This statement emerges from within the Kasama Project — in internationalist communist solidarity with the revolutionary movement of Nepal’s people
By Eric Ribellarsi and Mike Ely
Co-signers: Firewolf Bizahaloni-Wong, Jed Brandt, Luis Chavez, J.B. Connors, Joel Cosgrove, Gregory E, Red Fox, Gary, chegitz guevara, Rosa Harris, Lee James, Eddy Laing, Bill Martin, Stephanie McMillan, Giovanni Navarrete, Stiofan Obuadhaigh, Radical Eyes, Redpines, Alastair Reith, Enzo Rhyner, Harry Sims, John Steele, Kathie Strom, Tell No Lies, Adolfo V., Nat W., Fanshen Wong, Liam Wright
For over twenty years, the impoverished and isolated peoples in the southern Himalayan foothills have risen up to remake themselves and their world. Now, after the sacrifices of a whole generation, the future of their movement and society hangs in the balance:
Will the revolutionary sections of the people be able to carry through the struggle to create the radically new Nepal they have dreamed of? Or will the accomplishments of their struggle so far be consolidated into something that falls short of liberation?
Kasama has just received our first news from this summer’s traveling reporter team.
By Eric Ribellarsi
I arrived twelve hours ago in Athens, and rushed to find the crowds of streetfighters. The police tear gas has already hit around me about twenty times.
Athens’ Syntagma Square has for weeks been the site of the People’s Assemblies, huge rallies that challenge the government’s plans. Tonight this Square, the very heart of Greece, is a battleground where the police and resistors have been fighting face to face, line against line.
And all the while, people are singing and dancing and debating about revolution.
Welcome to the General Strike
The moment I stepped off the plane, any grogginess from two days’ travel disappeared.
I’m ready to join the action and start sending you my reports, but there is one problem. No buses. No way to get out of the airport.
Working people have shut down the entire country with a general strike. Their workstoppage is a determined rejection of the massive budget cuts and austerity measures being forced onto Greece by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU). These measures come in the midst of a 1-in-6 unemployment rate and a widespread hatred of capitalism.
A star-studded epic account of the events between the Chinese Revolution in 1911 and the founding of the CCP, Beginning of the Great Revival is this summer’s must see movie in China (in part because it is being played on all available screens, thereby ending the run of Kung Fu Panda 2. It is also playing in several cities in the U.S. We look forward to reviews from our readers.
Only a few weeks after announing plans to play in Tel Aviv, Jello Biafra has reversed his decision. While his statement refuses to embrace the call for a cultural boycott of Israel, and is in fact politically very weak, his actions indicate that the protests of many of his fans forced him to rethink. In the previous discussion here on this issue we talked about the problems with simply writing people off for having bakwards positions on certain questions and the importance of patient struggle with people. This development neatly illustrates this larger point.
A minor political brouhaha erupted a few weeks ago when it was announced punk rock legend Jello Biafra would be traveling to Israel to play a July 2 show with his band, the Guantanamo School of Medicine, at Tel Aviv’s Barby Club. Fans couldn’t believe a figure like Biafra would defy the implied academic/cultural boycott of Israel over the country’s ongoing aggression towards Palestine, and a chorus of “cancel the gig” quickly rose up. Jello finally wobbled this morning, releasing a statement saying the Guantanamo School would not be performing at the Barby Club.
“Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine are not going through with the July 2 date in Tel Aviv,” Biafra wrote on his Facebook page. “This does not mean I or anyone else in the band are endorsing or joining lockstep with the boycott of all things Israel. I am going to Israel and Palestine to check things out myself and may yet conclude that playing for people in the belly of the beast was the right thing to do in the first place.” Read the rest of this entry »
“In general, not having a single leader makes an organization harder to track,” said Amichai Shulman, chief technical officer of IT security firm Imperva. “(But) at the same time it reduces the ability… to carry out complex operations.”
Do “leaderless” revolts contain seeds of own failure?
From the streets of Cairo and Madrid to online forums and social media sites, “leaderless” protests are on the rise. But the very qualities that led to their short-term success may condemn them to failure in the long run.
