Big Bang Reforms: Why Now and for Whom

http://sanhati.com/articles/5580/
September 20, 2012

Deepankar Basu and Debarshi Das

Introduction

On 14 September, 2012, the Indian government announced a slew of measures to revive the process of “economic reforms” that was initiated in the early 1990s. Quite understandably, the international and Indian financial press has given the announcements an ecstatic reception. Commentators have gone overboard terming it the “big bang reforms” that will finally boost the sagging growth rate of the Indian economy.

Ever since the early 1990s, the thrust of the “economic reforms” process has been to facilitate a closer integration of the Indian economy with global capitalism and increase the weight of the private corporate sector within the domestic economy. The measures announced on September 14, 2012 continue and deepen this process significantly.

What are the key policy changes?

To understand the logic of the government’s announcements, it would be useful to divide the key components of the policy changes into two categories, those that primarily relate to the interests of foreign capital, and those that relate primarily to the interests of domestic big capital.

The policy changes that would be of direct and primary relevance to foreign capital are the following:

1. The government has finally decided to allow up to 51 percent foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi brand retail. This means that now foreign capital will be allowed to hold a majority stake in the multi brand retail sector, a move that will no doubt seem very agreeable to the likes of international retail giants Walmart, and Carrefour. The government has thrown in a largely meaningless caveat that States (and large cities) have the option of opting out if they choose to do so. In the current political and economic climate, the caveat is meaningless because the Central government’s push for foreign capital in multi brand retail (by allowing majority stake) will only unleash a destructive competition between State governments to attract a larger share of the foreign capital that actually comes in. It seems extremely unlikely that any State government will utilize this caveat to stall the further entry of foreign capital into the retail sector in its cities. Indian big capital that is looking to cash in on the basis of this measure by tying up with large foreign firms like Walmart seem to think that this is precisely what will happen: all states will welcome (read: will not be able to oppose) the entry of foreign capital in the retail sector.

Mother Jones Reporter David Corn on the Secret Romney Video That's Upended 2012 Campaign

Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China by Brother Hao

The Democrats: They expect us to eat shit

Posted by Mike E on October 28, 2010

http://kasamaproject.org/

“‎Humanity need something new — something utterly different. And if we, the radical ones, don’t fight for it, if we don’t make visible, it will never happen.

“If we, the radical ones, answer calls from the Democrats, we would make ourselves part of the problem. And we should not be part of that problem.

“We must embody a radical negation and help gather the core for a radical solution. We must be conscious.”

by Nando Sims (Mike Ely)

The Democrats have zero argument. They are the party of Guantanamo now. They are the party that escalates the war in Afghanistan/Pakistan. Their jets and navies back up a murderous order in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. Their diplomats, Israeli allies and war-planners target Iran.

They coldly send murder drones and assassination squads all over the world.

Watch closely: This is what democracy looks like

Posted by Mike E on September 5, 2012

http://kasamaproject.org/

In an act of reactionary politics and theocratic pandering, the Democratic platform committee suggested reopening their document to insert the word “God” into it, and to assert that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

The vote needed a 2/3 vote of delegates to change the platform. Clearly the delegates voted “No!”

Watch the video. Faced with a no vote, the chair had them do it again. Another “No!” vote. And he did it a third time, and just announced that the proposal had gotten 2/3 approval.

Want to see a major festering schism in U.S. society? Look at the class gap between the base of the Democrats and the imperialist establishment of that party.

 

West Bengal - APDR, PUDR, APCLC appeal to NHRC on condition of Sushil Ray

September 5, 2012

http://sanhati.com/

To

Chairperson
National Human Rights Commission of India
Faridkot House, Copernicus Marg New Delhi -110001 INDIA

We’re deeply concerned by plight of an accused, Mr. Sushil Roy, who is at the same time, a victim of police vendetta and abuse of law. The information collected by us is given below for your appropriate intervention for his release to avoid his custodial death. The Apex Court recently released 80 years old and ailing Pakistani virologist, Dr Khalil Chishty, on humanitarian grounds and on many other occasions, we’ve seen our wise Judiciary to come out with firm indictments to save the life of our citizens. Mr. Shusil Roy wrote in a letter to the West Bengal Ex. Chief Miinister that the police officer had told him “You are not telling anything, only stories. I will frame you in such a case that you have to be in jail for the rest of your life and you will die in jail.” We, therefore, put before you our earnest prayer to save the life of Mr. Sushil Roy who has no one but his only younger brother, Dr Shyamal C. Roy, resident of Kolkata, to look after him.

