A huge Maoist-led march demanded resignation of Army chief, April 27
From telegraphnepal.com. thanks to Ka Frank for suggesting it. Note: the word GHERAO in the first sentence means ‘encircle” — and is the name for a certain form of mass action used in South Asia .
Nepal Army-Maoist on collision course?
TGW
The Maoists party is preparing to gherao the entire Capital city come May 1, 2009, say fresh reports coming form the Maoists’ camp.
The Maoists cadres from across the country have begun arriving in the capital to participate in the May 1-Workers Day.
“They have been kept in different locations in the capital from where they will organize rallies and converge in the capital center on Friday”.
“The May 1- Maoists’ rally will be the biggest of its own kind ever held in the capital”, say Maoists sources.
“Our major concern, on that day, will be to pressurize the government to restore Peoples’ Supremacy.”
On the other hand, the Nepal Army has instructed all its divisions spread in the five development region of the country to stay on high alert.
“The NA headquarters has also asked the Special Force of the Bhairab Nath Battalion to remain prepared to handle any untoward event”.
The Ranger Force of the Bhairab Nath Battalion, Maharajgunj, Kathmandu that was specially trained to fight against the Maoists at time of the Maoists’ led Peoples’ Revolt, are already in the state of alert.
The Ranger Force was trained on the Israeli and American style(Sniper Training).
Some Generals and high ranking officers have also been told to shorten their vacation and immediately show up at their respective divisions.
In the meantime, the Chief of the Army Staff Mr. Rukmangad Katwal had called a meeting with high ranking General of the Nepal Army at the NA headquarters.
“All those Generals who appeared in the Tuesday meeting are considered to be close to Mr. Katawal”, say sources.
2009-04-29 09:31:00
Earlier we have discussed the U.S. “torture play list” — the popular songs used by American torturers to torment captives around the world. Part of the discussion has been the response of the artists themselves to this use of their music. Saoirse has pursued an investigation into these responses.
by Saoirse
According to the Associated Press, RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE guitarist Tom Morello has been especially forceful in denouncing the practice of systematically using loud music on hundreds of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. During a recent concert in San Francisco, he made a proposal for the government’s future plans for its Guantanamo Bay facilities.
“I suggest that they level Guantanamo Bay, but they keep one small cell and they put Bush in there … and they blast some RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE,” he said to whoops and cheers.
METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich appeared as a guest on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Monday night (April 27), where the liberal news commentator and the Danish drummer discussed living in San Francisco, Guitar Hero: Metallica, and politics (see video below). With the debate over the military and CIA’s use of torture front and center in the news lately, Maddow also asked Ulrich how he felt about METALLICA’s music being used to psychologically torture prisoners of war.
We have been discussing experiences and theories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the controversies around the January Storm (which are questions to get the the heart of understanding socialism and the process of capitalist restoration.)
The following combines Mao’s remarks from three meetings with the leaders of the january storm, held between 12 to 18 February 1967, in Beijing right after the seizuer of power in Shanghai. It is one of the key documents of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (made available to us via Dave Buck’s archive).
“Before you make a revolution, you must first create public opinion.”
“In future do not say: ‘Overthrow the diehards who persist in following the reactionary line.’ Say rather: ‘Overthrow those in authority taking the capitalist road.’”
“Communes are too weak when it comes to suppressing counterrevolution.”
“Our method of struggle should now be on a higher level. We shouldn’t keep on saying, ‘Smash their dogs’ heads, down with XXX.’ I think that university students should make a deeper study of things and choose a few passages to write some critical articles about.”
Talks at Three Meetings with Comrades Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan
By Mao Zedong
At the Wen-hul-pao [shanghai's daily newspaper] the leftists have now seized power. They rebelled on the fourth. The Liberation Daily also rebelled on the sixth. This is the right direction. I have read all three editions of the Wen-hul-pao since the seizure of power. They reprinted some articles by Red Guards. Some of them are good and should be reprinted elsewhere.
On the fifth the Wen-hul-pao issued ‘A Letter to the People of the Whole City’. The People’s Daily [in Beijing] should reprint it, and the radio stations should broadcast it.
Internal rebellions are fine. In a few days we can make a general report on them. This is one class overthrowing another. This is a great revolution.
Many papers in my opinion would be better closed down. But newspapers must still come out. The question is by whom they are brought out. It is good that the Wen-hul-pao and the Liberation Daily have changed management. As soon as they come out these two papers will certainly influence East China and every province and city in the country.
