Indian Workers Association Great Britain call for Boycott india's 63rd Republic Day and stand against sexual assualts on women

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/

DEMONSTRATE OUTSIDE INDIA HOUSE IN LONDON

Aldwych WC2B 4NA

11am to 1pm 26^th January 2013

As India prepares to celebrate its 63^rd Republic Day on 26 January 2013, Delhi is trying to come to terms with the recent gang rape of a young woman on a moving bus and her subsequent death. Such rapes have become rampant in the Indian cities and towns. Few months ago London Guardian commented India to be the worst country for women among the G20 nations. Indian rape laws are stringent enough; however, the executive and the judiciary are so much feudal and patriarchal that the conviction rate for rape cases in India between 2001 and 2010 was 26%. In the case of Muslim and Dalitwomen the rate of conviction is almost nil as evident from the gang rape case of Bhanwari Devi in Rajasthan.

However a bigger dimension to this is that the Indian state itself has proved time and again to be the biggest perpetuator of rapes and all forms of assaults on women. State violence is institutionalised through a culture of institutional impunity to the police, the paramilitary and the army. In June 1984, hundreds of Sikh women were gang raped in the sanctity of golden temple by the Indian Army during ‘Operation Blue Star’. In the village of Kuman-Poshpura in Kashmir valley, about 100 women were mass raped by the Indian Army in a single night of 23^rd Feb 1991. Hundreds of Muslim women were gang raped by security forces during the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002, as the Chief Minister Narendra Modi just watched.The brutal gang rape and execution of 32 year old Thangjam Manorama in Manipur in July 2004 is another example of Indian Army’s ongoing repression on women in the North-East.

Nepal: Tasks of the Seventh National Congress by Basanta

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/

The Seventh National Congress of our glorious party, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, is being convened in the second week of January 2013. The Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre), which was formed by the unification the erstwhile CPN (Mashal), CPN (splinter Masal), CPN (Fourth Congress) and the Proletarian Workers Organisation, had organised a Congress, 21 years before, in 1992. It was called the Unity Congress because the constituent parties in the Unity Centre lacked a common position on the chronological number of that very congress. Taking that Congress to be the sixth one, our party is going to realize its Seventh National Congress after a long 21 years now. It is a matter of pleasure not only for the oppressed Nepalese people but for the world proletariat.

In the context of world events, 21 years is a very short period. However, many events that have far-reaching significance in the world situation and Nepalese political scenario have occurred in between this period. Events like, the termination of cold war followed by the dissolution of Soviet social imperialism in the 90s, the unrivalled domination of the US imperialism for a brief period and again the emergence of multi-polar world along with the ongoing economic crisis are the events noteworthy in the international political scenario. In the same manner, many accomplishments including the initiation of great people's war under the leadership of the CPN (Maoist), formation of the People's Liberation Army Nepal, setting up of the people's power in the entire countryside and the end of 240 years' old absolute monarchy from the political scene of Nepal are the notable ones in favour of the oppressed Nepalese people.

Nepal: ‘If bourgeois state does not deliver democracy …. we will take up arms’

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/

“Maoists will take up arms” if…. : Baidya

KATHMANDU, Jan 17: The CPN-Maoist on Wednesday warned that the party will take up arms if the state power cannot assure the rights of the people. Speaking at a press meet organized here by the party following the conclusion Tuesday of its seventh general convention, the CPN-Maoist also informed that the time for the revolt will be determined by the political situation.

“Give rights to the people. It the people get their rights, who will take up arms? Nobody. Why is the state conspiring instead of assuring people their rights in accordance with previous agreements and assurances. If rights are not given to people, it is sure that arms will be taken up,” answered Mohan Baidya, newly elected chairman of the CPN-Maoist, when asked about the reason for people´s revolt.

“As far as the date for launching a revolt is concerned, it is not a matter to be announced at present. It will rather be determined by the circumstances. Asked when they would launch their revolt, Baidya said, “We will launch the people´s revolt or people´s war as and when circumstances compel us because no one takes up arms just on the basis of the whim or interests of certain leaders”. “Arms will be taken up by any other force also when the situation so demands, even if we ourselves drop the idea.”