1. Name of the accused: Sushil Roy (75 yrs), an alleged Maoist. Imprisoned for more than 7 years now at Giridih Mandal Kara District Giridih, Jharkhand (for last 8 months)

Statement against police attack on Nazrul Islam’s book

September 5, 2012
http://sanhati.com/

Released by APDR

Click here to read the original statement (in Bengali)

In recent times in West Bengal, there has been a continuous attack by the State on the right to freely express one’s own opinion. Freedom of expression is our democratic and constitutional right, even if such expressions are in opposition to traditional beliefs or to government’s opinions. The recent illegal police attack on Nazrul Islam’s book is one such example. That in a civilised country, such police attacks can be brought to bear upon a book which has not even been banned, is unimaginable to us.

We are against any attack on the freedom of expression. During the rule of the earlier Left Front government, we have opposed and condemned any such attack. Even now, we are condemning and protesting against all kinds of attacks, including that by the police, on Nazrul Islam’s book. At the same time, we are demanding that the chief minister Mamata Banerjee should remember her pre-election promise of restoring democracy and work towards implementing that.

Mahasweta Devi
Sunanda Sanyal
Kabir Suman
Tarun Sanyal
Kaushik Sen
Gautam Bhadra
Nabarun Bhattacharya

Jealous Of The Rich

Obama Has No Future for the People. THE REVOLUTION DOES.

Revolution #279, September 2, 2012

It is time for anyone who wants a better world to shake off the deadly illusion that supporting Obama is somehow “the best we can do.”

Barack Obama came into office promising “hope.” Millions of people in this country were eager for a change from the nightmare of the Bush years—its brutal wars; its torture and rendition; the spying; the vicious assaults upon the right to abortion; the mass criminalization and incarceration of Black and Latino youth; the worship of obscene wealth while millions lived on the brink of homelessness and joblessness or were plunged into complete destitution. The reality is that Obama has continued, developed, and intensified the policies begun by George W. Bush.

Do you want to continue living in a world where children are destroyed by remote control bombs and called “collateral damage”…where the president and his henchmen have weekly meetings to decide who to kill this week…where tens of thousands of people suffer the torture of solitary confinement, sometimes for years?

If you do, Obama could be your guy. But if you think this isn’t the best of all possible worlds… you need to check out the movement for revolution the Revolutionary Communist Party is building.

Below is a list of some of Obama’s “achievements” in the first 3½ years of his presidency.

Mass Criminalization and Incarceration of Black and Latino Youth

The United States’ first Black president has presided over unprecedented mass incarceration, an epidemic of police brutality and murder, and relentless criminalization of Black and Latino people, especially the youth.

• The “New Jim Crow” in the Obama years means more people imprisoned in the United States than any other country in the world (more than 2.4 million), the highest incarceration rate in the world, and in fact the highest incarceration rate in world history.
   
• More than six million people in the U.S. are under “correctional supervision”—in prison, on probation, or on parole.
   
• Black people make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population—but Black men are imprisoned at over six times the rate of men.
   
• Every day in this country, 50,000 male prisoners live in solitary confinement. Prolonged solitary confinement is recognized internationally as a form of torture.
   
• Stop-and-frisk policies begun in New York and spreading throughout the country have overwhelmingly and overtly targeted Black and Latino youth—Obama has never spoken against these policies. In the first six months of 2012, New Yorkers were stopped by police under stop-and-frisk 337,434 times; 53 percent of those people were Black, 32 percent Latino—89 percent were released, with the cops not able to come up with any reason to hold them.
   
• National statistics on people killed by police are not compiled by the federal government. But indications are that more people have been shot down and otherwise murdered by police in the Obama years than preceding years—again without a word of protest from Obama. In Los Angeles, the number of people shot by police jumped 60 percent in 2011; in Chicago, through the first half of 2011, 43 people were shot and 16 killed by Chicago police.

Massive Unemployment and Evictions

Reading Soni Sori's Letters from Prison: An International Women's Day Video Montage

We came across this important documentary. A must watch video for all fighting against injustice.

 Published on Mar 7, 2012
 by peaceandjustice2010

 In a global show of solidarity marking the International Women's Day, concerned citizens from around the world today released this video documentary based on letters written by imprisoned adivasi school teacher Soni Sori, currently held in the Central Jail in Raipur, Chhattisgarh.

Chhattisgarh - Locked away from justice

http://sanhati.com/
 September 1, 2012
Received from Balaji Narasimhan

In the southern districts of Chhattisgarh, hundreds of innocent people, mostly adivasis, languish in jails for years. Human rights and labor lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj talks about the utter failure of the criminal justice system that has brought about this situation.
 

