesis—is a much deeper recognition and appreciation of the role of art and culture in making revolution and transforming society, and so I wanted to maybe shift gears a little bit and talk about some of that. And I guess one place to start is that you were telling me that you have something that you're working on, something about Tim Tebow and the "tuck rule"—so I don't know if you wanted to get into some of that.

Coming Downhill From Kashipur

http://www.countercurrents.org/ranjan290112.htm

By Deba Ranjan

29 January, 2012
Countercurrents.org

Police firing and encounter deaths for corporate development in Odisha/India

I was coming from Basangamali village on that day with heavy heart. I was thinking about those seventeen villagers who carried nine dead bodies of alleged ‘Maoists’ on their shoulder, from the side of the stream to the top of the hill. Police forced them to do it at gun point after gunning down the ‘Maoists’. I was imagining the dreams and hopes they would have thought on the previous night and the pain and frustration on the next morning. This was the incident of early morning of 9th January 2011 when few armed police came to that village and threatened all villagers to carry dead ‘Maoists’ otherwise would face consequences because the villagers had given them food on previous night. I was part of the team of few human rights organizations including PUDR, PUCL, OPDR, HRF and APCLC in May 2011 to do a joint fact finding of infamous Basangamali-Kashipur encounter deaths. I was joining the team as a writer and an activist of Kashipur struggle. (I am thankful to all those members for inviting me to be part of it.)

Bio-fuels, Speculation, Land Grabs = Food Crisis

Factory Workers Kill Company President

Trotskyism or Leninism?

Saturday 28 January 2012

Everything You’ve Been Told About Communism Is Wrong: Capitalism Is a Failure, Revolution Is the Solution

Revolution #257, January 29, 2012
Editors’ Note: Beginning with this issue, Revolution is serializing an important speech given by Raymond Lotta during his national campus speaking tour in 2009-10. This version of the speech given at Harvard University in April 2010 has been slightly edited and footnotes have been added for publication.

I am very pleased to be at Harvard to speak with you about communism. My talk has five main themes:

How the current intellectual and academic atmosphere constrains and mutilates the discourse of what is possible in the world.
What socialism and communism actually are—and are not.
How the conventional wisdom, as well as the “state-of-the-art” scholarship, about the experience of socialist revolutions of the 20th century is shot through with distortions and lies…and how this robs people of understanding.
A look at the most important revolutionary experience thus far, the Cultural Revolution of China: its purposes, its achievements, and its shortcomings.
How Bob Avakian’s new synthesis enables humanity to go further and do better in making socialist revolution in today’s world.

I look forward to a vigorous and fruitful exchange in the question-and-answer. So let me start.

Introduction: Institutionalized Ignorance

Imagine a situation in which the Christian fundamentalist creationists have seized power overall, and have proceeded to suppress knowledge of evolution. Imagine that they go so far as to execute and imprison the most prominent scientists and educators who had insisted on teaching evolution and bringing knowledge of this to the public. And they heap scorn and abuse on the well-established fact of evolution, denouncing and ridiculing it as a flawed and dangerous theory which runs counter to well-known “truth” of the biblical creation story and to religious notions of “natural law” and the “divinely ordained order.”

INDIA: Violence by the BSF at Murshidabad, West Bengal

Worst of Abu Ghraib on our borders
http://sanhati.com/articles/4557/
January 27, 2012
by Partho Sarathi Ray
Please watch this video. Watch it before the government of India blocks access to it or it disappears among the millions of videos on YouTube. Watch it even though it disgusts and nauseates you. Watch it because it is important to know. What does it remind you of? Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan, Auschwitz? The places where the human being has been subjected to the greatest indignities possible? Unfortunately, it is much closer home. It is somewhere near India’s border with Bangladesh, in Murshidabad district of West Bengal. It is in this place, quite close to the “highly cultured” city of Kolkata, on a bitingly cold winter morning, that a man is made completely naked, his hands tied to a stake behind his back, and systematically beaten with sticks by a bunch of men, while another person records his ordeal on a mobile phone to be shared and savoured later with friends. Who are the perpetrators of this horrendous act? They are members of the Border Security Force (BSF), the protectors of our borders, the proud custodians of the country’s sovereignty. They are dressed in their fatigues, and the banal ease with which they do the entire thing suggests that they are quite accustomed, and proud, doing it.