Nepal: Success of people´s revolt on the foundation of people´s war? Interview with Baidya aka Kiran

Democracy and Class Struggle publishes this interview by Republica's Kiran Pun note the dates used are Nepali and are Bikram Era - do  not be confused by this dating system.

Republica´s Kiran Pun spoke with Baidya. Excerpts:

You have been elected party head again after 28 years. How do you feel –is there something new or difference, as you have been elected both times during critical periods?

I was elected a central committee member at four general conventions and I was elected party general secretary at the fifth national congress in 2041.

So, I no longer feel any desire for assuming the main leadership post.

I now see very high hills of challenge, challenge for the people and the country. The question is how to move forward facing these negative and positive challenges.

I am now in such a place where both renown as a revolutionary as well ill fame are possible. And I remember a quote from Comrade Mao, that people can fall very far down after reaching very high.

I can go on facing the challenges if I get the help of party cadres and the people. The question is how can I accommodate the line of the masses and the interests of the people.

Although you were elected both times in very critical circumstances do you feel any difference between the two occasions?

Letter of Solidarity and Greetings to Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist from Marxist Leninist Maoist National Liaison Commission (USA)

Comrades

We are most excited and delighted to know that the comrades of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), after years of struggle against the Prachanda-Bhattarai revisionist clique, are forging again a party of steel to complete revolution in Nepal. The Prachanda-Bhattarai revisionist clique had indeed not only derailed the revolutionary people’s war in Nepal but had confused the entirety of the revolutionary movement with their liquidationist treachery. In Nepal this clique had attempted to surrender the People’s Liberation Army to the enemy, it had locked up the fighting comrades, seized their weapons, and negotiated their liquidation with the reactionary state. For despite the crisis of governance that exists in your country, despite the removal of the feudal fratricidal King Gyanendra, the state itself remained intact and reinforced increasingly by Indian intrigues.

The Prachanda-Bhattarai clique jumping upon the crisis of governance has entangled itself in the muck of parliamentary disorder, their strategy has turned into nothing more than revisionist maneuvers of position within the body of the Constituent Assembly and the ministries. They, in failing to smash the state, subordinated the revolutionary party to the ruling reactionary classes of your country. As we have also pointed out, such revisionist treachery also confused the entirety of the revolutionary movement. Not only were comrades of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties around the world confused by such transformations, but it opened up the space for new emerging revisionist theses to spread in our movement. It further emboldened already existing revisionist parties and cliques everywhere to claim to the entirety of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist movement “Look! Now even your comrades have been reasonable and now they negotiate. Be as reasonable as they.”

Comrades, it would not be a lie to say that the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist movement internationally looked to Nepal where its banner was raised high on the top of the world for inspiration and leadership, and when the revisionist Prachanda-Bhattarai clique attempted to transform revolution into surrender, the whole of the movement was shook to its core. Today in our movement, internationally we struggle against Prachanda-Bhattarai clique’s revisionism with the comrades of your party at the lead. We must ideologically wrap our minds around how such revisionism emerged in the party, how it took command, and what is the correct course of revolution in Nepal today. Furthermore we must investigate the international dimensions of such revisionism as it pertains to the entirety of our movement.

We must also struggle internationally against Avakian’s revisionist political line. The “new synthesis” of the RCP,USA has been for years now posed in contrast to the Prachanda-Bhattarai clique. It has been for years claimed by the RCP,USA that Avakian’s “new synthesis” was by the only means to lead forward Communist revolution in this new sequence. We claim that Avakian’s “new synthesis” is nothing more than smoke and mirrors to mask essentially a radical humanist petty-bourgeois politics which rebukes the necessity for proletarian revolution and scientific socialism. We in the United States not only have the duty to struggle with this revisionism as it appears in its garb in the international plane of our movement, but also domestically, where the RCP,USA has in effect through their left-opportunist practice has weakened the entirety of the Communist movement. Comrades, we like you are forging ahead to build a party of the new type.