Unemployment continues to rise in France

/www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8oTQcQ3Gb0&feature=player_detailpage#t=87s

Interview with Comrade Kiran : Revolution has not paused; it is developing on slow or, fast speed.

Interview with Comrade Kiran : Revolution has not paused; it is developing on slow or, fast speed.

(An interview with the chairman of CPN-Maoist Comrade Kiran)

1. International

How do you evaluate present international situation?

\

Electronic communication and information technology has developed significantly since some decades. It is a qualitative progress in the sector of productive force.

But, the hegemony of imperialism is there in this area, and American imperialism is dreaming of unipolar world system by standing on this base.

But, the crisis which has rapidly grown around 2008 A.D has affected United States of America and several European countries. The crisis is the consequences of unproductive investment in army sector and cut off of the financial capital from production.

Imperialism doesn't have the real solution of this crisis, as consequences of development and rapid growth of such crisis in United States of America and other countries, on the one hands the peoples of all over the world are being attracted toward socialism and fed up with imperialism and one on the other, the possibility of workers movement also being strong in the developed countries.

Women and Veil, Talaash, Hassan Nisar, June 06, 2012

I came across this video which is quite progressive. Please examine it in the context of liberation of women.

International Dimensions of Prachanda's Neo-revisionism by Comrade Basanta

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/

I had authored an article about 6 years before. It was entitled: "International Dimensions of Prachanda Path". The article, published in the 10th issue of The Worker, Party organ in English, had created debate in the international communist movement.

Is Prachanda Path really a creative development of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism or merely a deviation from it was the question under debate at that time. Given the development of people's war in leaps, one after another, it was also not an easy task for them to take position against it. But, most of the revolutionary parties did not assimilate it rather they opined that it resulted from the ideological deviation on the part of CPN (Maoist).

The wave of Prachanda Path, which was said to be the synthesis of the experiences of 5 year's long stormy people's war, had stretched all across the world. It was not unnatural too. Party had defined Prachanda Path as a series of particular ideas generated by the Nepalese revolution. I had prepared that article as our party, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), comprehended it at that time.

Unsurprisingly, Prachanda was happy with the article.

After 6 years now, I am writing again a short article centring on Prachanda. It is titled: "International Dimensions of Prachanda's Neo- revisionism." Some readers may think that Basanta is correct because Prachanda has taken a U-turn from his earlier Marxist-Leninist-Maoist position. Someone may say that to think of Prachanda, who considers Marxism as a vibrant science and applies in practice accordingly, a revisionist is the result of mechanical and dogmatic thinking on the part of Basanta and his team-mates. This debate will obviously surface in the days to come. The revolutionaries will regard that Basanta is correct; but the revisionists and liquidationists will do its opposite. Naturally, this article will not make Prachanda happy this time.

Interview with G.N.Saibaba in Varberg Sweden

 http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/

The 14th of april 2012 "Jan Myrdals great award, the Lenin award" was handed out in a theatre in Varberg, Sweden. Individuals from different countries and mostly from different parts of of Sweden came for the celebration. Many of participants stayed at Hotell Gästis in central Varberg which have a lot of interesting arts, a library with revolutionary litterature and a beautiful pool, called the "Lenin bath". At the hotel we where very happy to be able to interview the joint secretary of Revolutionary Democratic Front of India, G.N.Saibaba. 

Indiensolidaritet, Sweden, 28/8 -2012

Interview with G.N.Saibaba in Varberg Sweden, 14-15th april 2012

(The transcript of the interview is checked by Saibaba)

Indiensolidaritet: Can you say something about the political work you do in India?
 

Saibaba: I work for an organization called Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF). It is a federation of revolutionary mass organizations working among different oppressed classes and sections of the Indian society. Revolutionary students’ and youth organisations, revolutionary peasants’ organisations, revolutionary workers’ organisations, revolutionary cultural organisations as well revolutionary womans’ organisations from different regions across India are constituents of RDF. Thus RDF is a large network of revolutionary organisations reaching out to all sections and strata of the society.

From the year 2009 onwards began the Operation Green Hunt, the Indian state’s genocidal war on the poorest of the poor in India. All of us in our organization RDF work with other parties, groups, democratic organisations and individuals to raise our voice collectively and unitedly against the present military onslaught on the people and the extermination campaign against the people of India. We see this massive military operation as a continuation and the latest addition in the war waged by India’s ruling classes against the people of the subcontinent for last many decades – be it in Kashmir, North East, Punjab, and now in central and eastern India. So we are at one level involved in the basic struggles of the people and at another we are working along with a large network of political forces and carrying out a countrywide campaign against Indian state’s anti-people policies, particularly Operation Green Hunt. 
 

