Wednesday 28 November 2012
Tuesday 27 November 2012
Red Salute from Democracy and Class Struggle to Big Successful Conference in Hamburg in Support of People's War in India
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/
Press release
Internationalist gathers in Hamburg in Support of the People’s War in India
On the 24th of November the International Conference in Support of the People´s War in India took place in the city of Hamburg, Germany. Following the joint Call of the International Committee to Support of the People’s War in India and the Hamburg based League against Imperialist Aggression, internationalists from different parts of the world came together to exchange views on who to develop the international work in support of the struggle of the Indian people against imperialism, semi-feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism.
Delegations, organizations and individuals from Afghanistan, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Croatia Columbia, France, Germany, Holland, Iran, Italy, Kurdistan, Norway, Palestine, Peru, Philippines, Galice and Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and many other countries participated in the Conference, Messages from India, Tunisie, Nepal.. Some 300 hundred persons attended the event.
Delegations, organizations and individuals from Afghanistan, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Croatia Columbia, France, Germany, Holland, Iran, Italy, Kurdistan, Norway, Palestine, Peru, Philippines, Galice and Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and many other countries participated in the Conference, Messages from India, Tunisie, Nepal.. Some 300 hundred persons attended the event.
Communist Parties, revolutionary mass-organizations, revolutionary youth organizations and solidarity and anti-imperialist organizations from all corners of the world made statements of support to the Indian comrades. From many countries from where comrades and friends of the Indian Maoists were not able to attend with a delegation sent messages of support. A list of the participating Parties and Organizations and all the speeches and messages will be published in the upcoming days on the website of the Conference:www.indienkonferenz.tk
On the same webpage pictures from the Conference as well as information of the preparatory campaign - including the official video of mobilization, the graffiti paintings, posters and so forth – can be seen.
The Conference also contained a cultural program with music groups preformed Swedish folk music, German Rap and Revolutionary songs in Turkish, all in a profound anti-imperialist spirit.
An important statement was made by a Palestinian comrade, who pointed out who the struggle of the Indian people are linked to the resistance against the murderous Zionist Occupiers and their Yankee-imperialist masters. At the end of the speak slogans in support of the heroic Palestinian people resounded the hall. The organizers of the Conference stated a strong condemnation of the barbaric attacks on the population of Gaza.
Another important feature of the Conference was the great number of youth who participated, not only as participants but also as part of the organizing structures. This aspect, together with the truly internationalist character of the event, gave it a very vivid and dynamic character.
After the official part of the program delegates and participants continued to celebrate and long into the night revolutionary songs in many different languages and anti-imperialist, militant antifascist and communist slogans made the tune of a rejoicing feast of internationalism.
As a result of the Conference concrete steps have been made in the Coordination of the forces who support the People’s War in India. This without a doubt will have very real impact on the international work and lead to a stronger international campaign.
When we wrote the Call to the Conference we stated that we wanted it to be a vivid expression of proletarian internationalism. It was. Form the Hamburg Conference sounds a cry that says:
We stand with our comrades in India!
Victory to the People’s War!
International Committee to Support the People’s War in India
League against Imperialist Aggression (Hamburg, Germany)
Why are five Adivasi activists and Xavier Dias sent to Chaibasa Jail?
http://sanhati.com/articles/
November 27, 2012
The following is a note sent by Xavier Dias, before they surrendered, to let the world know the details of the case and the story of the battle of the people of Noamundi against the TISCO.
[For earlier article on TATA’s rapsheet, go here -Ed]
TISCO (Tata Iron & Steel Co.) presently known as TATA STEEL’s captive iron ore mine lies in Noamundi Jharkhand (India). It is one of their first mines operational since 1907 and supplying ore to its furnace in Jamshedpur. This is the homeland of the Adivasi people of India from whom resources were expropriated to convert the House of Tata’s from a opium trader to a full-fledged monopoly capitalist. One of the first in British India.
Noamundi prior to the arrival of mining was a 100% ‘Ho’ Adivasi territory. Today Tatas have a large township with massive mechanised mining including processing plants.
In 1991 on the festival of Holi,a rowdy group of TISCO employees molested a team of Adivasi women labourers on the construction site of the Companies Sports Stadium. The women had joined their hands and told these drunken workers that as their Baa Parob (festival of spring) was not yet performed in their village they cannot join them in the Holi celebrations. According to Ho tradition unless the village head priest Duri performs the Baa puja villagers under his jurisdiction cannot participate in similar festivals elsewhere. It’s a sacrilege. The TISCO workers forced themselves on the women and by applying colour on their breast and genitals molested them.