A party for revolution, a party that will join the international communist movement led by the guiding scientific theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, a party which will attempt to mobilize millions of militant proletarians to smash US Imperialism and lend support to comrades around the world. The conditions for the development of such a party are both objectively and subjectively possible despite the Avakian revisionism of the RCP,USA, and the Post-Maoist revisionism of other trends. Hopefully comrades within some time we can report to you progress in the activity to forge a new party, to join you comrades in making world revolution and supporting primarily the efforts of your party, steeped in the legacy of ten years of people’s war and the blood of its martyr’s.

Down With Prachanda-Bhattarai Clique!

Down With All Post-Maoist Revisionism!

Long Live the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)!

Admin Aids French Bombing of Mali After US Trained-Forces Join Rebels in U

Zero Dark Thirty, or How a People Lose Their Humanity

http://revcom.us/

by Annie Day | January 13, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

I was shaking as I walked out of Zero Dark Thirty, the new film about the CIA's 10-year search for Osama bin Laden. Shaking and queasy. Wanting to hear from others in the audience, I asked people questions as they streamed out... What did they think of the film? Overwhelmingly, people answered positively... with smiles. Did they think the film upheld or condemned torture? Some answered that it didn't take a stand, just showed the facts. But many said they felt it upheld torture, that it portrayed it as essential to Osama Bin Laden's capture. And what did they think of torture? While a couple people answered that they supported it outright, many said they didn't think it was right, that America shouldn't use torture. So how did they feel about liking a film that upholds something they would otherwise find deplorable? Several people said it's just a movie and shouldn't be taken so seriously. One woman said she appreciated coming to understand, from the CIA's perspective, why they used torture. And far too often, the answer was, "It's complicated."

Natalio Pérez: Images from Nepal’s Maoist Congress

http://kasamaproject.org/

Posted by eric ribellarsi on January 15, 2013

These photos come to Kasama from Natalio Pérez, reporting for Winter Has Its End in Nepal. The Winter Has Its End team’s reporting will be coming shortly.

CPN-M finally opts for people’s revolt

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/

Democracy and Class Struggle publishes this report from Nepali Media for information purposes,it is not an offical statement of CPN-M.We hope to publish offical statements shortly.

KATHMANDU: The ongoing seventh national convention of CPN-Maoist today endorsed Chairman Mohan Baidhya’s political document, which called for people’s revolt that would stand on the base of people’s war.

Clarifying how people’s revolt was possible when all the bases created by the People’s War had been destroyed, Baidhya said the human resources, their decade-long experiences and skills were sufficient to develop such bases.

Most of the leaders, involved in people’s war right from its inception, have defected from Unified CPN-Maoist, accusing UCPN-M Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Vice-chairman Baburam Bhattarai of being traitors to the Nepali revolution.

The convention also decided to expose Dahal and Bhattarai, terming them the greatest agents of expansionism and neo-colonialism.

The leaders said the party would focus on the movement for the country’s national independence by forming a broad alliance with leftists, republicans and patriotic forces.

The leaders also told participants that the possibility of people’s revolt would exist only when there are crises in the country. “If the country gets a new constitution or holds elections the crises will get some sort of solution and the possibility of revolt will end,” said Lekhnath Neupane, a senior party leader. Neupane added that the party will have to take the route of protracted people’s war if the possibility of revolt ceases to exist.

Baidhya’s document was passed with a minor correction in the proposed organisational structure. The convention refused to establish councils under major bodies of the party, including the central executive committee.

Sources said the party would initiate preparations for people’s revolt in a covert manner and later that would automatically be revealed.

The new central committee of the party to be elected tomorrow will draft plans and programmes of the party according to the line passed by the convention. The leaders told participants they would gradually establish people’s army,  courts, base areas and people’s governments.

Yesterday, Ekraj Bhandari representing the Newa State Committee had demanded that the convention commit to fulfil the dreams of all the martyrs and disappeared people.

Bhandari’s son Bipin Bhandari, a popular student leader, had disappeared during the conflict.

The closed session, scheduled to conclude today, has been extended till tomorrow since discussions were delayed and the convention has not yet selected the central working committee.

Source: http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=CPN-M+finally+opts+for+people%27s+revolt&NewsID=361793

Reddit Founder Suicide On Gov.?