Indiensolidaritet: The way we see it, there are two lines regarding solidarity work in Europe. One line is trying to unite people on an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal basis and another one focuses more on Maoism. What do you think about this?

The Myth of the Bangladeshi and Violence in Assam

http://sanhati.com/

[The flare up of ethnic violence in West Assam has elicited numerous news reports and commentaries from mainstream media. The response has mainly been that of shock, surprise and sensationalism. The news reports were often inaccurate, lacking nodding acquaintance of the history of the land. For instance, a respected journalist wrote that Muslims were brought into the province from East Bengal as tea garden labourers. Not surprisingly, the pontifications which followed, from TV studios, news columns and ministers who came on relief camp hopping trips, were platitudinal at best. At worst they are simply callous. In this maze of ignorance, half-truths, opportunist communal propaganda a few articles stand out. As a media platform providing progressive, less-represented news we reproduce an article which first appeared in Kafila. The article presents a historical perspective of the repeated ethnic clashes in Assam, through a study of hard data it takes the myth of Bangladeshi migration to task and it raises uncomfortable questions over the dominance of identity politics in the state. - Ed]

by Nilim Dutta

The recent spate of violence that began in the Kokrajhar district of Assam in the month of July 2012 and then spread to the adjoining districts of the Bodoland Territorial Council, primarily between the Bodos and the Muslim community of immigrant origin settled in these districts, has once again unleashed a vicious debate on the perils posed by alleged unrestricted illegal immigration from Bangladesh, this time even on the floor of the Lok Sabha.

The situation has been further complicated by a ‘protest’ in Mumbai against ‘violence on Muslims in Assam’ turning into a riot or by sundry attacks as ‘retaliation’ against people from North East elsewhere in India. Thanks to either shockingly uninformed or brazenly motivated opinions being aired around incessantly, much of it in the national electronic and print media, the dominant discourse that has evolved around the issue has created three distinct perceptions:

First, that illegal immigration of Bengali Muslim peasants from neighbouring Bangladesh into Assam has been continuing unabated, leading to skewed demographic profiles of Assam’s districts bordering Bangladesh and thereafter, turning several adjoining districts of Assam to Muslim majority.

Assange, Manning and Pinochet: Kill thousands, live free; uncover murder, die in prison

Revolution #279, 
September 2, 2012 
 From A World To Win News Service August 20, 2012. 

 When Ecuador granted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's request for political asylum, the British government responded almost as if it were an act of war. Foreign Minister William Hague, with all the bellicosity of his recent call for military intervention in Syria, issued a note threatening to revoke the Ecuadorean embassy's diplomatic status and send the police storming in. In fact, police did swarm through the building's stairwells and lobby (which are not part of the embassy's offices). The building is currently surrounded by 50 constables at all times, with two more vans full and an armored car waiting nearby. On the day Assange came on the balcony to give a statement, a police helicopter hovered overhead. To an objective observer, this frenzied escalation of the campaign to imprison Assange, including through the blatant threat to violate international law protecting diplomatic missions, would

Manifesto of People’s Demands and Release of Political Prisoners

http://sanhati.com/

August 23, 2012

by Committee for Release of Political Prisoners and People’s Demands

Click here to read the original Bengali pamphlet

Cremation and burial of promises

Today there is no point in remembering those words.

Words which expired one year ago.

Promises used to blow in the wind then.

Promise to release political prisoners. Promise not to slap cases under the draconian UAPA. Promise of democracy in place of ‘partycracy’. Promise to provide education and health. Promise not to snatch away child from its mother through sheer neglect at the hospitals. Promise that the children will not have to be sent to earn instead of attending school.

All these promises had merged into hope. Our hope touched the sky. The slogan of that day echoed in the horizon of Bengal—We want Change, We want Poriborton!

Just one year later, we are witnessing the journey of the promises to the cremation ground. The Janaza of promises. The drowning of promises.

The political prisoners have not been released, not a single one has been released. Arrests have started afresh in Jangalmahal. More and more political activists are being imprisoned under the black act UAPA. Everyday is bringing in new harvest.

Those who had demanded investigation of the death of Azad before the elections have rejected the demand for investigation of Kishenji’s death now that the elections are over.

Partycracy is reigning supreme to this day. Democracy is nowhere to be seen.

Even now vigilante forces are shaking Jangalamahal. The Harmad force of yesterday has turned into the Bhairab force.

