Monthly Archives: April 2011

Spies in blue

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[Police misconduct has long been a focus of activists–of those subjected to false arrests and false imprisonments, of targets of racial profiling, and of those facing attacks on and police suppression of political advocacy, of opposition to the systemic oppression of targeted communities, of class struggles, international solidarity movements, and revolutionary movements.

The history of such misconduct runs throughout US history—from the suppression of slave resistance and the abolition movements, of the insurgent working class and trade union movements, the resistance of Native American, Puerto Rican, Hawaiian and other occupied and colonized people, the McCarthy “Red Scares”, and the attacks on the civil rights and Black Liberation movements. 

Major political challenges to systemic police misconduct have been organized at various times.  The Black Panther Party’s campaigns for community control of police, organizing to make local police conduct transparent and accountable and prosecutable, was a major advance in re-setting even the concept of community control.  And, after the FBI’s COINTELPRO  program was exposed—a nationwide program to confuse, provoke, entrap, imprison and eliminate political opposition—activists unearthed many of the hidden local instruments of this FBI terror program, and in some places forced new policies on local and state levels against the abusive police.  

But even where such fights have been won, police misconduct has continued to be common.  FBI (and other repressive instruments)—now systematized under the banner of Department of Homeland Security—has worked to circumvent restraints on official abuse, whether by illegal surveillance and wiretapping, racial profiling, or ICE raids and mass deportations, to mention but a few.

The following article from the San Francisco Bay Guardian details the FBI’s enabling of police abuses, and their circumventing of restraints on San Francisco Police Department’s abuses. – Frontlines ed.]

Spies in blue

A secret memo indicates that SF cops may be working as FBI spies — with no local oversight

April 26, 2011

Sarah Phelan, SF Bay Guardian

sarah@sfbg.com

San Francisco cops assigned to the FBI’s terrorism task force can ignore local police orders and California privacy laws to spy on people without any evidence of a crime.

That’s what a recently released memo appears to say — and it has sent shockwaves through the civil liberties community. Continue reading →

Dragging Malcolm X to Obamaland

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[From Black Agenda Report, a very critical review of Manning Marable’s social-reformist distortion of the life of Malcolm X.  Glen Ford begins the struggle to return the weapon of history to the hands of those who struggle for an end to national oppression, capitalist exploitation, and imperialism.  — Frontlines ed.]

April 27, 2011

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
http://www.blackagendareport.com/print/content/dragging-malcolm-x-obamaland

Malcolm X's revolutionary spirit, thinking, and teachings continue to inspire and educate new generations, despite the efforts of social reformists like Manning Marable to turn Malcolm into a useless icon and tool for the renunciation of revolution

Manning Marable’s rendition of Malcolm X’s life should be read very carefully, so as not to confuse Malcolm’s evolving worldview with the late Columbia University professor’s left-reformist politics. “Marable tries to convince us that Malcolm must have contemplated a reformist political path in his mind, if not in practice.” The author’s mission is to discredit revolutionary Black nationalism as outdated and primitive. Black Democratic Party activism and support for President Obama are hyped as the new Black Power.

Dragging Malcolm X to Obamaland

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“ Marable grows so bold in pushing his back-to-the-future reformist fantasies, by page 333 he describes a Malcolm X who has become ‘race-neutral.’”

In packaging the life of Malcolm X for a wide audience, the late Dr. Manning Marable has presented us with an opportunity to reignite the debate over the meaning of Black self-determination, a discussion-through-struggle that effectively ended when the Black Freedom Movement became no longer worthy of the name. Unfortunately, it appears this was not Dr. Marable’s intention, since Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention is largely an attempt to render useless the vocabulary of Black struggle. Essential terms such as “self-determination,” “Black nationalism,” “revolutionary” and “empowerment” lose their meaning, abused and misused in order to portray the great Black nationalist leader as inexorably evolving into a “race-neutral” reformer on the road to Obamaland. Continue reading →

Nepal: “Let us raise the flag of revolution high”