http://sanhati.com/articles/4552/

January 25, 2012

by Ranjit Sur

To begin with I want to draw attention to a peculiarity of the so called “peace talks” between the CPI(Maoist) and the Government of West Bengal. Generally in such cases, rights workers and civil society members represent the Movement; civil servants or top security personnel represent the Government. It’s a worldwide phenomenon. Look at the peace talks between ULFA and the Centre in Assam. The late Indira Goswami, an eminent Assamese writer represented ULFA; P C Halder, who was a top IB personnel, represented the Government. But here in West Bengal, the government appointed the rights workers and so called civil society members as the interlocutors or mediators from their side. Rather I should say, they agreed to be appointed by the Government in violation of international practice.

Interestingly, in a recent article in Mainstream magazine the chief of the interlocutors, Mr Sujato Bhadra, fraudulently referred to the interlocutors appointed by the government as “Concerned Citizens”. This was only to hoodwink the people by equating themselves with the representatives of the Committee for Concerned Citizens—interlocutors in Andhra Pradesh during talks between erstwhile CPI(ML) PWG and Andhra Pradesh Government. But there is a gulf of difference between the two peace processes.

Pagri Sambhal Campaign Committee in the Punjab

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.com/

Amidst the intensified political atmosphere in the Punjab state assembly elections, a “Pagri Sambhal Campaign Committee Punjab” has been organized by different prominent and struggling personalities. The committee will hold a State level “Pagri Sambhal Conference” on January 27^th at Grain Market Barnala to strip bare the deceitful game of elections and to proclaim the actual pro-people path of struggle.

In Punjab the mass revolutionary Movement is making history by staging a huge pagadi Sammelan conference in Barnala on February 27^th.The purpose of the conference is to create political consciousness to the broad revolutionary masses on the coming parliamentary elections in Punjab on January 30^th, be it the students,youth,working class or peasantry. A huge series of meetings have been held by the Lok Morcha Punjab,the Bharatiya Kisan Union-Ekta(Ugrahan),the Punjab Khet Mazdoor Union and the Naujavan Bharat Sabha propogating that all the political parties are simply hoodwinking the people and fighting to the last to mobilize the struggling sections to attend the meeting in Barnala.

Statement against gallantry award for Dantewada Superintendent of Police

http://sanhati.com/articles/4553/

January 26, 2012

(Issued by Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS) — a national network of women’s organisations, other democratic rights organisations, and individuals — on behalf of groups all across the country which have been participated in the campaign to bring justice to Soni Sori.)

We are deeply shocked and outraged by the conferring of the President’s Police Medal for Gallantry on Ankit Garg, Superintendent of Police, Dantewada, Chhattisgarh. Ankit Garg has been named by the Adivasi school teacher, Ms. Soni Sori, in several letters to the Supreme Court, of ordering and supervising her torture and sexual violence against her, on the night of October 8th, 2011 when she was in his custody at the Dantewada police station.

http://sanhati.com/articles/4553/

January 26, 2012

http://kasamaproject.org/2012/01/11/a-sketch-four-controversies-around-communist-theory-and-the-third-world/

Posted by Mike E on January 11, 2012

Armed farmers block road in India

by Mike Ely

A great many of us attracted to revolutionary politics in the U.S. (and similar “developed” countries) often see radical change through the prism of our surrounding society — where feudalism has been largely absorbed into capitalist agriculture, and where only a small-and-declining proportion of the working classes are on the land.