Can popular protests be developed to seize power from the capitalist elites?‏

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/

Picture Wilhelm Langthaler

Can popular protests be developed to size power from the capitalist elites?

by Wilhelm Langthaler at the Anti Imperialist Camp at Assisi

      

The European Union is experiencing its deepest and most acute crisis ever – both in economic as well as in political terms. We are faced with massive capital flight from Southern Europe to its centre, which is not much longer sustainable. At the same time the imposed austerity is driving a downward spiral into recession leading to mass impoverishment. Popular protests are in the making while the politico-institutional framework is at the brink of collapse. The Euro and the entire EU is being threatened, destabilising the power of the capitalist elites.

       

Acute crisis of capital flight

The current stage of the crisis of the EU/Euro is marked by capital fleeing the European south. The symbol for this are the increasing interest spreads over German bonds. But also banks and the corporate sector are in acute shortage of capital while private consumption is plunging. Together with the severe austerity imposed by the EU centre the European south is suffering deep recession of which the worst is still to come. Large sections of the population including the middle classes are being impoverished to an extent and in a pace unprecedented since decades.

For any peripheral country this would mean immediate default and devastating social crisis as countries like Mexico, Indonesia, Argentina and many other countries did suffer from. Only being part of the EU and the Euro, default could so far be postponed – to social costs which might exceed even the ones to be expected with bankruptcy as Argentina had exemplified.

Tribute to Andhra Pradesh Radical students Union(APRSU) by Indian Comrade

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/

The Andhra Pradesh Radical Students Union carved out a permanent niche in the annals of the history of the revolutionary student movement worldwide. Probably no student movement worldwide made such efforts to emulate the experience of the Russian and Chinese Revolution. It reminded you of a ship surviving in the stormiest of seas  as the APRSU weathered every storm in it’s journey.

It  traversed the wildest of forests. Lighting the torch of Mao Tse Tung Thought. Words simply cannot describe the sacrifices of the martys which should be inscribed in Gold. 20 years ago the Andhra Pradesh Radical Students Union faced it’s official ban.(the same time the C.P.I-M.L.-Peoples War Group was banned)

Rejoinder to story on Soni Sori in Indian Express: International Alliance for Defence of Human Rights in India

http://kafila.org/

by Nivedita Menon

The  International Alliance for Defence of Human Rights in India (IADHRI) is based in the US and has participated in the campaigns for the release of Dr. Binayak Sen, Kopa Kunjam and now more recently Soni Sori and Lingaram Kodopi.

On August 5th, The Indian Express published a disturbing, supposedly investigative story on Soni Sori, implying both that she was guilty of the charge of being a Maoist as well as casting doubt on the activists in India and outside who support her, and who are mainly responsible forbringing into the open the fact that she was and continues to be tortured in prison.

The IADHRI has written this response to the story, rebutting it point by point.

That the media often compromises its integrity for corporate interests and the political elite is not news any more. The recent Sunday Express report titled ‘Soni’s Story’ is symptomatic of a belief that if a lie is repeated often, it becomes the accepted truth.  The report talks of Soni Sori, the Adivasi school teacher from Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, who has been arrested and accused of being a Maoist conduit. With a clever sprinkling of truth, a report can seem unbiased- the reporter appears to be the warrior fighting to find facts and settling for nothing less. It is, however, imperative that fallacies be broken down, and the casual picking and choosing of facts be exposed for what it is. Let us use the same structure that the story uses.

1. Sori, the police and the Maoists
   1. The report paints a picture of Soni Sori, a vocal, educated school teacher with an influential family. It mentions that “Villagers in Palnar say Sori was not a Maoist, but like most people in these parts, she had links with the rebels.”
   2. However, in the quest for truth, the reporter does not remain satisfied, and to substantiate charges of Sori’s Maoist links refers to the incident where Maoists shoot her father in the leg but spare her as a subtle insinuation that there is something wrong brewing underneath. How exactly one’s father being shot is a sign of camaraderie we will never know, but the Sunday Express seems to have some ideas.

Stories from the Warzone

http://revcom.us/

Activists from around the country came to NYC for 10 days, August 4-14, to Take Patriarchy by Storm and to launch the movement thoughout society to End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women. Below are a few highlights from their early experiences as posted on their blog (stoppatriarchy.tumblr.com). If you want to be part of this movement contactstoppatriarchy.org.

We started with this…

…and took it to Union Square. The idea was to create a banner that grows, as people add their personal stories. Part of the war on women is a deep sense of isolation and shame, which reinforces self-blame. When people don’t know statistics like 1 in every 4 women in this country are raped at least once in their lifetime, it is easy for women to think they did something wrong, feel ashamed, and unable to understand or fight the institutions, advocates, and vendors of violence against women.

