It was last weekend when a small news article caught my eye. Yahoo Newsreported that a Venezuelan journalist and a dissident Cuban blogger denounced press censorship and other forms of media control by their countries' leftist governments on the second day of a meeting of the Inter-American Press Association, in Denver, CO.

Both journalists have been traveling around the world criticizing press censorship in their home countries. Yahoo News reported on remarks made by the award-winning Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez. She said Cuban President Raul Castro in the past year has stepped up government crackdowns on free speech.

The crackdown has involved "violence carried out by pro-government mobs, intimidation, vandalism and the arrests of five (would-be) independent journalists," she said.

By now most people have heard of Malala Yousafzai/ملاله یوسفزۍ‎/ملاله یوسفزۍ‎. Most of the mainstream media is calling her “the bravest persons in the world” right now.

 

Malala is making the rounds and she has already published her own memoirs. Typical of what we read is this excerpt from CNN;

London (CNN) -- Pakistani girls' education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, who has found international fame since being shot by Taliban militants last year, met with another icon Friday: Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.

The Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, invited the young activist to a reception at Buckingham Palace, where they met and chatted for a short time.

Malala, who was accompanied by her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, presented the Queen with a copy of her newly published memoir, titled "I am Malala."

She said in that article she wants to support the right to education everywhere, even in the UK.

She was brave for defending her rights as a woman and her rights to an education. However, I can’t help the feeling that the Imperialist powers, such as the US and many of its allies, want to use her to justify their continuing war in Afghanistan and the drone strikes in Pakistan. So while I have nothing bad to say about Malala, after all she is literally a child at this time, I can’t help wondering if all the attention and adoration will really help her in the long run or if she will feel let down when the imperialist powers no longer need her.

 

The new pro-military feeling in this country has been raised to the point where the military is sacred and above any criticism. Doing so can cost a person their job. And for some people it has. Like the flag and other sacred patriotic symbols, desecration will draw the wrath of both the military and those who support them.

For example, the New York Daily News ran a story called “Company praised for firing woman who took disrespectful photo next to soldier's grave.” The story tells of a woman who took pictures with her friends as the flipped the bird at a soldiers cemetery. According to the article;

A Massachusetts company is being applauded for firing a woman who made a vulgar gesture next to a soldier’s burial site, sparking nationwide outrage.

LIFE, a Cape Cod-based nonprofit that helps adults with disabilities, announced on Wednesday that 30-year-old Lindsey Stone was taken off unpaid leave and terminated.

STONE'S FACEBOOK PHOTO SPARKS OUTRAGE

Nearly 4,000 people “liked” the announcement on Facebook.

“This was the right thing to do,” one commenter wrote.

Things have changed since the end of the Vietnam War and now military people are the status quo’s heroes. To say anything against them is a crime. And many people support this view especially businesses that get the most out of the military. Most of us on the revolutionary left don’t focus anger on the soldiers themselves. We know it is politicians and our corporate masters who benefit from these wars. Many of the soldiers are young people who may not fully understand what they are really doing. They really believe all the phony explanations: “Freedom isn’t free,” “They protect the freedoms we take for granted,” “They defend us from terrorists and our enemies.” Some may eventually realize, as many in Vietnam learned, that imperialist wars are not fought for any of those reasons and the whole military thing is a lie,

Today’s critics, who may take a more vulgar and personal approach to militarism may not use sophisticated arguments. But they are all finding out that the freedoms being fought for do not include their right to criticize the military in any way.

A Kansas woman, Meagan May, has also been fired from her job for criticizing the military. Unlike the girl in the story above she has stuck to her guns and stood up to people who have attack her and some have harassed her for defending her words. This was all over a Facebook comment she wrote on her page. It was done away from work and it still cost her job. She may have had plenty of mean comments about her, but she had her supporters as well.

Below is a story from my blog that I printed last week that shows how hard it is to practice free speech in the US and how the freedoms the military are fighting for don’t include real dissent;

Several organizations have declared July 1, 2013, as International Day of Support to the People’s War in India. Most of the groups seem to be based in Europe, such as Comitato Sostegno GP India. How many of such groups exist here in the US I really don’t know. I do know there is virtually nothing like these groups in the city and most of the state in which I live. Therefore about all I can really do to support the struggle of Indian people is to post support statements by groups that have sent them to me and I wrote my own blog entry of support:

“This blog supports the people’s war, uprising, and political struggles in India. That includes support for the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and all their allies. I have been told here in the United States, by many people I know, that communism is dead and there are just a few believers left in the world for an outdated system and ideology that is dying out. That may seem believable when living in the middle of the US, but I am always quick to point out there is the “Red Corridor” in India. It is perhaps the largest and best organized Maoist group in the world today. Many Indians are now living with hope for their futures and there are those of us here in the US who knows that a better system is possible, despite all the naysayers who insist that the system here in the US is the best we can get and any notion of change is just foolish.