Before you make a revolution, you must first create public opinion.
We received the following from the A World to Win News Service, with the original title, “Some ideas about how to look at the swine flu epidemic.”
27 April 2009. A World to Win News Service. It is impossible to predict the spread, severity and consequences of the swine flu epidemic that broke out in Mexico. But influenza epidemics have occurred regularly – with three pandemics (global epidemics) in the 20th century – and scientists and public health authorities have known for a long time that new pandemics were inevitable. Some possible parameters and paths of development of such a situation can scientifically understood, in both the biological and social spheres.
There are two separate and mainly independent factors at work. One is the nature and evolution of the disease itself, which is not caused by human activity. Although social factors – for instance industrial pig farming – may conceivably have played a contributing role in the appearance of this particular disease, human beings didn’t invent viruses or human and animal vulnerability to them.
The other factor is just the opposite: What kind of society people live in, what drives the economic organisation of those societies and their social and political relations. In short, if the first factor concerns natural phenomena, itself, the second is the capitalist and imperialist world in which they occur.
Mike Davis, whose 2006 book The Monster at Our Door warned of the threat of a global bird flu pandemic, explains how globalized agribusiness set the stage for a frightening outbreak of the swine flu in Mexico. This story was originally published at socialistworker.org.
By Mike Davis
THE SPRING Break hordes returned from Cancún this year with an invisible but sinister souvenir.
The Mexican swine flu, a genetic chimera probably conceived in the fecal mire of an industrial pigsty, suddenly threatens to give the whole world a fever. Initial outbreaks across North America reveal an infection rate already traveling at higher velocity than the last official pandemic strain, the 1968 Hong Kong flu.
Stealing the limelight from our officially appointed assassin–the otherwise vigorously mutating H5N1, known as bird flu–this porcine virus is a threat of unknown magnitude. Certainly, it seems far less lethal than SARS in 2003, but as an influenza, it may be more durable than SARS and less inclined to return to its secret cave.
We are showered with chatter about “African piracy” — about the conflict between “civilization” and ”the chaos of failed states.”
It is worth remember who is really stalking the world’s oceans with criminal purposes — in nuclear battlefleets, in the plunder of non-renewable resources and (as this video shows) cargoes of toxic waste headed for the poorest countries of the world.
from Fernando Bolero's series of paintings on American torture
The torturers constantly claim they were trying to “keep America safe.” They raise hypothetical examples about torture to uncover an imminent attack. They imply that they were thwarting exiting plots by torturing their captives. But in fact, the torture of captives was tied to the Cheney-Bush determination to INVENT a reason to invade and conquer Iraq. The following piece from Counterpunch.org (April 24-26, 2009) is a contribution to understanding the actual dynamics of the so-called “war on terror” — and the strategic goals the U.S. government was sending its killers and torturers to pursue. From the moment of 9/11, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush were eager to divert the U.S. war fever from the non-strategic faild state of Afghanistan to the highly strategic Persian Gulf state of Iraq. Why waste a mood of revenge?
The torture was a war crime. And one reason it was carried out was to help fabricate justifications for another war crime — the unprovoked U.S. aggression against the country of Iraq.
What They Craved: Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11
By Marjorie Cohn
When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) stated that former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zabaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each. I told Franks that I didn’t believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. One of Stephen Bradbury’s 2005 memos asserted that “enhanced techniques” on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote in the New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever used.
Why, then, the relentless waterboarding of these two men? It turns out that high Bush officials put heavy pressure on Pentagon interrogators to get Mohammed and Zubaydah to reveal a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 hijackers, in order to justify Bush’s illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003. That link was never established.
This essay starts with one of the key theoretical questions of modern communism: Why did capitalist restoration happen in the socialist societies born in the twentieth century? Why did this happen without massive resistance arising from the people.
We have received the following essay for posting. We have previously posed a detailed exampination of these questions by the MLMRSG, and have several other analyses which we intend to post soon. Our posting of these position papers does not represent Kasama’s endorsement of the analyses contained — but is intended to open up a deepening and serious consideration of these questions.
Why China Went Capitalist
by Antaeus
Why did the Chinese Communist Party turn into a capitalist party so quickly once Mao died?
Why was it so easy for Deng and supporters to kick out the “Gang of Four”, Mao’s closest supporters and most “left” among the leadership?