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[This article by Rishi Raj Baral is a detailed commentary on the recent and current events within the Maoist party in Nepal, the UCPN(M),  on the occasion of the current central committee meeting.  This meeting will, by many accounts, bring to an end the two-line inner-party struggle.  This struggle over strategic line and direction has been conducted over the years since the conclusion of the People’s War (five years ago) and its replacement by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to share governmental administrative power with the bourgeois parties.  This article provides a detailed narrative of events leading to the present, and provides the author’s assessment of the juncture now reached. We urge all friends of the revolution in Nepal and all concerned about this juncture for the international movement, to study this article. — Frontlines ed.]

by Rishi Raj Baral, convener of Revolutionary Intellectual–Cultural Forum, Nepal

The central committee meeting of UNCP( Maoist) is going on and there is a sharp debate and discussion upon the document of Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Comrade Mohan Baidhya. In the name of party’s decision Dahal group may succeed to gain the technical majority. Then it is clear, it will be the betrayal of the revolution and deceit to the party workers and cadres.Now, it is crystal clear that there is nothing but a little bit faith on revolution in the mind of Pushpa Kamal Dahal. After all  ‘Prachanda’ came out in his real color.

Before the PLA ceased military operations in 2006, the people's war was successfully leading the peasantry in over three-fourths of the country, breaking the chains of feudal oppression and beginning to establish the instruments of popular governance and power.

Chunwang meeting was not only a predetermined plan to abandon revolution, the people’s war but also was the abandonment of Marxism–Leninism and Maoism. In fact, Chunwang meeting was the preparation for bourgeois political system and  so called democracy. It also proved that Prachanda can adopt and accept every thing, is even ready to make close contact with the reactionary powers outside the country for the sake of his own interests and for exercising power. It has been clear that he will not hesitate even to betray the heroic and sacrificial history of the Nepalese people for his personal interest and power. It is obvious that his slogan of nationalism and national independence is a mere show and a rubbish propaganda. Publicly, he opposes the Indian expansionist, but in reality he is the supporter of Indian expansionist.

In the name of creativity, Prachanda is always thinking of ways to gain more power. Like a chameleon changing its color, sometimes he pretends himself as a revolutionary and becomes close to revolutionary leaders within the party and sometimes he becomes close to reformists and revisionists (most of the time he makes his closeness to the reformists and revisionism of the party)  within the party to remain constantly in the party leadership. There should not be any confusion that in general, Prachanda seems to be a centrist–opportunist but in fact, he is a rightist– reformist. During the people’s war, after the conspiratorial capture of Comrade Mohan Baidhya, Prachanda enjoyed his time with the revisionists of the party. Then he compromised with Indian expansionists. Continue reading →

Turkey: Five TKP/ML-TIKKO women guerillas killed in avalanche

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Press Bulletin/ April 2011

To the Press and the Public:  5 martyrs of TKP/ML-TIKKO died in Dersim

The Press statement of the TKP/ML-TIKKO Dersim Region Comittee from April 20th 2011 states that on 2nd February 2011, 5 guerillas of TKP/ML-TIKKO have lost their lives as a result of an avalanche. According to the statement of the Dersim Region; on February 2nd 2011 at 5am an avalanche destroyed the Winter-Camp and killed five female TIKKO guerillas.

Sefagl Kesgin

1-      Sefagul Kesgin: code name, Eylem; was born in Erzurum in 1977. She joined the guerilla struggle in 2007. She was the Political “Polit- Luitenant” of the Dersim Region


Nursen Aslan

2-      Nursen Aslan: code name, Emel; was born in Tokat (Black Sea) in 1981. She joined the guerilla struggle in 1999. She was a forward sympathiser of the TKP/ML. She was a commander in the Dersim Region.


Gulizar Ozkan

3-      Gulizar Ozkan: code name, Ozlem; was born in 1967 in Dersim. She joined the guerilla in 2005. She was a forward sympathiser of the party.  She was a TIKKO commander.


Fatma Acar

4-      Fatma Acar, code name, Dilek; was born in 1983 in Mersin. She joined the guerilla struggle in 2006. She was a forward sympathiser of the TKP/ML and a commander of TIKKO.