The Indian Maoists have proven that change IS possible and it will happen. Communism cannot die because capitalism will never work for the majority of the people in the world. It must be abolished in order for humanity to survive.

Congratulations and solidarity with the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and all their Indian Maoists allies.”

Not long ago, a thread was posted at the Kasama Project called “Com Gonzalo-the greatest Marxist of our time?” Since the unrest in Turkey recently, A few people have mention the revolutionary İBRAHİM KAYPAKKAYA. In Turkey Kaypakkaya is a well known martyr who is much respected among Marxists and Maoists in that country. Someone on the Kasama Project posted a link to a biography of him.

According to that biography;

“His life was very short but he was able to create a tradition for real communists held in the torture chamber "You give your life but not a secret" and even until today this tradition continues.
That means that he never really died: his spirit still lives on because the struggle continues. This struggle is a part of proletarian internationalism.”

That brings up the question of whom if any of these people are the greatest Marxist of our time.  Both men have led impressive lives and both have contributed to revolution in their parts of the world. However, when does a revolutionary reach the status of being universally beyond the average?

I know that Marxists of any kind don’t like their beliefs to be compared to religion. But sometimes the similarities are there. A few years ago I heard this joke about a Catholic Priest who asked a grade school student if he would like be a saint.

“No,” the student answered. “I would have to be dead.”

As with being a saint, to be a truly universally admired and studied Marxist revolutionary, it is much easier to be dead. The reason for this is obvious. A living person can change their mind and turn on those who have bestowed their honorable place in history. Imagine having to take down a lot of stain glass windows and statues from churches all over Europe, if St. Francis of Assisi was anointed a saint, then a week later denounced the church as a farce and declared god as nothing more than a myth.

Has anyone heard of this New Maoist Party? Does anyone know anyone in it?

1. Maoist Road;

USA - From the Founding Congress of the New Communist Party (Organizing Committee)

Adopted by the Founding Congress of the New Communist Party (Organizing Committee) 
For release on May 1, 2013
The text below is a brief summary of our organizational line on the current global conjuncture and by extension a basis for the formulation of our strategic perspective in the years ahead. Fundamentally, it is clear that the dynamics of the world imperialist system are creating the objective conditions for global revolutionary power seizure by the proletariat. The matter in question is the development of the subjective forces of the World Proletarian Revolution.
We hope this text can contribute to the process of organization of a proletarian vanguard in the United States through the coalescence of the dispersed advanced elements of the class into a revolutionary party that is capable of diffusing communist politics practically among the masses, and organizing and directing the people’s hate against imperialism, revisionism and all reaction.
Central Committee, NCP (OC) May 1, 2013

The government in India is making a special effort to wipe the Maoist guerrilla influence out of the areas of West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand.

1. First Post of India is reporting that Security forces of West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand (April 14) decided to launch a joint operation against Maoists in their common border areas.

After the failed Operation Green Hunt, the government has high hopes this time they will wipe out the Maoist from these key areas. They hope to exploit some factional differences between the Maoist groups. One Indian Bourgeois outlet,The New Indian Express, even went as far as claiming “Prospect of elimination of Maoists in Jharkhand now real”.

There have been reported attacks on the government by Maoists. Times of Indiareported five policemen killed in an ambush on April 5.

Also an outfit called Kractivist reports that a group of young lawyers in Ranchi has decided to take up, gratis, cases of thousands of tribals branded as Maoists and shoved into jails across Jharkhand every year.

The Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea is in the news daily as they claim they are close to launching a war on South Korea or the US. Are they serious about war or is this about something else.

The US has bullied the UN to impose harsh sanctions on the DPRK and that is likely to be a reason behind the new threats. There is plenty of evidence that the DPRK is being starved out by the US.

The CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY of DPRK has posted a number of articles on war and also on sanctions including;

“UN Security Council, Marionette of U.S.: News Analyst”

Pyongyang, April 3 (KCNA) -- The U.S. imperialists' moves to provoke a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula have gone beyond the danger line and reached the phase of an actual war.

The current developments were caused by the unfair "resolutions" cooked up at the United Nations Security Council, which is blindly following the U.S. high-handed and arbitrary practices.

The UNSC, whose mission is to deter a war, preserve peace in the world and ensure sovereignty and security of the UN member states, has turned into a marionette of the U.S., inviting condemnation from the international community.

It’s always hard to tell what any government is really trying to do. Whether Kim Jong Un really believes his country is being provoked or not is hard to tell. Evidence points to sanctions as the likely reason for all of this saber rattling.

The death of President Hugo Chávez, of Venezuela was a deep disappointment for his many fans in Latin America and the US. But don’t be surprised to hear the usual anti-Chávez, pro-imperialist blather from the mainstream press. I have already heard that Chávez “left Venezuela worse than it was when he took power,” from NPR. I also hear that Chávez ran off US Oil Companies and their “new technology” by making too many demands on them.