Why was there no mass rebellion against this among the members of the Party?
Why did the “cadre” – full-time Party officials – go along with this swift move back to capitalist production, distribution, and property relations?
How was it that Deng himself had so much support among the Party cadre that he was able to control the Party behind the scenes and then, in a couple of years, openly take over? Along with Liu Shaoqi Deng had been one of the main targets of the GPCR.
The proximate roots of the overthrow of Chinese communism lie in the question of “cadres” that arose again and again during the Cultural Revolution.
The first is an excerpt of Mao’s talk after the 9 th party congress. (April 1969). In it he discusses his views on continuing the revolution, even after the great storms of mass struggle have been called off. And he situates that in the context of the growingmilitary clashes with the Soviet Union and the real danger of wider war.
Several of our old comrades have been to the factories for a while to see for themselves. I hope that in future you people will also go down to have a look when the opportunity arises. You should study the problems of various factories. It seems essential that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution should still be carried out. Our foundation has not been consolidated. According to my own observation I would say that, not in all factories, nor in an overwhelming majority of factories, but in quite a large majority of cases the leadership is not in the hands of true Marxists, nor yet in the hands of the masses of the workers.
In the past the leadership in the factories was not devoid of good men; there were good men. Among the Party committee secretaries, assistant secretaries and committee members there were good men. There were good men among the branch secretaries. But they followed the old line of Liu Shao-ch’i. They were all for material incentives, they put profits in command and did not promote proletarian politics. Instead they operated a system of bonuses, etc. There are now some factories which have liberated them and have included them in the leadership based on the Triple Alliance.
Some factories still have not done so. But in the factories there are indeed bad people, for example in the Seventh of February works, which is the railway locomotive and carriage repair works at Ch’ang-hsin-tien. This is a big factory with 8,000 workers and several tens of thousands if you include their families. In the past the Kuomintang had nine district branches there, theSan-min chu-i Youth League[] had three organizations and eight so-called special duty organs. Of course, careful analysis is called for because in those days it wouldn’t do to refuse to join the Kuomintang! Some of them are old workers.
They told us communism is dead & capitalism is forever…. THINK AGAIN
THEY TELL US: You have to give the banks trillions because “We can’t live without this financial system.” Sure we can! We don’t need these mountains of debts and mortgages, or these parasites robbing the whole world. We don’t need a system where nothing moves unless some monstrous corporation can get fat off of it. Their profit and survival is not our concern. Let them fall! We have dreams of something better, where human beings not dollars rule. Let’s take over the banks, and the corporations, and control them ourselves, or take them apart when their only function is exploitation. Let’s have a socialist revolution where debts are canceled, and human beings are not measured by money, where all the crimes of this system are uprooted. And where we concern ourselves with a whole world of humanity, not with their bottom lines and profit margins.
Capitalism is a bankrupt system — we need to get rid of it!
The dramatic collapse of the financial sectors over the past year is showing capitalism for what it is: a global parasitic system that feeds on the creative labor of the people of the world. Capitalist profit and banking interest come from the surplus-value created by that labor.
In 1994, a fierce campaign of killing swept across Rwanda in central Africa, where many hundreds of thousands of people were killed, mainly of the Tutsi people. These events have been portrayed internationally as the eruption of ancient and incomprehensible hatreds. But in fact, an examination of the history of Rwanda shows that the hostilities of the herding Tutsi people and the agricultural Hutu people was greatly inflamed by the discriminatory policies of the colonial French governments in the early 20th centry. And more, the explosion of fighting in Rwanda (just like the later civil war in the Congo) are closely connected with the rivalry of Anglo-American and French imperialism over the control of Central Africa. The following article digs into recent revelations about the direct involvement of the French government in the genocide.
It focuses on a 500 page report compiled by a team of investigators from the Rwandan Justice Ministry, and released in August 2008. The scathing 3-volume report was rleased by Rwandan Minister of Justice Tharcisse Karungarama to a conference room packed with hundreds of people. The findings of the report, which implicated French troops and 33 leading French politicians were quickly denounced by French officials.
We have received the following article which was originally published in Payam Fedaee #115. We have made changes to the English translation for clarity. (The original article is available in Farsi. Thanks to Green/Red for suggesting it.)
