The claims are straight-forward — but still controversial: Archeologists have found very early stone tools on Crete, an island in the middle of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Getting there would have required some kind of boat, probably from the mainland of Europe — from Greece, perhaps by island hopping in surrounding islands.
However, these tools are dated about 130,000 years ago — which is fully 80,000 long before any evidence places modern humans in Europe. (And, believe it or not, they may perhaps be much older.) And to complicate things further, some scientists believe the tools suggest the Acheulean culture — which is a style of primitive tool-making associated with Homo erectus — the human ancestor species, with a brain capacity 2/3 that of modern human, who spread out from Africa across Eurasia a million years ago.
So what does this mean?
That Homo erectus invented boats and sailing? This may be true, even if it is hard for me to imagine — given what we know about Homo erectus. Despite the fact that Homo erectus tamed fire and left tools scattered everywhere, the record of erectus’s tools show remarkably little cultural innovation or change over a million years. They were quite intelligent early humans, but not nearly as restlessly inventive as we modern humans are.
Does this mean that modern humans had settled in the Mediterranean islands 80,000 years earlier than we suspected anyone had left Africa — and that these early migrants were making boats but otherwise using primitive tools not that different from their own distant Homo erectus ancestors?
Utah defines some miscarriages as “criminal homicide”
Will Neville, Associate Director eCampaign Strategies
Utah is poised to become the first state in the U.S. to criminalize miscarriage and punish women for having or seeking an illegal abortion. Utah’s “Criminal Miscarriage” law:
expands the definition of illegal abortion to include some miscarriages
removes immunity protections for women who have or seek illegal abortions
treats women as presumptive criminals and leaves them open to criminal prosecution
But even among states that punish illegal abortions, this “Criminal Miscarriage” law is unique. It not only punishes individuals who perform illegal procedures; it punishes women.
“A professor mentioned how, in terms of strategy, we needed to cater our message more to the student population at our school and how it adversely affected them, white upper-middle class students. Another student suggested we not “use the race thing so much” because it would alienate many. A friend of mine suggested we make no mention of anything beyond the immediate cuts at our university, also to avoid alienation.
“And I’m trying to come to grips with all of this…
“There’s a real need to develop a revolutionary and radical strategy within this movement to move students beyond this position towards one which understands the holistic nature of the struggle, but I also believe it needs to be done in a way that connects with their desires and aspirations (something I haven’t figured out that well)…This is a struggle not simply for a return to the status quo of before, but for a better world where the interests of the youth are put before the interests of war and empire.“
* * * * * * *
by Vivid Visionary
I attend California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. It’s in a city midway in between the Bay Area and LA, with a population of about 45,000 (of which 20,000 or so belong to the university). As its name indicates, it is a polytechnic school, specializing in engineering, architecture, and agriculture. It places second in the nation in the amount of graduates it sends to the Department of Defense, and it takes a lot of pride in that. The agricultural department is backed by the billion dollar agriculture industry, with dairies, fields, feeds, etc.
Rioters Clash with Police in Streets South of UC Berkeley
The following is from the Daily Cal. Thanks to Adrienne for suggesting it. Barely mentioned in the following rather hostile piece is the fact that this started as a building event for the March 4 statewide protest against cuts in public education. We will post more about these March 4 plans soon.
A crowd of more than 200 people swarmed the streets of Southside early Friday morning in a riot involving six law enforcement agencies, runaway dumpsters, flaming trash cans, shattered windows and violent clashes between rioters and police.
What began as a dance party on Upper Sproul Plaza led to an occupation of Durant Hall at around 11:15 p.m. Thursday to raise support for the March 4 statewide protest in support of public education.
UCPD Captain Margo Bennett said the occupiers “cut a lock to get into the construction area and then cut a lock to get into the building” before vandalizing the area.
“There were windows broken, there was spray painting and graffiti on the interior, there was construction equipment that was tossed around,” she said.
The occupation evolved into a riot as it moved onto streets south of campus, where a protester broke several windows of the Subway at Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue at about 1:41 a.m.
Science Fiction as a Terrain of Struggle: A Review of Red Planets
by Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction is a fascinating book of literary/cinematic criticism and political theory. It was not, however, the book that I thought it would be. Red Planets is a collection of essays that offers an intricate analysis of the development of science fiction as a genre. This collection also unpacks many of the key themes in science fiction and relates them to broader struggles on the ideological plane. As such, Red Planets must be read less as an analysis of the hidden (and not so hidden) messages contained in much science fiction literature, cinema, and television, and more as an examination of how various issues of theory are struggled out within the realm of what we have come to know as science fiction.