So when revolutionaries in the third world (for example: India, Nepal, Peru, Turkey) talk of the political tasks facing both communists and the people because of major feudal elements — the discussion often seems a bit strange. Their discussion involves problems of genuine national independence, village-level land reform, basic industrial development, basic infrastructure (roads, sewage, electrification…), ending the patriarchy of peasant life… burning questions that aren’t concerns of any revolutionary movement in the U.S.

And meanwhile the face of the Third World is changing — rapidly — with profound implications for the politics, economics and revolutions of today’s world. Islands of imperialist-style production (and even social structures with broad bourgeoisified strata etc.) are emerging in former colonial areas and anchoring regional markets — within South Africa, Bangalore in India, Singapore in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Shanghai in China, even in their own way, Israel and Dubai within the still impoverished Middle East. And tremendous transformations are happening in third world agriculture — including capitalist development (dams, factories) and capitalist farming that are changing the face of village life and provoking powerful resistance.

S0, for many reasons, revolutionaries in the U.S. need to understand the conditions, theories and history of Third World revolution. I want to open the discussion here by simply sketching some ongoing controversies and peeling back to show some ways they affect our global political unities and theoretical challenges.

Capitalism or socialism: Two roads in the poorer countries

Jan Makandal gave us one place to start when he wrote in a nearby discussion:

“A theoretical error made by the proponents of the bourgeois revolution stage, they identify two antagonistic modes of productions capitalism, however deformed and dominated it is, and feudalism as two modes of productions existing equally thus the concept of semi. This identification is a mechanical approach of contradictions. In the reality contradictory phenomenon always exist in struggle, even on their relative correspondence, and the objective of these struggle are for dominance and annihilation of the opposite and as materialist we do need to understand all the prevailing tendencies to understand the direction and the path this annihilation is going and mostly qualitatively. For example, most of those feudal landlords are heavily indebted to capitalist. For me even in most of those social formation feudalism is strong but it is stagnant as well and capitalism is deformed, dominated but emerging.

Arundhati Roy on India: “Perhaps it’s time for the ghosts to come out and play”

http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/arundhati-roy-on-india-perhaps-its-time-for-the-ghosts-to-come-out-and-play/

Posted by hetty7 on January 24, 2012

From a new article by Arundhati Roy:

“Capitalism’s real gravediggers, it turns out, are not Marx’s revolutionary proletariat but its own delusional cardinals, who have turned ideology into faith. They seem to have trouble comprehending reality or grasping the science of climate change, which says, quite simply, that capitalism (including the Chinese variety) is destroying the planet.“

This article appeared in Financial Times

Beware the ‘gush-up gospel’ behind India’s Billionaires

by Arundhati Roy

January 13,2012

Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India, or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla arrived on Altamount Road in Mumbai, exuding mystery and quiet menace, things have not been the same. “Here we are,” the friend who took me there said, “pay your respects to our new ruler.”Antilla belongs to India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. I’d read about this, the most expensive dwelling ever built, the 27 floors, three helipads, nine lifts, hanging gardens, ballrooms, weather rooms, gymnasiums, six floors of parking, and the 600 servants. Nothing had prepared me for the vertical lawn – a soaring wall of grass attached to a vast metal grid. The grass was dry in patches, bits had fallen off in neat rectangles. Clearly, “trickle down” had not worked.

But “gush-up” has. That’s why in a nation of 1.2bn, India’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to a quarter of gross domestic product.

http://rwor.org/a/257/obscene-acts-of-unjust-war-en.html

The Obscene Acts of Unjust War

DOWNLOAD PDF POSTER OF THIS ARTICLE (17x22")

In early January, a video went viral on the Internet showing four U.S. Marines in Afghanistan urinating on the bodies of three killed Taliban. The video, which the Pentagon confirmed was authentic and was likely taken between March and September 2011 by another Marine on the scene, immediately drew worldwide condemnation.