Activists in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere say the lack of top-down management has been an important element in their recent success in rallying crowds disillusioned with the ruling establishment, using social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Read the rest of this entry »
This report appeared on the blog of Mexico’s Movimiento Popular Revolucionario (Revolutionary People’s Movement). It is also available in Spanish.
A World to Win News Service writes in introduction:
“‘Homeless, Jobless, Futureless, Fearless,’ ‘Our dreams can’t fit in your ballot boxes,’ ‘System Error Message from the Spanish Revolution’ these are some of the slogans of the “Indignados” (“The Outraged”) movement that has swept Spain since 15 May and is continuing in various forms today. On 25 June hundreds of people set out on foot in sweltering heat from Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia, Cadiz and other cities in marches expected to converge on Madrid in July. Following are condensed excerpts from a report on the tumultuous first two weeks when the members of a young generation once considered politically indifferent and inert first forced their way onto the political stage. They have launched an intense debate previously almost forbidden by “common sense”, not to mention the country’s power structure, including the main left and right parties, about the desirability, possibility and modalities of radical change.
“This movement shares some features with the likewise unexpected revolt in the Arab countries, which helped inspire it, most notably an often fearless rejection of the status quo coupled with the idea that democratic reforms may be able to bring about basic change without a revolutionary seizure of power.”
In these six weeks, the life of the community has completely changed: Now the municipal president doesn’t operate out of the government palace and the installations are practically in the hands of the community members. There are no classes in the elementary school or middle school, nor in the high school or in the Pedagogical University. A “dry law” is in place and they can’t ingest or sell alcoholic beverages; vehicular traffic ends at eight at night and 24 hour security is maintained throughout the municipal seat.
In Cherán “we got fed up with keeping our heads down”
By Gloria Muñoz Ramírez Translated by Scott Campbell
Cherán, Michoacán, May 27. In the face of government indifference and/or complicity, close to 20,000 community members have organized themselves for the past 42 days against illegal loggers who are supported by gangs linked to organized crime. Patrols, barricades of sandbags, trunks and stones at all the points of entry and 179 permanent bonfires in the four neighborhoods, have been in place since April 15.
Since then, the population has armed itself with sticks, rocks, machetes, pickaxes, shovels and anything they could, in order to confront those who “for the past three years have devastated the community’s forests, with the protection of armed groups and even the government, which has done nothing to stop them,” said one of the thousands of community members who guard the barricade which covers the path to Paracho.
Far removed from their everyday life, the women, men, children and elders of this town on the Purépecha plateau live in a permanent tension around the barricades, guarding the entryways so that no unknown person passes through. Dawn yesterday brought the news that armed men in tens of SUVs were getting ready in Paracho. It was a false alarm, but the patrols were reinforced, “just in case.”
There is a social democratic reading of Gramsci that seems to skip over “The Modern Prince.” This is where he discusses the crucial necessity of coalescing a revolutionary agent that can meet the requirements of the historical tasks at hand, in this case the revolutionary party to make socialist revolution. If we just concentrated on “hegemony” and concerned ourselves only with alliances and shifting relations between them, then we would get Gramsci as a social democrat. However, such alliances must be led by a force which can negotiate various needs and tensions while driving towards its revolutionary goal. This force, the party, must be have a core with deep ties to a base or it will not be able to maintain strategic firmness. This is Gramsci the revolutionary.
The following article by Brazilian Trotskyist Roberto Robaina discusses the divergent readings of Gramsci. It appeared in International Socialism. While it reflects certain Trotskyist preoccupations, it is helpful in understanding some of the main issues involved.
Gramsci and revolution: a necessary clarification
By Roberto Robaina
Brazil was one of the first countries in Latin America to rediscover Antonio Gramsci. This was important in itself, but it was also attended by the theoretical distortions of a left that, although it was breaking with Stalinism, still resisted the alternative of a revolutionary perspective.