The French Government role in Rwanda’s 1994 Genocide
By Maryam
Newly evidence documents the role of the French regime in the 1994 Rwanda genocide — and has, once again, put the spotlight on this tragic event and the role of foreign imperialists in it.
In early August 2008, the Rwandan government released a report based on eyewitness accounts that the direct cooperation between the French state and the government of Rwandan Hutus that was in power during the 1994 genocide. This report is consistent with the results of investigations performed by various other organizations, including human rights groups.
Quiz instructions:
Read the following text, then click for the questions.
For ten years, the communists and people of China waged a bitter civil war against the forces of the GMD (Guomindang – the Nationalist Party) — the political party and military that in the 1930s most represented the big landlords, reactionary warlords, corrupt bureaucrat capitalists and foreign-serving “compradors” of China.
There was the horrific massacre of workers and communists in Shanghai — as Chiang Kaishek turned his guns suddenly on his former communist allies, and sought to wipe them out. There were encirclement and suppression campaigns — where the GMD massacred the peasants who were the base of new liberated zones. There was the Long March, where Mao’s forces treked across the broad expanse of China, fighting desperate battles constantly with pursuing GMD armies.
The Maoist forces regrouped in the remote area of Yenan, on China’s distant northern border — and prepared themselves for the next stage of the revolution. The communists were organized on the basis of agrarian revolution — violent land reform that took property and wealth from the landlords and gave them to the people. Political power in the base areas was organized on the basis of rural Soviets — independent states flying the red flag with the hammer and sickle. The revolutionary forces were called the Red Army.
Then on September 22, 1937, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued a manifesto. They proposed as one of the “general objectives for the common struggle of the entire people” the enforcement of “democracy based on people’s rights and the convocation of the National People’s Congress in order to enact the Constitution and decide upon the plans of national salvation.”
The Communist Party Central Committee declared:
“1) The Three Peoples Principles enunciated by Dr. Sun Yatsen [the great bourgeois democrat founder of the Nationalist Party ] are the paramount need of China today. This Party is ready to strive for their enforcement.
“2) This Party abandons its policy of overthrowing the Guomindang of China by force and the movement of sovietization and discontinues its policy of forced confiscation of land from landowners.
“3) This Party abolishes the present Soviet government and enforces democracy based on people’s rights in order to unify the national political machinery.
“4) This Party abolishes the Red Army, reorganizes it into the National Revolutionary Army [of the GMD], places it under the direct control of the Military Affairs Commission of the National Government, and awaits orders for mobilization to share the responsibility of resiting foreign invasion at the front.”
The next day, Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek declared:
“The various decisions embodied in the Manifesto, such as the abandonment of a policy of violence, the cessation of Communist propaganda, the abolition of the Chinese Soviet government, and the disbandment of the Red Army are all essential conditions for mobilizing our national strength in order that we may meet the menace from without and guarantee our own national existance. “
Let’s take a close look at this revealing essay by the Nepali Maoists. They put it forward at a key moment as their explanation to the world of their plans for this period. And many times since then they have urged us to look to their basic statements of policy, not to this or that public statement in the world press.
We published this statement first almost a year ago on the South Asia Revolution site, and would like to urge people to dig deep into it now.
Some excerpts, followed by the full article:
“Today, the New Democratic Revolution in Nepal is at a crucial juncture of great victory and severe setback. It is true for any revolution when it reaches at the threshold of seizing central power. In such a situation, only a correct political tactic can lead to great accomplishment while a wrong one is bound to result into disastrous consequence. We have witnessed triumphant revolutions in Russia and China. We have also witnessed serious setbacks of proletarian revolution in other parts of the world. We have sufficient treasury of experiences, positive and negative in the international communist movement. Success or failure of any revolution is dependent on whether or not the party of the proletariat can draw correct lesson from those experiences, both negative and positive, and apply the positive ones creatively in agreement with the specificity of the given country.”
“The revolution in Peru that had built up strong base areas and a strong People’s Liberation Army and that had entered into the stage of strategic offensive has suffered a serious setback. Also the armed struggles in Burma, Malaysia and Nicaragua that had made considerable advances in their specificity failed to fight back enemy onslaught at a certain juncture of history. The result is before us. Apart from this, there are some armed struggles that are being waged uninterruptedly under the leadership of communist parties since sixties and seventies but they have neither been able to develop a people’s army nor have they been able to establish base areas till date.”