Understanding the Capitalist Economic Crisis

Understanding the Capitalist Economic Crisis from Jill Hickson on Vimeo.

Sunday 22 January 2012

Mikhail Gorbachev May Get His

Friday 20 January 2012

And Who, By the Way, Is John C. Stennis?!?

Revolution #255, January 8, 2012

by Toby O’Ryan

In yet another threatening move, the U.S. recently sent an aircraft carrier through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passageway of water that connects the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea and then the Indian Ocean. The Strait of Hormuz borders Iran, as does the Persian Gulf. The Iranian military commander then "recommended" that the U.S. not return this aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf. The New York Times, on January 4, termed this the latest and "most aggressive" move in the increasingly intense maneuvering between the big gangsters the U.S. and Israel, on the one hand—which are menacing Iran with the threat of an attack and carrying out covert military activities against it even now—and Iran, the upstart mafioso which is attempting to project itself as an increasingly significant "player" in the domination and plunder of the region.

Red Guards, It is Right to Rebel, Says Mao

IT IS RIGHT TO REBEL!

Thanks to http://www.youtube.com/user/righttorebel/videos

US Forces To Kuwait For Iran Invasion

Iranian Scientist Killed In Bombing

The NDAA could be used against Occupy Movement - Chris Hedges

Mass Incarceration of Black America

Clashes at protests against cuts and austerity hit streets of Romania

Occupy Congress 17th January 2012 - Occupy Wall Street takes a run at Capitol Hill

Monday 16 January 2012

I am the 99% anthem of the Occupy Movement

Saturday 14 January 2012

Racial Justice and the Occupy Movement

Nepal’s Gajurel: We do not Accept the Path of Surrender

Posted by hetty7 on January 6, 2012

The following is an interview with CP Gajurel, a leader of the revolutionary faction of Nepal’s Maoist party. Here, he responds to Prachanda’s recent Central Committee document.

It originally appeared at myrepublica.com

Interview – ‘Dahal’s Paper a Surrender’

by Kiran Pun

December 25,2011

Republica: Party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has presented a political document at the CC meeting. What do you have to say about it?

CP Gajurel: The document has proved that our leadership is swiftly heading toward ‘rightist and opportunistic” political line. The document has justified the mistakes committed by political leadership. So, the document has adopted the path of surrender. We do not accept it. Party Senior Vice-chairman Kiran (Mohan Baidya) will present another document from our side.This means, the document would not be helpful for party unity?

CP Gajurel: Yes. How will the party unite when the genuine concerns that have already been registered by party leaders and cadres are not addressed. So, the document would not be in anyway helpful for party unity.

What do you think would be crucial to party unity?

CP Gajurel: First of all, the document has to clearly address the mandate of the Palungtar plenum. But Dahal’s document has neglected the mandate. He has claimed in his document that the four-point deal, the seven-point deal, army integration, BIPPA, return of seized properties, were the decisions taken by the party. But these decisions have been taken by Dahal and PM Bhattarai and not the party.

Sri Lanka: A Regime Whitewashes Its Dirty History

Posted by redpines on January 9, 2012

The Sri Lankan regime has carried out repression against the Tamil people — a minority nationality on the island — for decades, and this article from a Ceylonese Maoist leader outlines how the LLRC (copy of the commission’s report), a “truth and reconciliation commission” set up by the regime, has served as an effort to whitewash the government’s history of attacks on the masses. The question of national liberation (as among the Terai people in Nepal or adivasis in
India) is a central concern of communist revolutionaries in many places in the world.

“If the war on the side of the Regime and the State was
waged based on a political ideology and an accompanying military doctrine aimed at militarily liquidating the LTTE, along with its political-military leadership, and to annihilate the political status of the Tamil nation, if the war was waged under a military
doctrine with no regard for collateral damage in order to achieve this
objective; and with that, to consolidate a Sinhala-Buddhist
hegemonic-chauvinist-militarist State that would feed into the
political agenda of perpetuating the Rajapakse dynastic regime,
then the war itself is on trial.”