Once I came to understand that this was a very different book than I anticipated, I was able to read it more comfortably, though through many challenges. This is a book that works as a course book in a college and university setting, particularly where students are attempting to understand the history of the development of the literary and cinematic genre of science fiction. This is not to say that the essays are written absent a clear point of view. To the contrary, the essays are strongly written, in many cases attempting (generally successfully) to link their analysis of various aspects of science fiction to struggles that were taking place in other realms of theory. One of the most thought-provoking of the pieces was Darren Jorgensen’s “Towards a Revolutionary Science Fiction: Althusser’s Critique of Historicity.” I think that the last thing that I expected to see in this collection was a use of Althusserian Marxism to examine and critique a particular school of thought in science fiction. Yet the essay worked, as did Rob Latham’s “The Urban Question in New Wave SF.” This latter piece particularly struck me because of the emerging struggles in much of the world — including here in the USA — regarding urban terrain: specifically, the question of class struggle at the level of geography, a theme advanced by David Harvey, as well as — at the activist level — by the Right to the City Alliance.
Last year Kasama hosted a discussion of the slogan “Unleash the Fury of Women as a Powerful Force for Revolution.” The initiating post (by Mike Ely) raised a few questions for discussion (without necessarily endorsing them):
“I have always heard three major objections raised to this slogan….
1) First and most important: When revolution requires the intellect, consciousness, determination, work, creativity, invention, subversive power of women, why focus so singlemindedly on their “fury”? Doesn’t that major focus on “the FURY of women” play into the ancient depiction of women as emotional (upset, hysterical and so on), and not analytical beings?
2) The use of the word “unleash” (in some Maoist politics) implies a great deal of spontaneity — as if the positive power of people is merely “leashed” and just needs to be “unleashed” to work its magic. Is that really what the task is, in relation to the oppression of women, to “unleash” their fury? Where do the other tasks come in: like raising consciousness to the point where we “know the world to change the world”?
3) Who is this slogan addressed at? Who is supposed to do this “unleashing”? This is obviously not a demand against the ruling classes (which is fine). It does not seem to be a slogan for the people themselves to adopt…If we are going to rally people (and especially women) in a revolutoinary struggle to end the oppression of women — does this capture and concentrate the most advanced sentiments and understandings that people have?
A year later, Joy writes in response to this post:
Let’s just be real about the essence of what is being said here. That women should not be angry about their conditions about being raped, molested, depicted as second class citizens and if they are angry, ” it means that women are ‘emotional (upset, hysterical and so on)’
An “essence” is declared — without any real explanation.
“…countries as diverse as Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Korea, Albania, and men as dissimilar as Lenin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, have all found themselves arriving at the one-party state, then we might be forced to conclude that the proletariat HAS IN FACT ALREADY FOUND the form of political rule appropriate to itself as a class.”
* * * * * * *
By John Carter
Comrades,
First, I think it’s extremely cool that Mike has chosen to directly engage the divergent views expressed in this thread. Coming from the orbit of the CPUSA, where criticism is dismissed out of hand when it’s not ignored, I hardly know how to respond … I lack recent practice in maintaining a polemic.
But that’s fine. We need to encourage and find ways to foster and nurture the kind of intellectual and ideological struggle that characterized the Bolshevik Party during Lenin’s lifetime, while still remaining comrades. I quite certain Mike would agree with that.
Anyway -
At first blush, it might seem that allowing room for a multiplicity of competing socialist parties, the basic premise of the Maobadi’s “new mainstream” And here I stand corrected, BTW; it is quite correct that the parties of the exploiters and the bourgeoisie are excluded from this spectrum), is a natrual evolution from the insight that tendencies are going to exist within the vanguard party, and so we might as well let them struggle in the open rather than suppressing them through administrative means or worse.
“I don’t think its a very good idea for Marxists to try to create a revolutionary situation by pushing for reforms the system can’t or won’t meet anyway. This approach tends to give the initiative to the reactionaries who can pick their own time to launch coups or mass round-ups of communists. I don’t really think this is exactly what the UCPN(M) is doing in any case. I think they’re just trying to win reforms.
This issue hasn’t been discussed enough. And that issue is transitional demands.
Every successful revolution in history has had a moment when key demands of the people become the banner for the seizure of power. Millions of people don’t simply fight and die for the ultimate goals of revolution — for communism, socialism and classless society, as concepts. They are willing to fight, and even die, when they cannot live the old way and rally to a real, existing political force dedicated to communism, socialism and classless society.