Friday 23 November 2012
The UN’s ‘grave failure’ in Sri Lanka demands an answer by Frances Harrison
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/
Democracy and Class Struggle was about to publish this article by Frances Harrison on Sri Lanka when we received this report from a Tamil Comrade on current situation in the country:
In Sri Lankan 109 young girls were forcefully recruited by Sri Lankan military.
Imperialist countries and Indian government helped the Rajapaksha regime to carry out the genocide. UN and some western funded NGOs are claiming the death toll is about 50 thousand within the last 3 days of the final war. However according the independent sources, the actual number may be up to 100 thousand. In order to silence the angry Tamils around the world, UN, European Union and US repeatedly asserted for the past four years that they would punish Rajapaksha government for War Crime. Once the government of Sri Lanka let the multinational to exploit the country, these imperial power and its components are discussing the so called development in Sri Lanka.
In the north of Sri Lanka where Tamils live predominantly, which is under the administration of Sri Lankan military and its paramilitary forces, young Tamil girls have been forced to marry members of the Sri Lankan army. The military introduces drugs among the School children. Prostitution is promoted as a tool for earning money by the military in the north and east.
In this context the Sri Lankan military recruited Tamil young girls.
Clearly the injustice continues to this day in Sri Lanka has does the silence about it. Silence is complicity, in not only hiding this appalling genocide but complicity in future genocides to come because nobdy had the courage to expose this one before the world.
It’s been called Ban Ki-moon’s Rwanda moment: a little-reported war three years ago on a tiny Indian Ocean island where tens of thousands of civilians were slaughtered, waiting for the United Nations to come and rescue them.
What happened in Sri Lanka in 2009 has come back to haunt the UN with the leak of an internal inquiry commissioned by the Secretary-General. The independent report concluded that the UN’s own conduct during the final months of Sri Lanka’s civil war marked a “grave failure.” There was damning criticism of senior staff, who “simply did not perceive the prevention of killing of civilians as their responsibility.”
Would the entire report have seen the light of day if a draft hadn’t been leaked to the BBC? A reluctant UN in New York had to publish the document, but chose to do so without its powerful executive summary that set the conflict in the context of post-9/11 global attitudes to terrorism that tragically skewed the reporting of the bloodshed. Internal communications show senior UN officials struggling to portray the proscribed terrorist group, the Tamil Tigers, as the ones primarily to blame for the killings.
But the latest UN report documents how UN staff members were in possession of reliable information that showed that the Sri Lankan government was responsible for the majority of deaths.
And that two-thirds of the killings were inside safe zones unilaterally declared by the Sri Lankan government purportedly to protect civilians. This was information senior UN managers decided not to share with diplomats when they briefed them.
What happened in Sri Lanka in 2009 has come back to haunt the UN with the leak of an internal inquiry commissioned by the Secretary-General. The independent report concluded that the UN’s own conduct during the final months of Sri Lanka’s civil war marked a “grave failure.” There was damning criticism of senior staff, who “simply did not perceive the prevention of killing of civilians as their responsibility.”
Would the entire report have seen the light of day if a draft hadn’t been leaked to the BBC? A reluctant UN in New York had to publish the document, but chose to do so without its powerful executive summary that set the conflict in the context of post-9/11 global attitudes to terrorism that tragically skewed the reporting of the bloodshed. Internal communications show senior UN officials struggling to portray the proscribed terrorist group, the Tamil Tigers, as the ones primarily to blame for the killings.
But the latest UN report documents how UN staff members were in possession of reliable information that showed that the Sri Lankan government was responsible for the majority of deaths.
And that two-thirds of the killings were inside safe zones unilaterally declared by the Sri Lankan government purportedly to protect civilians. This was information senior UN managers decided not to share with diplomats when they briefed them.
Orissa - PUDR Statement on the killing of villagers by paramilitary forces
http://sanhati.com/
November 22, 2012
The recent incident of paramilitary forces murdering five villagers and saying that they were Maoists in the Gajapati district of southern Odisha on the 13th November 2012, is yet another instance of a serious malaise of the body politic which PUDR has repeatedly raised and always condemns.