Derya Aras

5-      Derya Aras; cod name, Sevda: she was born in 1979 in Erzincan and joined the guerillas in 2009. She was a forward sympathiser of the TKP/ML and a TIKKO fighter.

Even if right after the landslide a immediate interference took place, only the lifeless bodies of the five comrades were buried.

The Dersim Regional Committee further declares that “including comrade Sefagul Kesgin the marytrdom of our five comrades is a big loss for our organization. We know that these losses and death is part our war. In order to bear the price of this heavy loss we will focus on our struggle with all our abilities and strength and we will increase the struggle that has been handed over to us by our martyers in a way that our comrades deserve.”

“Our five comrades have left a note on the page of history;  they have done this with their leading role in our war and in showing the oppressed women the way towards freedom. Their lives, just as their martyrdom, was a rebellion against the oppression of women since thousands of years and this rebellion will illuminate the path of the comrades who will continue the struggle. We can only keep our comrades alive with the weapons we have taken over from them for the struggle of democratic peoples’revolution, socialism and communism.”

As the international office of the TKP/ML we know that the path of proletarian world revolution is a path full of willpower, sacrifieces and determination. The way to final victory can only be reached with the knowledge of proletarian world revolution and the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology. For this we call upon all revolutionary and communist forces to take notice of the martyrdom of our comrades Sefagul Kesgin, Nursen Aslan, Gulizar Ozkan, Fatma Acar, Derya Aras.

Long Live Proletarian Internationalism!

Long Live Peoples War – Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!

 

TKP/ML-International Relation Office

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MAOIST REVOLUTION

Egypt’s ElBaradei suggests war crimes probe of Bush team

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In this Nov. 4, 2009 file photo, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reacts during his lecture at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the "shame of a needless war" in Iraq. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

(AP) – 4 days ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Former chief U.N. nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the “shame of a needless war” in Iraq.

Freer to speak now than he was as an international civil servant, the Nobel-winning Egyptian accuses U.S. leaders of “grotesque distortion” in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when then-President George W. Bush and his lieutenants claimed Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by ElBaradei’s and other arms inspectors inside the country.

The Iraq war taught him that “deliberate deception was not limited to small countries ruled by ruthless dictators,” ElBaradei writes in “The Age of Deception,” being published Tuesday by Henry Holt and Company.

The 68-year-old legal scholar, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1997 to 2009 and recently a rallying figure in Egypt’s revolution, concludes his 321-page account of two decades of “tedious, wrenching” nuclear diplomacy with a plea for more of it, particularly in the efforts to rein in North Korean and Iranian nuclear ambitions.

“All parties must come to the negotiating table,” writes ElBaradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the IAEA in 2005. He repeatedly chides Washington for reluctant or hardline approaches to negotiations with Tehran and Pyongyang.

He is harshest in addressing the Bush administration’s 2002-2003 drive for war with Iraq, when ElBaradei and Hans Blix led teams of U.N. inspectors looking for signs Saddam Hussein’s government had revived nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs. Continue reading →

Delhi students investigate the mass struggle and state repression in Odisha

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Preliminary report of the DSU fact-finding visit to Narayanpatna, Odisha

Democratic Students’ Union (DSU), Delhi

PRESS RELEASE:  A REPORT FROM GROUND ZERO

Tribal people of Narayanpatna in 2009

A team of students from DU, JNU and IGNOU belonging to the Democratic Students’ Union (DSU) visited Narayanpatna Block in the Koraput district of Odisha from 11 April to 16 April 2011. The objective of
the visit was to study the ground situation at present in the region where a militant mass struggle is going on for the last few years, and according to the media reports, has faced extreme forms of state repression. The aim was also to study the socio-economic aspects of
the social life of Narayanpatna region, and to look into the factors that have contributed to the emergence of this important peasant struggle in contemporary South Asia.

Narayanpatna is inhabited by sixteen tribal communities including Kui, Parija, Jorka, Matia, Doria and others, of whom the Kuis are numerically predominant. The adivasis, who constitute more than 90 percent of around 45,000 people of Narayanpatna block, are interspersed with Dalit communities such as Mali, Dombo, Forga, Paiko, Rilli, etc. Continue reading →

The “Arab Spring” and How the Opposition Disarms Itself: A View from Jordan

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Jordan’s New Opposition and the Traps of Identity and Ambiguity

by Hisham Bustani, Jadaliyya

Apr 20 2011

Protesters took the streets of Amman, Jordan, on April 15, calling for governmental and constitutional reforms.