“Bread, Peace and Land” in the Russian revolution is a crucial example — where the heartfelt demands of millions became sharply focused (in the midst of a world war and social collapse) and where ONLY the communist victory could resolve those demands.
لزومی ندارد با گرایشات و اندیشه های جدید دیگران به مثابه ارتداد از خلوص مذهبی برخورد شود. (مایک اِلی)
در این نوشته می خواهم پیرامون نظریات ” تل نات لای” ( سایت TNL ) در خصوص اشاره به نام تروتسکی از سوی یکی از رهبران مائوئیست نپال، مطالبی بیان کنم.
اولا ً کل مطلب این است که شفاف بودن و انقلابی مخلص بودن به معنی فرقه ای بودن نیست. طرفه اینکه یکی از چالش های چپ همین موضوع ” فرقه” است، چون ضدیت با فرقه گرایی پرچم رفرمیسم است. من فکر می کنم – آنگونه که همه ما مشتاقیم – امکان انقلابی مخلص بودن و در عین حال ضد فرقه بودن با تمام اسباب و ملزومات اش برای همه ی ِ ما موجود است.
TNL بطورخلاصه می گوید:
” من از دیدن نقل قولی از تروتسکی از سوی باتارای صرفا ً به خاطر ایجاد شدن تَرَکی در اندیشه بسته دگماتیست ها بسیار خوشحال شدم… کاش چنین امری در همه مرتدین از گرامشی گرفته تا فانون و دیگران روی می داد. هوشیار بودن در برابر اندیشه های ارتدادی برای تئوری انقلابی حیاتی است…دیدگاه دارای خلوص علمی از ارتداد هراسی ندارد و آگاه است که ایده های مردود همواره با تجارب جدید و یا پیشرفت های ایدئولوژیک در سایر حوزه ها ، مجددا ً خودنمایی می کنند.”
نقد تروتسکیستی ساختمان سوسیالیسم در یک کشور از اینرو عمدتا ً پروبلماتیک است که به لحاظ سیاسی موجب ناکارآمدی می شود زیرا در خصوص محدودیت های آنچه که می تواند بدست آید به لحاظ تحلیلی نادرست است و احیای آن در کشوری بسیار کوچک در جهان تمرکز یافته به نظر صحیح نمی آید.”
فکر می کنم از جنبه های مختلف می توان به این موضوع پرداخت:
۱- تهدید و متهم کردن عقاید به ارتداد باب بحث و تبادل نظر را قبل از پرداختن عمیق به موضوعات مطروحه می بندد. این شیوه برخورد هولناک است. کمونیسم ، مذهبی با دکترین مذهبی و کافرین و مرتدین مخصوص به خود نیست.
در تاریخ به موازات برخورد کمینترن با تروتسکیسم و( سایر جریانات) به مثابه جریانات ارتدادی، با گرایشات چپ نیز به عنوان جریانات جاسوسی و کودتاگر و ضدانقلابی مسلم ، سیاست فوق العاده سکتاریستی نیز پیش برده شده که امثال آن را تنها در فرقه های کوچک پروتستان مسیحی می توان سراغ گرفت.
لازم است با ایده ها به روشنی و صراحت برخورد کرد. حتا اگر معتقد باشیم که آن ایده ها و برنامه ها مطلقا ً نادرست اند. چون تنها از بحث بر سر ایده هاست که موجب تعمیق و غنای اندیشه ها و دستیابی به یک متدولوژی قابل اطمینان خواهد شد. و(همانگونه که عده ای خاطرنشان کرده اند) گاهی در لابلای ایده ها و نظریات نادرست هم چیزهایی برای آموختن وجود دارد.
Thanks to the translation team. They urge Spanish and French speakers to translate this article into their languages as well — to help expose little known truths about the criminal founding of the United States.
خونریزی بومیان: افسانه ی روز شکرگزاری
اثر مایک ایلای
یادداشت مترجم: چهارمین پنجشنبه ی ماه نوامبر هر سال در آمریکا روز شکرگزاری نام داشته، که بنا به ادعای آمریکائیان روزی بود که برای شکر یاری خداوند به مهاجرین، آنها با بومیان جشن خرمن گرفتند. بهروز نوائی
پوریتان ها ی مهاجر در قتل عام پکوئوت
اثر: مایک ایلای
جشن گرفتن برای بقا یافتن مهاجرین کولونیست در شهر پلیموت سنتی بسیار مهم در فرهنگ ایالات متحده ی آمریکا ست که طی آن از خداوند مسیحیان تشکر میکنند که پنداراً از آنها نگهداری کرده و از تهاجم گران اروپا قهرمان ساخته است. مفهوم واقعی آن هراز گاهی لازم است که دائماً شکافته شود. اسطوره و دروغ هایی که در رابطه با گذشته است دائماً تحت وحشت ها و شکنجه های امروزی پوشانده میشوند.