The first disseminators of Gramsci’s thought, particularly Carlos Nelson Coutinho, extended the discussion about the state to include questions of hegemony, the accumulation of forces and the necessity or otherwise of insurrection. And it was precisely on these questions that Gramsci has been most misused within the Brazilian Workers Party (PT), where his work has been represented as reformist. Concepts like hegemony and historic bloc, for example, have been consistently distorted. Some leaders of the PT, indeed, are still using these concepts to defend a politics of class collaboration with the bourgeoisie, or at least sections of it. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a powerful statement — and its publication may prove to be a significant event. A Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and documentary filmmaker, Jose Antonio Vargas, has outed himself — as an undocumented immigrant. He has put himself in the position of being deported or imprisoned (for lying on official documents). This story (and this man’s courage) is putting a face on the millions who live in the shadows. His article was just published in the New York Times Magazine — which gives it great prominence at a time when undocumented immigrants face a terrible mix of invisibility and accelerated persecution. * * * * * * *
by Jose Antonio Vargas
One August morning nearly two decades ago, my mother woke me and put me in a cab. She handed me a jacket. “Baka malamig doon” were among the few words she said. (“It might be cold there.”) When I arrived at the Philippines’ Ninoy Aquino International Airport with her, my aunt and a family friend, I was introduced to a man I’d never seen. They told me he was my uncle. He held my hand as I boarded an airplane for the first time. It was 1993, and I was 12.
My mother wanted to give me a better life, so she sent me thousands of miles away to live with her parents in America — my grandfather (Lolo in Tagalog) and grandmother (Lola). After I arrived in Mountain View, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area, I entered sixth grade and quickly grew to love my new home, family and culture. I discovered a passion for language, though it was hard to learn the difference between formal English and American slang. One of my early memories is of a freckled kid in middle school asking me, “What’s up?” I replied, “The sky,” and he and a couple of other kids laughed. I won the eighth-grade spelling bee by memorizing words I couldn’t properly pronounce. (The winning word was “indefatigable.”)
“Expose the empire to oppose the empire. Oppose the empire to end the empire.”
Of course we should do that. That means effectively explaining to people that we live in an imperialist country that operates according to certain general principles of motion. (Lenin’s theory of imperialism has been treated dismissively by some on this site. But I think there are really only three choices: to see U.S. wars as noble causes (as the political class usually asks us to do); to see them “mistakes”—perhaps rooted in “flawed intelligence”; or to see them as expressions of the nature of the system.
The question is how to explain the nature of the system, and to show how wars serve the interests of the capitalist class in general (or at least are undertaken because those in power calculate that they will).
“The decision to continue this war is a cold decision of empire, it is a calculation based on imperialist politics of an establishment elite (not on popular politics).”
“Obama is ‘winding the war down’ (!) by barely chipping away piecemeal at his own escalation — while planning a permanent occupation force. This is called ‘responsible withdrawal.'”
“A police action becomes an invasion, becomes an occupation, becomes a permanent outpost of empire. And at every step there is the mix of whining disappointment and ongoing participation among official liberals.”
“Would U.S. withdrawal mean that their puppets are exposed? Yes. Is that so bad? No.
“Would U.S. withdrawal mean that its future ability to threaten is weakened? Yes. Is that so bad? No.”
“They will call our logic and demands ‘irresponsible’ — well, so be it. We are responsible to a different set of people and a different future. Humanity doesn’t need or want some strutting capitalist ‘global policeman’ (whose corruption, murder and plunder masquerades as self-defense and selfless aid.)”
by Mike Ely
Obama announced his Afghanistan plans this week, and it was all posed as a “responsible withdrawal” — slow, paced, preserving U.S. “gains,” protecting U.S. puppets, maintaining the dignity of a superpower. And the official media arena is filled with debate over whether it is “responsible” enough.
So we are presented with a (typical and deceptive) ruling class debate where the most basic realities are shoved to the side.
The facts remain: Obama’s “responsible pace of withdrawal” may will leave troop in Afghanistan forever. And for the foreseeable future they are not far from where Bush-era levels of invasion force.
Obama’s plan is a token shift of 10,000 soldiers (leaving by the end of 2011) and maybe (maybe!) 23,000 in another year.