Protesters took the streets of Amman, Jordan, on Friday, calling for governmental and constitutional reforms.There are two major tribulations in Jordan from which all other issues stem.

The first is the autocratic authority that dominates the role of all “state institutions” (i.e., the Cabinet, the Parliament, and the Judiciary). This autocratic domination is legally sanctioned by the Jordanian constitution:

·      Article 26 states that “The Executive Power shall be vested in the King, who shall exercise his powers through his Ministers.”

·      Article 35 states that “The King appoints the Prime Minister and may dismiss him or accept his resignation. He appoints the Ministers; he also dismisses them or accepts their resignation, upon the recommendation of the Prime Minister.”

·      Article 34 states that “(i) The King issues orders for the holding of elections to the Chamber of Deputies in accordance with the provisions of the law; (ii) The King convenes the National Assembly, inaugurates, adjourns, and prorogues it in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution; (iii) The King may dissolve the Chamber of Deputies; (iv) The King may dissolve the Senate or relieve any Senator of his membership.”  Continue reading →

Saudi counter-revolution cools Arab Spring

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Fueled by fear of rising oil prices, US deference is helping Saudi Arabia implement its agenda in the Gulf.

Jim Lobe, al Jazeera

24 Apr 2011 —

”]As the so-called Arab Spring enters its sixth month, it appears to have run into seriously wintry headwinds.

While some observers here have blamed Saudi Arabia and its neighbouring Sunni-led sheikhdoms as a major source of the icy winds that are blasting through the Gulf, the growing contradictions between the US and Western “values” and their interests are adding to the unseasonable weather.

Thus, while Washington has privately expressed strong doubts about the wisdom of the increasingly brutal and indiscriminate crackdown against the majority Shia population in Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, its failure to clearly and publicly denounce the Saudi-backed repression is only the most blatant example of this trend. Continue reading →

Shanghai: Massive truckers strike highlights crisis-driven price hikes

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People walk along an unfinished road being used by truck drivers to park their container trucks near a port in Shanghai April 21, 2011, following a protest nearby the area earlier in the morning.

Third day of Shanghai strike threatens China exports

Fri, Apr 22 2011

By Melanie Lee and Royston Chan

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Striking truck drivers protested for a third day on Friday in Shanghai’s main harbour district amid heavy police presence and signs the action has already started to curb exports from the world’s busiest container port.

The strike is a very public demonstrations of anger over rising consumer prices and fuel price increases in China.

It comes as the government struggles to contain higher inflation, which hit 5.4 percent in March, fearful that rising prices could fuel protests like those that have rocked the Middle East.

A crowd of up to 600 people milled about outside an office of a logistics company near the Baoshan Port, one of the city’s ports. Some threw rocks at trucks whose drivers had not joined in the strikes, breaking the windows of at least one truck. Continue reading →

Bristol, UK: Anti-corporate “direct action” protest against Tesco

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Protesters set up barricades

Anti-Tesco protest boils over into riot / Police accused of attacking bystanders

The Independent (UK)

By Kunal Dutta and Oliver Duff

Saturday, 23 April 2011

Hundreds of people set up burning street barricades and hurled rocks at police as anti-Tesco protests in Bristol fast escalated into bloody running battles between officers and residents.

A Tesco Express store in the bohemian neighbourhood of Stokes Croft, in the north of Bristol, became the focal point for the violence, with police claiming that they had uncovered a plot to petrol bomb the store, which opened eight days ago to widespread hostility from the community.

More than 160 police in riot gear, officers on horseback and reinforcements from neighbouring forces fought with protesters for seven hours through the night until dawn yesterday. A swelling, increasingly angry crowd of 300 people upturned bottle banks to gather glass to bombard officers. Continue reading →

Australia: Asylum-seekers rebel against treatment of migrants

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Asylum-seeker riot blaze sees 22 arrested

Friday 22 April 2011

Sydney, Australia — Australian police investigating a riot at Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre were still questioning 22 people today about a protest and fire started by asylum-seekers which erupted late on Wednesday night.