Before this starting banner was even complete, we met a woman who contributed this:

Yeah, some of us “choose” to be in the SEX NDUSTRY,                                    BUT When you’re RAPED + MOLESTED + BEAT From when you’re 5 yrs old, you think, “What else can I do,but  FUCK?  I might as well                                        Get PAID  $ for it.”       So the 1st time I got $300 for some guy painting my toes for being a Dominatrix, I thought, “This shit is cool. I’ve been used by men for sex so many times, raped, “date raped,” etc... might as well charge.”          But no one told me it was going to change my life so horrifically in so many ways– I was miserable, I hated my life, I hated myself, I felt even more degraded than ever, and I hated the way I was humiliating & degrading the men who were my clients. And I was almost murdered.                   — A. A.

We learned that she had done work at a porn store / strip club that we were going to protest, and she got really excited about going there with us to rail against it.  Within a few minutes, she was defending our project against people who were defending porn.  She will be coming back, and fighting the power with us.

The day after the banner was complete, we received approximately 30 stories.  Some are included on stoppatriarchy.tumblr.com.  As this grows, it is building a wall against the false rationale that women are to blame for the WAR ON WOMEN.

Taking Patriarchy by Storm!
our week begins...

Statement Opposes Obama’s Repressive Assault

http://revcom.us/

Revolution received “A Call To Stand Together To Oppose The Obama Administration’s Dangerous Assault On Fundamental Rights.” It is posted for signatures at opposerepressionndaa.net. The initial signatories follow the statement.

According to Raymond Lotta, who helped initiate this statement, “Its purpose is to call attention, and summon resistance, to a dangerous trajectory of repressive acts and laws and to reaffirm a core principle: We cannot allow any one group or person to be singled out and targeted.”

The immediate catalyst for the statement is the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) and the ruling of May 16 by Judge Katherine Forrest in U.S. District Court (NYSD) in response to the lawsuit Hedges et al. v Obama et al. The judge agreed with the plaintiffs (Hedges et al) that section 1021 of the NDAA, which allowed for indefinite detention, without charge or trial, of a vague category of people was unconstitutional—and she imposed a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of the law. The ruling was a mainly positive one, but it also contains an erroneous and potentially harmful characterization of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP) and its Chairman, Bob Avakian. This has been protested in a legal brief. See “Brief Filed Objecting to Dangerous Mischaracterization of RCP, USA,” Revolution #275, July 22, 2012.

Oppose Ban on RDF in Andhra Pradesh

http://www.antiimperialista.org/

12/08/2012

Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF)

Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF) has been banned by the Andhra Pradesh government on 9 August 2012 through Government Order No.430 under Andhra Pradesh Public Security Act 1992. This comes as the latest of the anti-people repressive measures that the Andhra Pradesh government have persistently adopted to over the last few decades to crush democratic voices and peoples’ movements under the garb of fighting Maoism. This comes as another glaring example of the hollowness of Indian government’s claim as ‘largest democracy of the world’.

We strongly condemn this act of banning and criminalisation of our organisation and demand the immediate withdrawal of this authoritarian ban.

The Government Order brands RDF as “unlawful” and bans it “with immediate effect”. The GO links RDF with the banned CPI(Maoist) by calling it a “frontal organisation” of the Maoist party. Falsely implicating RDF as “part of Tactical United Front”, it dubiously enlists the following as “unlawful activities” of the organisation:

(1) Sub serving the interest and objectives of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) whose avowed objective is to overthrow the lawfully established Government by means of force and violence through terrorist activities involving the use of firearms and explosives;

All India Revolutionary Democratic Front on Workers Struggle; Communal Clashes; and Caste Atrociities

http://maoistroad.blogspot.in/

All India Executive Committee of Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF) -- Three Resolutions (approved at meeting in Delhi, 1-2 August 2012)  (after the First Conference in Hyderabad on 22-23 April 2012).

1. On Maruti Suzuki Worker's Struggle

RDF hails the militant movement of the workers of Maruti Suzuki factory at Gurgaon, and strongly condemns the management of the company as well as the government who have undertaken a severe repressive campaign against the workers. The company has declared a lock-out which leading to the loss of jobs of thousands of workers. More than a hundred workers including the office-bearers of the Maruti Suzuki Workers' Union have been arrested and charged with murder, while most of the other workers have been forced to go underground to avoid arrests. RDF resolves to extend solidarity and all possible support to the struggling workers of Maruti Suzuki. RDF demands that the plant be immediately reopened, the arrested workers be released, the cases against them withdrawn unconditionally, they be restored to their previous jobs, and all the demands of the workers' Union be resolved forthwith. We call upon the workers to continue and step up the struggle till these demands are achieved.