The local media has identified the victims of the staged encounter as Mr. Ghasiram Bagsing, Ayub Padra, Syamson Majhi & Sanatan Maillik of Brahmanigaon Police Station area & Laxmikanta Nayak of Tikabali Police Station area. The first three persons were prominent activists. They had raised the issue of corruption and dishonesty on the part of the Sarpanch of the Sirmuli Gram Panchayat Smt Kamla Patmajhi, her husband and ex-Sarpanch Karma Patmajhi and her other family members in the distribution and illegal sell of BPL rice. They spearheaded a campaign, lodged a FIR with the local police on 19 Aug 2012 for this case. The sarpanch was subsequently arrested along with her driver and BPL rice was recovered. They even mobilized villagers and had staged a dharna on the 11th October 2012, in front of Daringabadi Block Office, for the arrest of all members of the Sarpanch’s family involved in the illegal sell of BPL rice. Ghasiram Bagsing was an elected member of the Gram Panchyat Samiti.
Bal Thackeray, or, Why the Communists Did Nothing
http://sanhati.com/
November 22, 2012
by Saroj Giri
Right where Bal Thackeray was cremated, at Shivaji Park in Mumbai, another event had taken place in June 1970: “a twenty-five-thousand-strong funeral procession marched to Shivaji Park, the Sena stronghold, shouting anti-Shiv Sena slogans,” reports Gyan Prakash in his Mumbai Fables (Princeton University Press, 2010, p. 247). The reason: the murder of Krishna Desai by the Sena in June 5, 1970. Bal Thackeray was supposed to be directly involved in it.
Desai was the sitting Communist Party of India (CPI) MLA from central Bombay, a popular and militant working class leader. He was also one of those who went beyond the diktats of the official CPI leadership, which discouraged self-defence and direct action and could not integrate them in its overall political strategy. That evening of the day he was murdered, it is told that thousands of workers spontaneously came out to avenge the murder. This could have meant they would have ‘liquidated’ Bal Thackeray and his cohorts.
Wednesday 21 November 2012
Monday 19 November 2012
Israel's Murderous Assault on the People in Gaza... And the Need to Oppose These Crimes NOW
http://revcom.us/
by Alan Goodman | November 25, 2012 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
At this writing, a brutal wave of targeted and indiscriminate killing, destruction, and terror is being rained down on the Palestinian people in Gaza by Israel—an operation the Israelis are calling "Pillar of Defense." Health officials in Gaza say 46 people have been killed and 440 people wounded so far in the attacks. By the time you read this, that number will be larger (there have been three reported deaths on the Israeli side). This terror and brutality—overwhelmingly hitting at non-combatants in Gaza—is fully backed by the United States, with Obama insisting over and over that Israel's murderous bombardment of essentially defenseless people in Gaza is "self defense."
Israel's assaults on Gaza are taking place under cover of darkness—literally. Israeli missiles and bombs have, at this writing, knocked out power in Gaza, leaving people, hospitals, homes, and emergency responders without light. What few reports from Gaza make it into mainstream media coverage portray a reporter standing in pitch dark, describing sonic booms, earth-shaking bombs, and flames erupting high into the sky. The Israeli assault has already killed elderly people, children, and many, many other people who could not possibly be considered "combatants" in any military activity originating in Gaza.
Sunday 18 November 2012
Jana Andolan - The People's Movement in Nepal by Fritz Tucker
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/
Democracy and Class Struggle is pleased to publish this contribution to understanding the success and failings of the Nepalese Revolution by a critical thinker and supporter of the Nepalese Revolution - Fritz Tucker.
Jana Andolan
The People’s Movement in Nepal
By Fritz Tucker
Post-War Kathmandu
Every day, hundreds of European, American, Australian, and Israeli tourists walk the streets of Thamel, downtown Kathmandu. Nearby is the Narayanhiti Palace Museum, the Nepali Royal Palace that was converted into a museum after the Nepali People’s Movement of 2006 (in Nepalese, Jana Andolan II). Most of these tourists are unaware that the crowded, winding streets of Thamel were much more crowded in April 2006—filled, in fact, with millions of stone and torch-wielding Nepalis battling and defeating the automatic-rifle bearing Royal Nepal Army. With the Maoist and Royal armies confined to their barracks, Parliament’s blue-shirted police patrol the streets of Kathmandu, the village outposts, and the Indian borders.