“We firmly believe that without learning from these unpleasant lessons and without developing an ideological and political line to evade from reactionary ambush that the imperialism has planted since Vietnam War no revolutionary party can lead revolution to victory in the present world situation.”
“But, the present process of negotiations to clear the way for restructuring the state power through constituent assembly election has created confusion within the contemporary communist movement. Some of our comrades have even termed this process as a deviation from the basics principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Not only at this time, there were confusions over some of the political steps our party had adopted in the past too….But, why do such confusions arise at the particular junctures of revolutionary process, mainly during the period of political offensive? Why our fraternal comrades have failed to understand the dynamism of revolution we are leading? We think that this gap is the result of differences we have in grasping the historical and dialectical materialism, the Marxist philosophy. More precisely, this gap exists mainly because our comrades take a look at our people’s war from pragmatic and militarist angle and draw conclusion based on dogmatic grasp of our ideology, the MLM.”
“In due course, gun is decisive to make a revolution victorious. But it is possible only when the party of the proletariat fights ideolgically and politically in all fronts and crushes all the strategies that the imperialism and domestic reaction enforce to prevent revolution in the given country. In the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, the enemy strategy has been to make use of various measures that can prevent the development of revolutionary consciousness among the masses. To abort revolution in its embryo, the measures that the imperialist system has been making use of are psychological warfare, cultural war, enemy infiltration to carry out destructive activities in the party of the proletariat, economic and political reforms to confuse the revolutionary masses, network of NGOs and INGOs to entrap petty bourgeois circle in the reformist mirage, foreign employment, religious superstition etc. Armed suppression and genocide is its final resort after the revolution is born. In short, the enemy fights a total war. Unless one can revolutionise masses by waging ideological war to crush such measures, no people’s war, even if initiated, can attain its goal. With this in mind, our party paid sufficient attention to develop a counterstrategy, based on tit for tat, the total war.”
“Armed struggle is an inevitable means to bring the political goal of the proletariat to fruition. Hence the first is subordinate to the second, although their principal position changes at times. However, there have always been problems in discerning the interrelation between these two in the international communist movement. We find mainly two trends in this respect. The first trend that does not consider the armed struggle as an inevitable part of political struggle for power but one-sidedly emphasises on the political offensive or relegates preparation of people’s war in various pretexts is outright reformism and right revisionism. While the second one that emphasises more on military offensive but ignores the political one or equates war with politics represents militarism. Right revisionism is the principal danger but militarism too has not harmed less in the political struggle for power in the contemporary communist movement. Only the correct handling of the relation between war and politics can propel the revolution forward.”
Refuse & Resist!, the once-promising network of resistance produced the following “pocket guide” (and other useful materials). This document is shaped by the climate and changes immediately following 9/11 — but its core advice and thrust remain relevant. This guide is available as a printable PDF. If we were to produce a piece today (years later) what would it contain, what would its focus be?
Stopping a Police State: A Pocket Guide from Refuse & Resist!
We have seen the round-up and secret detention of those from Muslim and South Asian countries. We have seen the President order the military to seize citizens and hold them incommunicado and without charges. We have seen free speech marginalized and protest banned from public spaces. We have seen the FBI questioning people planning protests at the political conventions. We have seen the Patriot Act give police agents vast new powers of secret search and surveillance. We have seen a campaign to impose fundamentalist religious social norms. And we have even heard government agencies talking about plans to postpone national elections. For many in this country, police state conditions are not new. And since 9/11 millions more are threatened. It won’t do to count on others to do something and hope that it will all go away. No! We see where things are heading. The time to resist is now.
1. Build Communities of Resistance.
All across the country, local governments are refusing to cooperate with the Patriot Act and people are beginning to organize. Hang-outs, house parties, book clubs, film series, discussion groups, open mics and other cultural scenes build communities of trust as well as the networks to read the alternative press, discuss current events, raise money, organize defense committees, and promote active resistance.
2. Stand with Those Under Attack.
The government seeks to scapegoat whole sections of people and go after the leadership of any real resistance to their plans for empire. Yet all across the country people went to the aid of their Muslim neighbors and stood watch at local mosques after 9/11. The government’s plan is to pick us off one at a time. Our response must be to recognize that it’s all one attack and give aid and shelter to all those under attack.