Freedom to Connect: Aaron Swartz (1986-2013) on Victory To Save Open Inte

From Delhi to Ohio and Around the World: If You Are Not Fighting Rape, You Are Condoning It! We Need Revolution and a Whole New World!

http://revcom.us/

by Sunsara Taylor | January 13, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On Dec. 16, 2012, a 23-year-old medical student was kidnapped, repeatedly gang-raped and tortured on a bus in Delhi, India, which had been taken over by six men. She was raped repeatedly, beaten viciously, and penetrated by a rusty iron rod which ruptured her internal organs. By the time her rapists dumped her naked body under an overpass, along with her male companion who had sustained broken bones and a severe beating, 95 percent of her intestines had been pulled out of her body. Her rapists attempted to run her over with the bus, but her companion managed to pull her out of the way. Still, her ordeal was not over. For nearly two hours, as blood poured from her body, medical treatment was delayed—first as passersby refused to stop and then as police delayed and debated over whose jurisdiction and responsibility she was. On December 29, after 13 days of emergency surgeries and medical attention, she died.

On August 11, 2012, a 16-year-old girl in Steubenville, Ohio, passed out at a party. While she was unconscious, the stars of the local football team stripped her naked, raped her, and goaded party-goers into urinating on her while crowds looked on. They dragged the unconscious girl to three different parties, violating her throughout the night. In cellphone footage taken that night, one of those at the scene can be seen laughing and joking about the rape of the girl. Referring to the fact that she was unresponsive as this assault went on, he jokes, "Is it really rape, cuz you don't know if she wanted it or not. She might have wanted it. That might have been her final wish." While this girl did not, in fact, die, a group of guys can be heard laughing as one of them goes on for a full 12 minutes saying things like, "She is deader than OJ Simpson's wife," and, "She is deader than Trayvon Martin."

How different are these two stories, really?

MXGM: Solidarity with Nepal’s Communist Regroupment

http://kasamaproject.org/

Posted by eric ribellarsi on January 11, 2013

Kasama will be sharing a series of statements in solidarity with the congress of the newly reconstituted Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist. Nepal’s Maoist revolutionaries have regrouped into a new revolutionary party. They are fighting to carve out a new revolutionary path in Nepal. This statement comes to Kasama from theMalcolm X Grassroots Movement.

Greetings of Solidarity from the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement to the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist.

The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) salutes you on the occasion of your Party 7th Congress.

The People’s War and the struggle for New Democracy in Nepal stand as one of the most fundamental contributions to world revolution in our time. We are heartened by your commitment to maintain and advance the struggle and not succumb to the illusions of Parliamentary democracy and the confines of the bourgeois state. We are clear, from our own painful struggles with neo-colonialism and comprador traitors, that we must remain vigilant against the dead ends of revisionism in its many guises.

The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) is an organization of people of Afrikan descent fighting for communism and the self-determination of colonized and oppressed peoples’ within the United States settler colonial empire. We are an integral part of the Black Liberation and Revolutionary Movement in the United States today, and have a long history of struggle going back to the 1960’s, with roots directly drawn from the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, the National Black Human Rights Coalition, and the New Afrikan People’s Organization.

People’s War is the road to final victory. We applaud your courage, conviction, and clarity in continuing its march.

Down with revisionism!
Forward to victory!

Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
Sunday, January 6, 2013

BASICS News: Solidarity from Canada to Nepal

There are thousand and one reasons to rebel, and only one amongst those is enough for us to start making preparations!

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.in/

From resistance march ahead towards revolutionary change!

Issued on 29^th December 2012

Sisters! Comrades!

The courageous girl who had been bravely battling for life for the past 14 days breathed her last on 29^th December. The spontaneous anger of people, especially youth, burst on streets once this incident came to light. Thousands of people have expressed their anger by gathering and uniting at Jantar Mantar and India Gate in Delhi. Undoubtedly, this anger had been cumulating in our heads for a long time now. What this incident did was to spill out the already over brimming cup of our patience and consequently most of us took to streets. The Sheela Dikshit government in Delhi as well as the Union government has now assumed a defensive stance. Throughout the country, the demand for death penalty for rape is being put forth. However, the truth is that the rapists easily get away in 74 percent rape cases. Therefore, in the first place, it must be ensured that at the very least, the rapists are convicted as well as punished. And secondly, the issue of punishment comes later; the most pertinent question is to understand as to why incidents of rape are increasing by the day and what forces are responsible for this trend?