2. On communal clashes in Asom

All Sorts of Roguery?

http://sanhati.com/

The ‘Financial Aristocracy’ and Government à bon marché in India

by Bernie*

[This article was first published in the July-August 2012 issue of Analytical Monthly Review.]

My voice is a crime,

My thoughts anarchy,

Because

I do not sing to their tunes,

I do not carry them on my shoulders.

– Cherabandaraju, who was the lead accused in a “conspiracy case” involving poets and their poetry.

It’s been two decades and a year since India’s elite embraced neo-liberalism. Money –– the standard of all things, the measure of one’s worth –– now has very many more avenues for profitable deployment than it had in early 1991. Indeed, India’s moneybags now almost have de facto the freedom to accumulate wealth by any and all available means. “Corruption” has hit the roof and “civil society”, with the upper middle class at its wheel, is morally outraged, dead set against the political representatives of the “immoral” state, though not against the most powerful section of capital, the “financial aristocracy”,[1] which effectively calls the shots. Various estimates of the “magnitude of black money generated in the country” and “the unaccounted wealth stashed abroad” in tax havens and offshore financial centres have been doing the rounds. The din and the babble over these matters in Parliament wouldn’t subside, so the government commissioned a Paper (WP) on Black Money.[2]

In his Foreword to the WP the Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee (as we go to press, he’s been kicked upstairs, soon to occupy Rashtrapati Bhavan, the palatial official home of the President of the Union) writes that “there is much that we could do, both individually and collectively, to strengthen the moral fibre of our society”. Surely few would take seriously such preaching/moralising from one of the leading political representatives of a system that is rotten to the core. But how would one view –– what one could reasonably presume to be an intention on the part of the government, since it finds a prominent place in the WP –– the proposal of a scheme for voluntary disclosure of black money stashed overseas with a view to bringing it back as “” money? Surely, if the finance minister has any “moral fibre”, the lump sum income tax dues along with interest and a penalty would have to be paid, but the quid pro quo is immunity from prosecution.

The Pentagon Pathology

N FACEBOOK

CounterPunch Special Report on Military Spending

http://www.counterpunch.org/

by GABRIEL KOLKO

The allocation of money within the American military system is reflected in which weapons are chosen—and why.  What is at stake are rivalries among military branches, which have influence and connections with arms producers, the Congress, and the entire complex matrix of factors that determine who wins and loses in the Pentagon budget process.  The United States has, by far, the largest military budget of any nation on earth but it also loses wars, cannot procure everything the military services dream up, and ultimately it too must choose between weapons at the expense of the priorities and demands of other services.

In plain English, if the Air Force gets an ultra-modern aircraft which may cost many billions, even trillions, and takes years to iron out the technology (and may ultimately even never operate) there will be less money for the Army and Navy to attain its dreams—or visa versa.

Here some historical background is in order.

In April 1950 the U. S. National Security Council (NSC) produced a policy paper, which remained top secret until 1975, which discussed a wide range of crucial national security problems, and among many things led to the creation of H-bombs. One of its major conclusions was that the American and Western European economies faced the danger of a slowdown unless the governments spent more.  The Congress still had members who wanted to balance the budget, and it and the public did not adequately appreciate that the Cold War would continue and require yet greater efforts. There are many contingencies at play, ranging from a roll-back of Communism in Eastern Europe to the need for the U.S. to be ready to negotiate with the Soviets under certain circumstances.  There was an excessively simplistic view of what the U.S.S.R’s ultimate objectives were, an utterly inadequate view of the Sino-Soviet relationship, and the weaknesses in the Soviet system that ultimately led to the complete disappearance of the U.S.S.R. in 1991. The NSC report advocated “a substantial increase in expenditures for military purposes,” and up to $50 billion was later agreed upon.   The original Pentagon budget for 1950 was $13 billion. The outbreak of the Korean War the following June reinforced the NSC’s worst assumptions about Soviet intentions, blaming it for the war but ignoring the extent to which the North Koreans, like Tito in Yugoslavia or the Chinese, were independent actors. The Pentagon’s budget became the backbone of the American economy in the late 1940s, and has been crucial ever since.

Complexities of the Syrian uprising

http://kasamaproject.org/

Posted by Mike E on August 8, 2012

The following essay comes from the British blog Lenin’s Tomb. It is part of our ongoing examination of the Syrian conflict and the sharp debates over how to evaluate its colliding forces. This essay focuses on engaging argument made by John Rees.