3. Don’t Talk.
Never answer the questions of police or government agents beyond identifying yourself where required by law. You should then state that you do not consent to any search and that you wish to be represented by an attorney. Do not say anything else, even if agents threaten you with a grand jury subpoena or promise to leave you alone if you cooperate. Recently activists at Drake University were called before a Grand Jury to give testimony about an antiwar conference on campus. They refused and public outcry forced the government to withdraw the subpoenas.
4. Defend Every Legal Right.
At the same time that the government invades other countries in the name of democracy, there is a constant chipping away at every legal right in this country. Follow the example of those who have videotaped and exposed beatings by police. Every denial of a permit, every arrest, every police raid on dissenters, every wire-tap, and every grand jury subpoena must be fought both in court and in the court of public opinion. This is part of the battle. Don’t let the police and media decide what is legitimate protest and who are legitimate protesters.
5. Handle Information Responsibly.
Choosing to keep your personal information and that of your organization confidential does not mean you have something to hide. It means you know what kind of country we live in! Librarians in California now destroy the records of what books people read to protect their patrons from government snoops. Unnecessary records should be destroyed, the audience at meetings should not be videotaped, e-mail should be encrypted with PGP, and vital information should be duplicated and stored in a secure location.
6. Oppose the Climate of Fear and Compulsory Patriotism.
It is the policies of the U.S. government that have put the American people in harm’s way. The leaders of the new Rome constantly seek to ensnare us in a devil’s bargain: a false promise to keep us safe if only we will give up all our rights to privacy and dissent, and hand over to them our allegiance for their war plans. In Madison, WI, the local school board refused a call from the federal government after 9/11 to compel school children to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in unison.
7. Be Part of the National Resistance Network.
In Refuse & Resist! some of us strongly believe in the principles and values to which this country has historically aspired, while others of us find oppression and injustice to be rooted in those same principles. But we are united as one in our determination to build a culture, climate and community of resistance against the current Ashcroft police-state measures with its imposition of Christian fundamentalist social norms. Join Refuse & Resist!
Riot police shielding the Army headquarters,
while Maoist supporters stage a rally against
Nepal Army Chief Rookmangud Katawal
in Kathmandu on Wednesday.
(Photo : Narendra Shrestha)
Ka Frank gathered these press clippings.
“We know how to fire bullets, if the Prime Minster orders we will begin fighting instantly,” said the Maoist student leader.
“The Maoists’ fresh attack on institution of the Nepal Army is nothing but their inner intent to capture the State,” says UML leader.
We are ready to capture Nepal Army HQ: Maoist leaders
TGW
The Maoists affiliated peoples’ organizations organized rallies in several parts of the country supporting the government’s decision to seek clarification from the Chief of the Nepal Army Mr. Rukmangad Katawal.
The Maoists’ sister organizations have been organizing rallies in support of the government move since last two days. The protestors were mainly demanding the government to immediately sack CoAS Katawal.
On Wednesday, April 22, 2009, the Maoists’ cadres not only chanted anti-Nepal Army slogans but also criticized their own government for the delay in sacking the Nepal Army Chief. The Maoists’ leaders addressing the rallies also demanded immediate resignation from Katwal for his role in murdering the Maoists’ cadres during the revolt and at time of the Peoples’ Uprising-II.
Yuba Raj Chaulagai, the vice president of the Maoists’ affiliated Students’ union told the mass that the Maoists are all prepared to capture Nepal Army headquarters if needed to remove Katawal.
“We know how to fire bullets, if the Prime Minster orders we will begin fighting instantly”, he added.
Jaroslav writes a critique of the revolutionaries in Nepal. He rejects the idea that they may be working to show large numbers of people, through living political practice, that there is a need for a new revolution:
“I am not saying [the people] had all the education they need for seizure of power, I’m saying that what UCPN(M) is doing now is not contributing to any further education. Either people get it & it is repetition, or they don’t & it’s not helping.
This is a remarkable claim. I want to use this remark as a jumping off point — for some comments that are not aimed at anyone personally. They are aimed at a mix of dogmatism and deep cynicism has (unfortunately) paralyzed too many people who sincerely want radical change.
The Riptides of Revolutionary Opportunities
Let’s just step back a second, and think about how revolutionaries come to know the mood of the people within an emerging revolutionary situation — when the people are not yet ready to strike and when exactly they become ready. Think of how carefully revolutionaries need to evaluate which sections of the people are needed for victory, and how the thinking of those sections are changing. Victory and defeat can hinge on this. In such moments the mass line has heightened importance — These are not the politics of small propaganda groups, but of moving millions of people into position to act (and fight).