A handful of protesters remained camped out on rooftops at the centre today, with officials sending up supplies of food and water.

Immigration Department spokesman Sandi Logan said officials would not negotiate with the protesters until they came down from the roof. Continue reading →

Oman: Protests break out in Omani city

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Thousands take to the streets in southern city in Gulf state to press for better wages, jobs and end to corruption.
22 Apr 2011
Unrest in Oman has been small relative to other Arab countries

but security has been increased significantly [Reuters]

At least 1,000 protesters have taken to the streets in Oman’s southern port city of Salalah in one of the biggest pro-reform demonstrations since scattered unrest began in the Gulf Arab sultanate two months ago.

The protesters assembled in a car park across the street from the governor’s office on Friday, where a preacher led mid-day prayers and led them on a march across the city.

“The Omani people are not afraid of protesting for as long as it takes for reform, [but] first and foremost is to get government officials, who have been embezzling funds for years, to stand trial,” Amer Hargan, the leader, told the crowd. Continue reading →

Syria: Massive protest defiant of government’s bloody repression

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Damascus, Syria:  April 22, 2011

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Protests in the Syria city of Banias Friday, April 22, 2011

Witnesses: Clashes between Syrian security forces and protesters kill 27, including young boy

By Bassem Mroue, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press

BEIRUT – Syrian security forces fired live bullets and tear gas Friday on pro-democracy demonstrations across the country, killing at least 27 people — including a young boy — in one of the bloodiest days of the uprising against President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian regime, witnesses said.

Protesters flooded into the streets after Muslim prayers in at least nine major areas across the country, a sign that Assad’s attempts to quell the monthlong protests with a deadly crackdown and promises of reform have all but failed.

“Bullets started flying over our heads like heavy rain,” said one witness in Izraa, a southern village in Daraa province, the same region where the uprising kicked off in mid-March. Continue reading →

India: At least 20 injured in protests over Jaitapur nuclear plant

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A policeman stands at a kiosk at the proposed site of the Jaitapur nuclear plant in Ratnagiri district, about 360 km (224 miles) south of Mumbai, April 13, 2011. An angry mob attacked a hospital and torched buses as protests against a proposed nuclear plant in Jaitapur turned violent on Tuesday, local media said

By Danish Siddiqui
Tue Apr 19, 2011 – MUMBAI (Reuters) – People protesting against a planned nuclear power plant at Jaitapur attacked a hospital and torched buses on Tuesday and at least 20 people were injured a day after an anti-nuclear activist was killed in police firing.

Protests led by opposition politicians shut down towns near the site of the $10 billion plant in Maharashtra where anger over land acquisitions has intensified after the nuclear crisis in Japan.

“The situation is very tense out here,” protest leader Amjad Abdul Latif Borkar told Reuters.

Five demonstrators were taken to hospital with bullet wounds, and at least six policemen were injured, the administration head in Ratnagiri told Reuters.

Chief of police in Ratnagiri, 60km (38 miles) north of the site of the planned plant at Jaitapur, said at least 20 people had been injured.

Protesters attacked and damaged a hospital to prevent a government autopsy on the activist killed on Monday. Protesters think the autopsy will not be impartial. Continue reading →

Nepal: 3 articles on the strategic transition from Maoist revolution to bourgeois republic

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Dahal swings back to peace, constitution
KATHMANDU, April 20:  Ditching the official party line of revolt, Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has swung back to the line of peace and constitution floated by Vice-chairman Dr Baburam Bhattarai.

In his three-page political document presented at the party politburo meeting on Wednesday, Dahal emphasized the need to conclude the peace process and constitution-drafting to safeguard the political achievements made so far.

“There is a real risk of counter-revolution if we don´t put in best efforts to conclude the peace process and constitution drafting,” a politburo member quoted Dahal´s document. With constitution-drafting deadline just a month away, Dahal was hard-pressed to choose between peace and a revolt. Continue reading →