Compare these numbers to the current size of the occupation force which is 250,000 military forces by the U.S. and its invasion partners (100,000 U.S. troops, 50,000 NATO troops and 100,000 Pentagon-paid contractors).
This is a plan for a continuing war and brutalization of Afghanistan’s people (and of nearby Pakistan) — all while claiming that the invaders “provide the people with the security they need for normal life”! Obama’s plans apparently envision at least 25,000 occupation troops remaining after 2014. Meaning that there is zero discussion involving ending this occupation, but instead plans to make it permanent.
Democracy and Class Struggle published this report from Peter Tobin, a correspondent who is currently in Nepal. It offers background and analysis of extremely important controversies that have sharpened within Nepal, and within that country’s revolutionary Maoist forces, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). The original piece assumes a great deal of knowledge about Nepal (and its political acronyms), so we have inserted brief explanations [in brackets] at appropriate places.
Balance of military forces in Nepal –
In relation to PLA integration into the Nepal Army
by Peter Tobin
Before reporting on arguments around the integration into NA [formerly royalist Nepal Army], (as per terms of 2005 CPA [Comprehensive Peace Accords]) of approximately 20,000 PLA cadre [Peoples Liberation Army], it is necessary to understand the overwhelming logistical and numerical apparent superiority of the military available to the reactionary parties through the state apparatus.
The Nepalese Army has 95,000 active personal. It has been well-armed by India, US, UK, Russia and Israel. Its officer caste are trained in India, US and UK, and its high command is profoundly anti-Maobaadi (viz 2008 coup against Prachanda-led coalition). [Maobadi is a popular name for the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).]
Last year Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal – the unelected UML [a status quo party], GS, and Delhi’s placeman after Prachanda – threatened to unleash the forces at his disposal against any “Maoist attempt to seize state power”, during the May manifestations. There is no doubt that NA general staff would have complied. [Dehli, above, refers to India’s capital — and to the fact that Nepal’s powerful southern neighbor, India, exercises a major and oppressive domination over Nepal, and is intriguing in major ways within Nepali political and military affairs.]
It receives $1.7 billion from US though the EMET programme which is jointly funded by Defense/State Departments, and funneled through, the euphemistically titled: EIPC (Enhanced International Peacekeeping Capabilities)
Further military networking and synching occurs through OCD (Office for Defense Co-operation) convened under CINCPAC [U.S. Commander-in Chief – Pacific].
This is a very provocative development, an open source non-trackable digital currency independent of any nation state. The video is long, (a little more than an hour) but utterly fascinating. (Fast Forward to 0:07:15). The revolutionary implications of this just keep coming out as the program progresses. Even if Bitcoin itself doesn’t take off, the idea itself is so irrepressibly subversive that I suspect something like it will eventually establish itself and quite possibly powerfully upset the global financial order. It is, at any rate, something revolutionaries should be aware of and be discussing.
This essay was written in 2007, just as the current ceasefire and political stalemate was beginning in Nepal, after ten years of sacrifice and growth during the revolutionary people’s war. It lays out some basic questons of assessment and orientation by the Maoist forces in Nepal [the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) – UCPN(M)]. It is worth publishing now because the issues expressed here are among those now at the center of a major struggle — including whether the international situation is fatally adverse to socialist transition.
By posting it here, Kasama is not (of course) endorsing every practical assessment or the specific universalizations of Marxism it may assert.
But there are also several very important question of orientation we all need to pay attention to:
“There is also a tendency in the ICM, which conceives tactics almost at the same level as the strategy. The strategy remains same until some basic political changes take place, whereas the tactics changes as soon as there is even a small change in the political situation. Therefore, firm in strategy and flexible in tactics is the correct way of thinking.”
“In many events, communists when they change color and turn to be revisionists, revert the basic tenets of the proletarian ideology, pretend that they were making creative application. So there is a fear-psycho among the Maoists, who have lots of dogmatism in their thinking even when there is real creative application of our ideology, they fall prey of the same illusion.”