The hard core needs to be ready (mentally) to move decisively– literally to die and kill for the next advance — and they need to be organized to act with great unity, energy and determination (something that, if you think about it, revolutionaries are not always able to do). The middle forces need to be swinging toward the revolution (or at least toward “friendly neutrality”). And the reactionary forces need to be “over a barrel” — exposed, divided, far from the high moral ground.
This is political combat of a particularly close kind — where society is becoming highly politicized and all kinds of awakening forces are scrambling to decide what to do.
Damián García, an early Maoist revolutionary and member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), was assassinated in Los Angeles on April 22, 1980.
With great boldness, Damián with Hayden Fisher scaled the Alamo, in San Antonio, Texas, on March 20, 1980. He raised the red flag of revolution on this hated symbol of U.S. domination over Mexico. It was an action heard around the world, and stirred the hearts of all who suffer under this empire.
It also caught the attention of those who spy and kill for the oppressors. A month after the Alamo action, Damián was stabbed to death while organizing in LA’s Pico Gardens housing project for revolutionary actions on May First. Since then evidence has revealed that at least one police agent was there at the scene as Damián was murdered. The killer reportedly said, as he struck, “You hate the government, I am the government. Your flag is red, mine is red-white-and-blue.”
In life, Damián took his place in the front ranks — helping to organize communist forces and going among the working people to build their revolutionary movement.
The loss of this fighter and friend has always been felt deeply by revolutionary communists. Each year, as May 1st draws close, we remember Damián’s militancy and his great love of the people. We take note of the seriousness of our struggle and the viciousness of our enemies. He is an example for us all. And he is never forgotten.
Mao Zedong said:
“Everyone must die, but death can vary in its significance…. To die for the people is heavier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather.”
Damián García está presente!
* * * * * * *
The following poem was written by a prisoner in the Atlanta city jail, 1980
Guilty of being poor: Debtors’ prisons making a comeback
By Eric Ruder
(SW) — THE JAILERS of the 19th century–even in the pre-Civil War South–largely abandoned the practice of imprisoning people for falling into debt as counterproductive and ultimately barbaric. In the 1970s and ’80s, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that incarcerating people who can’t pay fines because of poverty violates the U.S. Constitution.
Apparently, though, some states and county jails never got the memo. Welcome to the debtors’ prisons of the 21st century.
“Edwina Nowlin, a poor Michigan resident, was ordered to reimburse a juvenile detention center $104 a month for holding her 16-year-old son,” the New York Times wrote in an editorial.
“When she explained to the court that she could not afford to pay, Ms. Nowlin was sent to prison. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which helped get her out last week after she spent 28 days behind bars, says it is seeing more people being sent to jail because they cannot make various court-ordered payments. That is both barbaric and unconstitutional.”
In the news of late is the piracy drama off Africa’s horn — the eastern coast of Somalia.
All of a sudden, piracy is a problem, one needing military, if not global solutions.
Every petty politician is bum-rushing the mike, to spout off on how pirates are “thugs”, “criminals”, or the latest Western curse, ” terrorists”.
Such pronouncements almost always leave me cold, or, at best, ambivalent, for behind these events lie a history that cries out for clarity and perspective.
If piracy is a crime when individuals do it, what is it when states do it?
Who can deny that America was stolen and swindled from the Indians? Or that millions of people were stolen from Africa to work for them for centuries?
Is that piracy– or just plain policy?
Piracy did occur in the 17th and 18th centuries, and this was either cases of conflict between colonial powers (where British ‘privateers’, for example, would target and steal from Spanish ships), or simply in pursuit of profits.
The Somali state has been absent for a generation, and as such, what is today’s piracy but making a living, albeit a dangerous one?
When Ethiopia was armed and egged on to invade Somalia several years ago by the Bush administration, was that state piracy?
When the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003, removed it’s government, imposed its puppets, bombed its people, and ran a third of its population into exile, based on lies–was this piracy of one nation against another–or ‘national security?’
Pirates are retail; nations are wholesale.
Who are the ‘thugs’, the ‘criminals’, the real pirates?
To my knowledge, no band of pirates has ever stolen a nation.
This essay starts with one of the key theoretical questions of modern communism: Why did capitalist restoration happen in the socialist societies born in the twentieth century? Why did this happen without massive resistance arising from the people.