به هر بچه ی دبستان در آمریکا این دروغ تدریس شده که در پی نجات یافتن شان در طی یکمین سال سخت شان در نیو اینگلند، مهاجرین مستعمره ی پلیماوت بومیان Read the rest of this entry »
This article originally appeared in Red Star and was suggested by NSPF.
“The recently-held Central Committee Meeting of our party has correctly assessed that the New Democratic revolution in Nepal is at a crossroads of great potentiality of victory and serious danger of defeat. In the present world situation, it is only our country Nepal where New Democratic revolution is possible. However, whether or not the Nepalese proletariat can seize this opportunity depends upon whether or not our party can develop a correct ideological and political line, consolidate party unity based on it and rally the world proletariat around it. If we succeed to achieve this, no one in the world will be able to stop us from establishing People’s Federal Republic of Nepal.”
“We should keep in mind that sustenance of the proletarian power in a single country is in the present world situation equally difficult to or more challenging than the seizure of political power. Sustenance of people’s power is inseparably related with the expansion and development of revolutionary class struggles in other countries.”
“At the present juncture, which is full of opportunities and challenges, only by developing a correct ideological and political line, party unity based on it and pushing forward the aforesaid international tasks in a planned way will we be able to establish People’s Republic in Nepal. This and this will be a service to world revolution and genuine proletarian internationalism too.”
* * * * * **
by Indra Mohan Sigdel (Basanta)
Politbureau member of Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
The proletariat class, which is deprived of means of production, is forced to sell its labour as a commodity into the market to those bourgeois who grab them. In a capitalist society, those who produce commodity with the expense of their labour are deprived of appropriating the very product while those who are not at all involved in production appropriate it. It is not particular to a certain country but a universal phenomenon where the capitalist mode of production exists.
Many points have been raised have been raised in the sharp debate over the 4 Reasons article and on the major recent statement by the Maoist leadership in Nepal.
If you step back, you will notice that every attempt to rally and mobilize support for the living revolution in Nepal is met by a cascade of cranky and muttered complaints — basically that the Nepalis are not following some pre-ordained script, and that you can’t be making a communist revolution without those specific pre-ordained scripts (and this muttering comes from various circles entranced in a fixed orthodoxy — which sometimes proclaims itself as Maoist, or as Trotskyist, or as newly minted) .
Thirty years ago, the following was embraced by the main Maoist forces within the U.S.:
“It can be… said that it is even a law of revolution, and especially of proletarian revolution, that in order for it to succeed in any particular country, the struggle in that country and those leading it will have to depart from and even oppose certain particular conceptions or previous practices which have come to be invested with the stature of ‘established norms’ in the revolutionary movement.”
I have since developed differences with the specific author of those words, but I agreed with thode thoughts in 1979, and agree with them today.
Here are some comments (taking up issues in no particular order).
Ringing a Bell or Crying Wolf?
Joseph Ball writes:
“Many times since 2006 we have heard that this or that dispute over the political process in Nepal would lead to revolution.”
I think this is basically a strawman. I have never heard any claims that one or another crisis would lead to revolution. By contrast, what I have heard (and said) is:
In the summer of 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. They are known to the world as Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner. But back then, in the days before they died, I knew them as Andy, JE, and Mickey.
I want to share with you my memories of the time we drove south together to join the Mississippi Freedom Summer project. I want to tell a bit of the story of that summer, and tell it for a purpose. I believe it has implications for today.
Driving South
Mickey was driving as we pulled out of Oxford, Ohio in his station wagon, windows down, through the lush green of early summer. The four of us were volunteers. We were excited. And we felt some fear. We were part of a project to fight white supremacy in Mississippi, where the most basic democratic rights were denied to African American people. We were going to throw ourselves into the front lines of a cause that called itself, simply, the Movement.
“They don’t just want my death, they want my silence.”
Mumia Abu-Jamal [1]
From Panther to Voice of the Voiceless
On August 8, 1978, Mayor Frank Rizzo was in a combative mood at a special afternoon press conference in Philadelphia’s City Hall. Just hours before, Rizzo’s police had staged a massive raid on the home of the radical MOVE organization on Powelton Avenue. After attacking the house with intense gunfire, tear gas and a flood of water, police arrested the MOVE members and publicly beat Delbert Africa as he surrendered.