Most of the urban rebels, party-affiliated or not, have gone back to their full-time jobs. Many of them work in one of Nepal’s largest industries, tourism. This is why a tourist doesn’t have to walk half a block to purchase a bicycle-rickshaw ride, tiger balm, hashish, a prostitute, or a trekking expedition.
Prachanda slapped by former supporter
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/
November 17, 2012 -- The leader of Nepal's 10-year Maoist insurgency was left shaken on Friday when a former supporter slapped the ex-guerrilla across the face, smashing his glasses. Police dragged away 25-year-old Padam Kunwar during the angry confrontation with Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal - better known as Prachanda, or the Fierce One - at a reception in the capital Kathmandu.
"We have arrested him but he is undergoing treatment at hospital after he was beaten up by Maoist members," police spokesman Keshav Adhikari said, adding Kunwar would be questioned later. The attacker, said to be an alienated former party member, grabbed the 57-year-old's hand and slapped him hard on the cheek, breaking the former revolutionary's spectacles, during a tea-drinking ceremony.
Saturday 17 November 2012
Saturday 10 November 2012
West Bengal : Condemn the police firing on protesting villagers in Dubrajpur! No matter which party is in power, it is the same story of corporate land grab and plunder!
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/
"The problem started during the Left Front rule. Since then we have knocked on the doors of all political parties — CPM, Congress and Trinamool Congress. All of them assured us that they would take up the cause but didn't do anything" – the protesters at Dubrajpur
In another case of police firing at the behest of corporations, an armed force of over 1,000 policemen entered Dubrajpur in West Bengal’s Birbhum district and opened fire on protesting villagers. Twenty villagers, including a woman and school children, were injured in the police firing with two of them in a serious condition. The police went there to recover the machinery of the DVC-EMTA Coal Mines which has acquired 600 acres of land from the area.
The background of the police firing: In 2010, during the then ‘Left’ Front rule, the DVC-EMTA Coal Mines was given nearly 600 acres of land for an open-cast mine. Since then, the people had been protesting against the land grab. After the TMC came to power in 2011 it continued with the project despite stern opposition from the people. In 2011 the villagers of Loba, Palashdanga and Juprai drove away the officials from the region and seized their instruments, demanding that the government pay them the compensation first. The TMC led state government and the DVC Emta Coal mines since then were working in tandem to recover the equipment. The industries minister Partha Chatterjee called up the local SP a few days back asking him to expedite the recovery. The TMC Birbhum president Anubrata Mandal even accompanied when the police was on its way to wreck mayhem.
The TMC led state government ordered the police firing. But, it was however quick to go into a denial mode right after the firing - even going to the extent of forging hospital documents of the injured to somehow prove its claims. Similar to what was said by the CPM during Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh movements, the TMC is claiming that the “innocent” people of Dubrajpur were incited to violence by ‘misguided outsiders’. And when our ruling class politicians are talking about outsiders, how can they forget the Maoists? CPM always saw the hand of Maoists and TMC (as well as a nexus between the two!) whenever people rose up in revolt against its terror. And now the TMC is claiming that the Maoists and CPM may be behind the resistance in Dubrajpur! But seeing through this hypocrisy of both the TMC and CPM, the people of Dubrajpur who are currently protesting against the TMC led state government and its attempts of forceful eviction also refused to talk to the ‘Left’ front delegation that went to the area.
The TMC had replaced the CPM government more than a year back with the grand promise of ‘parivartan’. But it did not take long for the real face of this parivartan to unmask itself. Mamata Banerjee who had shed crocodile tears for the struggling people of Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh did not take long to unleash the same state repression on the people, once she came to power. The continuing state terror in Junglemahal, the eviction of slum dwellers and arrest of activists from Nonadanga and now the police firing in Dubrajpur reveals how the TMC is united with all other parliamentary parties in carrying on with brute force all the anti-people policies of the Indian state. Only a revolutionary transformation of the present society, and not change of governments, will put an end to the corporate loot and plunder.
Friday 9 November 2012
Wednesday 7 November 2012
November 7th - Celebrating the 95th Anniversary of Bolshevik Revolution "Standing on the shoulders of giants" means that we can -- or ought to be able to -- see farther than they could.
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/
Democracy and Class Struggle has received this communication from a friend on the 95th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution on November 7th and is pleased to publish it.
Dear friends:
Today, November 7, 2012, is the 95th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
We should all celebrate it. Today the working class seized state power, and kept it -- for decades.