“Therefore, it is the responsibility of proletariat, nationally and internationally to work hard to turn this challenge to a brilliant opportunity. Definitely huge risk is involved into it. We should dare to fight and dare to win. If we win, our class, proletariat which is an international class will win. This victory of our class will open the door for further and higher level of victory. When we win, we all will celebrate it. It finally boils down to ‘Either all of us will reach communism, or none of us will’.”
“I think that is a basic method. And it starts with a global assessment of potential and necessity (who will we need? who might we win over?) — not with what is spontaneously true at any given moment (who is now with us? who is now against us?)
In other words, there are people we should treat as friends (as part of “the people”) even if they are (at this moment, and even for a long time into the future) rather hostile to our views and plans.
“This is a strategic evaluation — we are sketching out who we want to bring together, and start treating them as potential strategic allies long before they are conscious of having any relationship with a specific socialist revolution.”
“I am trying to think through how Mao’s distinction of contradictions among the people vs. contradictions with the enemy works in our current context(s).”
Mao’s distinction involves specific concepts of “the people” and “the enemy” — so to follow BB’s point it is necessary to revisit and define these terms.
Mao wrote at the very beginning of his political work an analysis of Chinese society and classes. It starts with the now-famous words :
“Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.
“The basic reason why all previous revolutionary struggles in China achieved so little was their failure to unite with real friends in order to attack real enemies. A revolutionary party is the guide of the masses, and no revolution ever succeeds when the revolutionary party leads them astray.
“To ensure that we will definitely achieve success in our revolution and will not lead the masses astray, we must pay attention to uniting with our real friends in order to attack our real enemies. To distinguish real friends from real enemies, we must make a general analysis of the economic status of the various classes in Chinese society and of their respective attitudes towards the revolution.”
So we are discussing several long-standing questions:
How does a revolution identify its potential supporters and allies? How does it identify its “real enemies.”
And (beyond that) how does a movement “treat” these different categories of forces.
“This raid was the first time that the infamous Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit would be deployed in the United States. The LA Panthers, comprised mostly of teenagers and young adults, engaged in a four hour long gun battle, which can be attributed to the fortification, preparation and training provided by Geronimo.”
The following appeared on on the MXGM site. Kasama honors the memory of this revolutionary fighter. The original title: “NAPO/MXGM statement on the passing of our Comrade Geronimo ji Jaga.”
The New Afrikan Peoples Organization (NAPO) and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGRO) salute the life of our brother and comrade Geronimo ji Jaga. The life of Geronimo, or “G” as he was affectionately known, represents a freedom fighter that sacrificed and loved Afrikan people and humanity.
Geronimo was given the name Elmer Gerard Pratt at birth on September 13, 1947, in Morgan City, Louisiana. He was born into a loving family that would nurture him and provide support throughout his life. He grew up in a community where he and other youth had to fight white supremacists from the “other side of the tracks.”
Geronimo said he was encouraged to go into the US military by his community Elders, who had roots in Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Deacons for Defense. His objective was to learn military skills to be utilized for the defense of our community and our people. “G” was a decorated soldier in the wrong army, earning two Bronze Stars, a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts. He distinguished himself as a Sergeant and Ranger in the 82nd Airborne of the US Army.
It is not often that we print gossip from the New York Post. But even if it is a hoax, it seemed worth noting what it takes for Zizek to make the Post.
Marxist muse befriends Gaga
Lady Gaga has struck up a strong friendship with mysterious Marxist Slavoj Zizek, dubbed “the world’s hippest philosopher.”
In the midst of her rift with long-term boyfriend Luc Carl, eyebrows were raised over Gaga’s decision to spend a lot of time with the 62-year-old, bearded, postmodern theorist and pal of Julian Assange while she was touring the UK and US this spring.
Sources say Gaga and Slovenian-born Zizek — who like Salman Rushdie seems to be intellectual catnip to beautiful women and who was once married to Argentine model Analia Hounie — spent time together discussing feminism and collective human creativity. The pop star also agreed to support Zizek at a March rally in London when the lecturers’ union UCU was on strike.
This statement emerges from within the Kasama Project — in internationalist communist solidarity with the revolutionary movement of Nepal’s people
Kasama 