A Burning Question for the Revolution—and a Call to Our Readers

January 13, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Life for the vast majority of humans on this earth presents itself as an endless horror. People in this country and all over the world dream of being free of this madness and suffering and they resist in thousands of different ways. But at the same time, they are told, from all directions, and constantly, that the world we live in is the best of all possible worlds and to make revolution will only bring something worse—that the best humans can do is try to make it a little better.

Fast Food Industry Attacks Workers

An Outpouring of Rage and a Challenge

January 13, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The eyes of the world are on India, where thousands of women, and men, have poured into the streets in outrage over the brutal rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman. It is a horror that could have happened anywhere in this world. But this time people are rising up in righteous rage. This is a moment, worldwide, when the usual, everyday workings of the capitalist-imperialist system, the way it destroys women physically and in spirit, is not being accepted as “just the way it is.”

And in fact, this is NOT the way the world needs to be. As the “Call to Action, End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women!” says: “Women are not objects. Women are not things to be used for the sexual pleasure of men NOR are they breeders of children. WOMEN ARE HUMAN BEINGS CAPABLE OF FULL EQUALITY IN EVERY REALM!” (The full Call to Action is available at revcom.us.)

This struggle is a critical element in the need, and basis for revolution in today’s world. In the talkUnresolved Contradictions, Driving Forces for Revolution, Bob Avakian says:

The question of the status—the oppression and the struggle for the liberation—of women is objectively coming to the forefront in today’s world and posing itself ever more profoundly and acutely.

This moment, and beyond that, the great need and potential indicated in this quote from BA poses an urgent challenge to revolutionaries. To help readers meet that challenge, there is a special page at revcom.us dedicated to updated coverage, analysis, correspondence, and providing quick access to critical material to take into the mix wherever people are stirring in outrage and protest. Find it atrevcom.us/movement-for-revolution/india-rape/.

Outrage in India— and the Global Capitalist Culture of Rape

January 13, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

December 16, 2012. Late into the night, a young woman and man—naked, bloody, and barely conscious—are dumped from a bus onto a dusty street in Mahipalpur, a district of south Delhi, India. After an agonizing wait of close to an hour while they lay bleeding in the street, they are finally taken to a hospital.

The woman had moved to the sprawling mega city of Delhi from her impoverished state of Uttar Pradesh. Her family had spent and sold everything they had so she could study medicine. She dreamed of returning to the village where she grew up and opening a hospital.

In Defence Of The Vanguard Party

India Workers Kill Tea Estate Boss

A Marxist Understanding Of The 2008 Economic Crisis

The Power of Shame

http://sanhati.com/

December 31, 2012

By Saroj Giri

‘National shame’, lajja – this is the sentiment most Indians feel, now that the raped girl has died. The rape has so far been essentially portrayed as a heinous but aberrant crime, a deviant behavior which apparently did not follow from the kind of society we inhabit. So, why should we, the entire society, feel the shame? This only means that shame has burst through exposing all the denials and attempts to contain the enormity of the problem and just make it a case requiring strong laws. Shame has come upon Indian society in spite of itself. Society as a whole stands implicated – this is what the sentiment of shame entails.

Shame, said Marx, is a revolutionary sentiment. Shame is introspective, loosens the inner resistance one can put up against looking into oneself. Now Indians might be willing to look into their society, their family, their institutions, their day to day life, their values, their civilization, their ethos, their human relations – and locate the recesses of patriarchal domination in them all. Indian society today, that real society where violence against women is normal, almost casual, and where love towards women is deeply patriarchal, seems to have loosened itself up a bit. It appears far less confident about its claims, its self-lauding proclamations. Its defences are down – a rare occasion. It is caught offguard today. It cannot act as though violence against women is only an external problem, exceptional and a deviation from ‘our’ social norms.