Here is a link to the New York Times' article about the Bolshevik seizure of power of November 7, 1917:
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/1107.html
The Bolsheviks set up again the Communist International, or Comintern.
The Comintern became the greatest force for liberation in the history of the world. It led the fight for freedom from imperialism and colonialism all over the world.
Where it did not lead this fight, it inspired and aided those who did.
Workers and employees throughout the world got social welfare benefits
* because their own struggles were inspired by the successes of the Bolsheviks in taking and holding state power,
* and also because capitalists around the world yielded reforms to try to keep workers from leading revolutions and overthrowing the profit system altogether!
The Comintern led the world in fighting racism and sexism. It inspired the greatest works of 20th century art. It opposed religious obscurantism.
The Communist movement led the fight against fascism everywhere. Fascism -- the ideology of capitalism in crisis -- killed tens or hundreds of millions, but in the last analysis was no match for the communist movement.
For tens of millions of working people, intellectuals, students, and others, the title "communist" became the proudest badge of honor.
No movement in world history is so rich with lessons, both positive and negative, for the working people of the world to study and learn from, in order to do it better next time.
The Comintern and world communist movement ultimately turned into their opposites. They reverted to capitalism. This happened because of internal weaknesses, contradictions, and errors.
It also happened because the Bolsheviks were the first! Many of the mistakes they made, they made because they were "blazing the trial", trying to build communism when it had never been done before.
Major errors were inevitable. We can, must, and will learn from them.
Ever since 1917 the capitalists have promoted a huge flood of lies about the communist movement, particularly against Joseph Stalin, who led the Bolshevik Party from the late 1920s until his death in 1953.
Leon Trotsky invented many of these falsehoods. In fact, little that Trotsky wrote during the 1930s about the USSR was true. Most of it was conscious falsehoods -- Trotsky knew he was lying. This was convenient for him, and also for the capitalists.
We need to be "critically critical". It is a huge error to simply "believe" horror stories about the communist movement, Stalin, the Comintern, and the Bolshevik Party.
The Bolsheviks did the main thing RIGHT! They dared to seize power from the capitalists, and dared to fight hard and successfully to hold onto it.
We are, and should be, inspired by them. We "stand on the shoulders of giants", the Bolsheviks, who led the first successful working-class communist revolution 95 years ago today.
"Standing on the shoulders of giants" means that we can -- or ought to be able to -- see farther than they could.
That means learning from their errors, as well as from their successes. That's our task.
Let's get to it!
Monday 5 November 2012
Saturday 3 November 2012
From the Editors:On Hurricane Sandy—What Is the Problem? What Is the Solution? And What We Need to Do Now!
November 2, 2012 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The crisis set off by Hurricane Sandy has laid bare the real ways society operates. It has shown why those ways must be radically and fundamentally changed. And it has shown some of the outlines ofhow that change could come about.
Ask yourself some questions about how this society—what we are told is the "greatest country that ever existed"—handled this disaster. What was done when it became clear, days ahead of time, that Sandy was very likely going to hit, and hit very hard? Did those with real power in this society—the capitalist-imperialists—make sure that everybody would be adequately provided with necessities in the face of this disaster? Did they use their vast systems of transportation and communication—all built by masses of people, here and around the world—to make sure that everyone would have access to what they needed? Did they even make sure that people—including the desperately poor in this society whose food typically runs out by the end of the month—would be able to eat when Sandy hit? Did they take steps so that those most in need and most vulnerable—including the elderly and the sick, often living alone, as well as small children—would be taken care of? Did they make preparations to turn over their often lavish office buildings for people in need of shelter? Did they allow use of their massive network of airplanes and trains and buses, including their vast array of military airplanes which rain down death and destruction all over the world, to enable people to travel for free, either to get out of harm's way or to volunteer to help? Did they open up public facilities so that people would be able to meet and organize themselves, and develop the networks to meet the unpredictable needs that would be set off by Sandy? Did they inform people in a living way of the devastation the storm was wreaking in more impoverished areas of the world, like Haiti, and organize volunteers for that, and spread feelings of human solidarity in the face of disaster? Did they try to foster an attitude of "look out for each other"? Did they organize the many skilled people who would want to help into volunteer brigades, ready to spring into action before, during and after the disaster? Did they organize squads of younger, more physically fit people as "runners" to make sure that everybody would know all the latest information?
Thursday 1 November 2012
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