The original post appeared at Democracy and Class Struggle. Thanks to Joseph for pointing it out, and writing the introduction.

The LLRC Report: A Process of Reconciliation or Perpetuation of a

Dynastic Military Junta?

December 29, 2011

by Surendra Ajit Rupasinghe, Secretary, Ceylon Communist Party – Maoist

by Raymond Lotta

The December 2011-January 2012 issue of The Platypus Review features an interview with philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek.¹ It is a fusillade of distortion of the historical experience of revolution and socialism in the 20th century, accompanied by an egregiously uninformed and unprincipled attack on Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism.

Žižek's musings about communism are dressed up as new and nuanced thinking, but on display is a rather old and clunky anti-communism of a piece with the dominant bourgeois narrative of communism as "failure" and "horror." Žižek portrays himself as "anti-capitalist," but on parade are apologetics for capitalist-imperialism.

This is the fruit of what Slavoj Žižek calls his "honest pessimism."

In what follows, I respond to Žižek's central claims and misrepresentations. But at the outset I call on Slavoj Žižek to take part in a public debate with me about the nature of imperialism, and the history and prospects of the communist project.

Inside Job, Narrated by Matt Damon

Inside Job, Narrated by Matt Damon (Full Length HD) from jwrock on Vimeo.

Tuesday 3 January 2012

Wukan – Protests Spread Across South China – Another Arab Spring?

Posted by hetty7 on December 29, 2011

Could the major protests that began in Wukan be the spark that stars a prairie fire? It remains to be seen, but rebellion seems to be spreading to other areas of China. This article is from The Telegraph.

Wukan: Protests Across South China as Riot Police Take on Demonstrators in Haimen

Riot police fired tear-gas and beat demonstrators who stormed government buildings in Haimen, a major town in southern China on Tuesday – just 75 miles from the rebel village of Wukan.

By Peter Simpson in Wukan, Dec. 20,2011

Residents of Haimen, a 130,000-strong town in the province of Guangdong, are demanding a coal-fired plant be moved, claiming it is damaging their health.

Web photos show a large gathering of people and riot police in a public square, and it is reported about 30,000 people in the town have gone on strike.Demonstrators are claiming a 15-year-old boy has been killed and more than 100 others badly beaten by riot police, but this has yet to be confirmed.

Government officials in the town have so far refused to comment on the incident.

Here is the New Document by Comrade Kiran - On the Problems of the Party and their Resolution

MONDAY, JANUARY 2, 2012

Democracy and Class Struggle are pleased that a translation has been made of Comrade Kiran's report to the Central Committee of UCPN Maoist. We also thank comrade Lamsal and the Next Front has we have been told this was a particularly difficult document to translate.

We at Democracy and Class Struggle particularly welcome the following statement from Comrade Kiran in the Report below and now look forward to action from Nepalese comrades based on these clearly expressed views.

"In this entire process, the principal leadership has adopted the strategy of tricking and lying to the revolutionary rank and file against the revolutionary political line, playing one against the other, presenting itself in an opaque and abstract manner, adopting the policy of weakening others, enticing the leaders and workers with false promises and assurances and later betraying. This type of strategy only benefits the class enemy and has been benefiting them"

Kiran : On problems of the party and their resolution

1. Need for a new report:

Now, the class struggle is at a serious juncture and this class struggle has been reflected on our party’s two-line struggle. The history of Nepal’s new people’s democratic revolution and communist movement is at a new turning point. We are in the grave type of labor pain. While, on the one hand, the conspiracy to liquidate the process of great people’s war initiated in 1996 into parliamentary quagmire is being consolidated; the revolutionary line, on the other, has emerged more effectively against this trend with a new commitment to give continuity to the Nepali new people’s democratic revolution.