A note on the complexities of the Syrian uprising

The lonely hour of the final instance never comes. This seemingly delphic statement has a fairly simple meaning.

Marxists speak of social life being determined ‘in the last instance’ by the economy, by the manner in which people go about producing their means of existence. In capitalist society, this production is structured around a fundamental antagonism, or ‘contradiction’, between capital and labour. Yet there is no point at which this antagonism appears in its stark simplicity; no mise-en-scene in which the multiple contradictions and determinations that make up a social formation (think of gender, ethnicity, religion, regional divides, culture wars, and so on) suddenly step aside, and give the stage to the real, fundamental contradiction. The elements of a social formation continue always to have a reciprocal effectivity, so that each element is overdetermined by the whole. The class struggle always has cultural, national, gender, religious, identitarian or other inflections. This is why the ‘pure’ class struggle never arrives, any more than does the ‘pure’ revolution.

Something like this insight was the basis for much of Lenin’s strategic thinking. Writing on the outburst of the Irish rebellion in 1916, he famously said,  “Whoever expects a pure social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip service to revolution without understanding what revolution is.”   He went on: “The socialist revolution in Europe cannot be anything other than an outburst of mass struggle on the part of all and sundry oppressed and discontented elements. Inevitably, sections of the petty bourgeoisie and of the backward workers will participate in it – without such participation, mass struggle is impossible, without it no revolution is possible – and just as inevitably will they bring into the movement their prejudices, their reactionary fantasies, their weaknesses and errors.”  Even so, “objectively they will attack capital”.  The function of the most advanced workers in this situation was to unify and lead – that is, hegemonise – a “variegated and discordant, motley and outwardly fragmented, mass struggle”.

…

Of course, Lenin was discussing the prospects for socialist revolution developing out of a national or bourgeois revolution.  In Syria, there is no more immediate prospect of socialism than there was in Egypt or Tunisia.  The question of workers’ power will be posed by objective circumstances – nothing is more certain.  But nothing is less certain than how it will be answered.  Nor has the working class or a section of it in any of these revolutions had the politically leading role, even if it has supplied the strategic leverage and overpowering mass of force to differing degrees.  But the principle of analysis which I was alluding to surely holds firm: there is no pure revolution.

In that light, I well understand those who talk about the complexity of the Syrian struggle, which is not just one thing, but many things.  It is precisely “a variegated and discordant, motley and outwardly fragmented, mass struggle”.  This is a process which involves not only a progressive struggle against a dictatorship (in class terms, a workers’ struggle against a state-capitalist ruling class), but also all the “prejudices … reactionary fantasies … weaknesses and errors” that workers and “all and sundry oppressed and discontented elements” are motivated by. It is a struggle which activates and acts on not just nationally given contradictions, butregional and global contradictions. Thus, local antagonisms such as splits in the Syrian ruling class over the handling of neoliberal reforms, divisions between rich and poor Sunnis, class struggles over thebreakdown of the social compact, and so on, combine with regional dynamics such as the Kurdish struggle, or Wahabbi anti-Shi’ism, which are in turn partially determined by inter-imperialist rivalry, such as US-Russian antagonisms, and sub-imperialist subventions, such as the orchestration of region-wide counter-revolutionary action by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council, or the emergent Turkish regional leadership under the impress of so-called neo-Ottomanism.

"Boycott Elections!" International Significance of the Slogan, 1968 :Charu Mazumdar

http://marxists.org/reference/archive/

The year was 1937. German, Italian and Japanese fascism, the three advanced detachments of world imperialism, were conspiring to redivide the world among themselves. German and Italian fascism intruded on the stage of Spain as active supporters of General Franco.The world working class came out in support of the united front government of Spain, and an International Brigade was formed with people who came from different countries. But unfortunately Franco succeeded in smashing the resistance put up by the International Brigade and in imposing his brand of fascism on Spain.

Just at that time, the Communist Party of China headed by Chairman Mao liberated a small area, Yenan, and stood up to oppose Japanese militarism. Not only that. It smashed all the boasts of Japanese militarism and began to create one liberated zone after another by rousing the poor peasants in the Japanese-occupied areas. These liberated zones not only survived the fierce Japanese attacks but also struck back hard at Japanese imperialism. At that time the Communist Party of China headed by Chairman Mao Tse-tung had not only to fight Japanese imperialism but also had to resist the reactionary Kuomintang government led by Chiang.

Neo-Nazi Rampage: Army Psy-Ops ID'd in Shooting

Climate Skeptic Richard Muller Admits Global Warming is Real and Humans are the Cause