At City Hall, Rizzo was blunt with the press: he expected them to close ranks in support of police actions. Then, from the crowded pack of reporters, a young Black journalist spoke out in the resonant tones of a radio broadcaster. He raised pointed questions about the official police story Rizzo had just laid out.
Mayor Rizzo exploded in fury and spat out a thinly veiled threat: “They believe what you write, and what you say, and it’s got to stop. And one day–and I hope it’s in my career–that you’re going to have to be held responsible and accountable for what you do.” [2]
The journalist who challenged Rizzo that day was Mumia Abu-Jamal. He had spent a decade exposing the racism of Philadelphia’s police and legal system.
In Homer, Louisiana, the police shot an unarmed 73 year old Black man seven times in his chest, on his own porch. Now, a year later a grand jury has announced that no charges will be pressed against the uniformed killers — not murder, not even manslaughter.Nothing.
Everyone knows if Bernard Monroe had been white, this killing would probably not have happened. Now it is clear that it was not just the police who cared nothing for the life of this Black man — his death meant nothing to the whole investigating structure of authority.
The following is an article from the New York Times that gives some of the factual details.
An Officer Shoots, a 73-Year-Old Dies, and Schisms Return
HOMER, La. — For the past year, many residents of this tiny town in the northern Louisiana hill country have waited in anger.
They have waited ever since last Feb. 20, when Bernard Monroe, a 73-year-old black man left mute from throat cancer, was shot to death in his front yard by a white police officer who claimed, contrary to other witnesses, that Mr. Monroe had a pistol. They waited as the state police finished its investigation, as the case was passed on to the state attorney general and as a grand jury deliberated on a list of charges, including murder, manslaughter and negligent homicide.
The Standing Committee Meeting of our glorious party, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), was held from January 27, 2010 to February 3, 2010. Clarifying the historical tasks before the party, movement and the Nepalese people, the meeting, which was held at a very serious and sensitive turning-point of our country, was successfully concluded by preparing guideline and plan to accomplish them. This press release has been issued to make public the important decisions of the meeting, which was chaired by Party Chairman Comrade Prachanda.
1. In the beginning of the meeting, emotional homage was paid to those entire martyrs, known and unknown, who laid down their lives in the course of great people’s war, historical mass movement and other occasions to emancipate Nepal and the Nepalese people.
2. The meeting admitted with full seriousness the reality that the Chairman Comrade Prachanda, who as a centralized expression of collective leadership has played the main role to synthesize and determine party line (idea, line and policy) has been providing a correct and an adept leadership to the party and the revolutionary movement. Against the truth that the party has been going ahead successfully with the correct centralization of idea and leadership, the meeting has concluded that the all round attack and misinformation by detaching the line and leadership and all round attack upon the leaders including the main leadership is a well planned conspiracy, which on the part of the reactionary and opportunist forces is aimed at attacking upon party and its authentic line and dividing the party itself. The meeting, calling upon the entire party ranks and the masses to remain heedful on such conspiracies, has expressed its resolve to go ahead unitedly and firmly towards the revolutionary goal.
The following piece first appeared on Counterpunch. One of the pieces it dissects was posted and discussed here on Kasama.
The New York Times on Nepal
Skewing the Himalayan Revolution
by Gary Leupp
Two recent articles in the New York Times by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Jim Yardley draw attention to the mounting political crisis in Nepal. They point out that the fundamental problem is “the unresolved task of merging the two enemy armies” mandated by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed by the Maoists and the government in November 2006.
Yardley notes that the interim constitution composed in January 2007 will expire on May 28, when a new one authored by the Constituent Assembly is supposed to go into effect. But the writing of the new constitution has not been completed, and the peace agreement may fall by the wayside in a few months.
Yardley indicates that both parties are at fault for the impasse. “Many analysts,” he writes (without citing any names), “say the Maoists have maneuvered to keep their army intact as a bargaining chip to influence the constitutional negotiations. At the same time, the Nepalese Army, which before 2006 answered to the king, now deposed, has grudgingly succumbed to civilian control. In January, the defense minister announced that the army was not obligated to accept Maoist soldiers and should be included in civilian negotiations over integration — comments rejected by the prime minister and seized upon by Maoists as evidence of bad faith by the government.”
by Mike Ely
The following is a translation of “