I’m sure we will hear the same tired old anti-nationalism, anti-leftism of the mainstream US press. Anything else will be hard to find. But Chávez won several elections which demonstrated that the poorer classes in Venezuela preferred his nationalist attitude of using the country’s resources for the local people themselves instead of trading all of it for a pittance for the “magical wiz-bang technology” that dazzles and amazes so many tech-nerds in the US.

The people there have made it clear they do not want to be subjugated by the US or the local middle class which did all they could to derail Chávez’s presidency. The US government also tried everything it could muster to foment a coup or to simply vote out the president.

It was only a matter of time before the US put its weight behind the opposition in Syria (most likely the Free Syrian Army). Yahoo News reported that;

“The United States will increase aid to Syrians and the Syrian opposition in an effort to speed a political transition in Syria, a White House spokesman said on Wednesday.

The Washington Post has reported that the White House was considering a shift in policy toward the nearly two-year-long conflict in Syria and may send the rebels body armor and armed vehicles, and possibly provide military training. According to the report, U.S. officials still oppose providing arms.”

For anyone who still believes there is a difference between Democrats and Republicans on these foreign policy issues, just look at what Yahoo News attributes to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry;

"That may require us to change President al-Assad's current calculation," he (Kerry;) said. "He needs to know he cannot shoot his way out of this, so we need to convince him of that and I think the opposition needs more help in order to be able to do that. And we are working together to have a united position."

I received this article, Joan of Arc from the Swaziland Progressive Women's Movement. They note her heroics as a woman who went against traditional women’s roles and was persecuted by feudal leaders of her time. At first I wondered if I should post about a person who was temporarily part of the feudal establishment, but then I remembered other religious leaders who took on the established order of the time and many of them were religious leaders.

One example is Thomas Müntzer who was a Protestant minister who gave major support to a peasant rebellion in the 1500s. This man inspired Fredrick Engels to write The Peasant War in Germany.

Although Müntzer was a religious leader, politically he showed less interest in religious questions than in the social position of the people. Engels described Müntzer’s beliefs as a form of early communism.

Today I received a message from the Maoist List, an e-mail service, http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/MAOIST_REVOLUTION. Many Maoists throughout the world still talk about the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). But sadly, there really isn’t such a group.

From the Maoist_List;

"A World to Win' was the journal associated with the Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). The last issue of 'A World to Win' was published in 2006. RIM disintegrated several years ago The 'A World to Win News Service' is put out by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and embodies its political views.

Some parties in some countries still talk about reconstructing the RIM and about struggling from revisionism. The Party of Ecuador Committee of Reconstruction (Partido Comunista Del Ecuador Comité De Reconstrucción), is among many groups, world wide, who want to revive the RIM.

“He has already begun the debate titled "Reconstitute or settle the MRI (Revolutionary International Movement or RIM in English), struggle between Marxism and revisionism" that prepared our party a week ago. This is precisely one of the goals set by our organization: the unleashing of the two-line struggle in the MCI (Communist Movement International) around the hot spots of the communist movement and international perspectives.”

But many of us don’t live in hot spots. Can we really struggle between Marxism and revisionism in the US? In this country I live no where near any Marxists, revisionist or other wise.

 It has been reported that The Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea sent ambassadors to be present at the opening ceremony of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist at the start of their recent national congress. This was reported by Liam Wright, in a comment on an article he wrote about his presents at the national congress. The article was in The Kasama Project.
As most readers of both this blog and The Kasama Project know by now, representatives from various revolutionary Maoist parties from around the world have been invited to this national congress in Nepal. China also sent some ambassadors to the congress, which has confused some of the people reading and following this event.
The non-Chinese groups invited are Maoist in ideology and not supporters of the present leadership in China. Even more interesting is why the DPR(North) Korea sent ambassadors? That country has never been “Maoist.” The DPRK has been an ally of China, especially during the Korea war, when China moved in and saved the regime from being over-run by US troops.
But why is the DPRK interested at all in what a group of devout Maoists want to do?
There is no doubt that the new younger leader Kim Jong Un (김정은) is more of a reformer than the two Kims before him. News articles out of the mainstream press have reported on changes he has already brought to the country, allowing more cultural diversity in clothing style and a few other things, such as foods.
One interesting article is in the Economist, “Chinese Maoists in North Korea.” An un-named reporter from that publication accompanied 15 Chinese tourists to the DPRK. The Reporter called the tourists:
“Die-hard Maoists, they believe that China’s leaders are betraying the ideals of the communist country’s founder and leading it to enslavement by the West and perdition. The past few months have seen the purging of their idol, a Mao-quoting member of the Politburo, Bo Xilai, and the closure by the Chinese government of some of their most outspoken websites.”