Reproductive Justice Under Pervasive Attack

By Sue Davis
Published Nov 19, 2011 11:12 AM

Initiative 26 was trounced 58-42 percent by voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8. It would have outlawed all abortions, many forms of birth control, fertility treatments and stem-cell research and possibly have criminalized women who had ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages.

Known as the “egg-as-personhood” referendum, its defeat is an unexpected victory for women in the most conservative state in the U.S. It’s also a real setback for all who seek to deny women their full human rights by denying them control over their own bodies.

This pro-choice victory was not predicted even two weeks before the election. Polls showed passage was a done deal. The Oct. 26 New York Times reported both candidates for governor supported passage and quoted people in favor of or undecided about it.

What turned things around was a massive eleventh-hour, grassroots effort mounted by Mississippians for Healthy Families, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the Feminist Majority Foundation and the NAACP. Mississippi now joins Colorado and South Dakota in rejecting “personhood” laws — twice in both those states. But new campaigns are said to be planned in Nevada, Georgia, Florida, Montana, Ohio, California, Oregon, Michigan, Wisconsin and South Dakota (yet again).

Meanwhile, anti-choice laws have spread like a rabid virus in many states. They include bans on insurance coverage for abortion; laws mandating that women who seek abortions must visit a “crisis pregnancy center” for an anti-abortion lecture by religious zealots; and laws that require a woman to view a sonogram of the fetus before having an abortion. Other laws seek to deny public funding to Planned Parenthood because it is the country’s largest abortion provider, even though millions of poor women rely on its facilities for their primary health care. Those who would be deprived are disproportionately women of color, young and living in rural areas.

But the most far-reaching attack on women’s reproductive rights occurred at the federal level on Oct. 13, with the endorsement and blessing of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Family Research Council. By a vote of 251 to 172, the House of Representatives passed the horribly misnamed “Protect Life Act.” Among its many anti-women, anti-health and anti-life provisions was one that would allow doctors, other health care providers and hospitals to “exercise their conscience” and let pregnant women who need emergency medical care die.

No wonder women’s rights and progressive legal groups called it the “Let Women Die Bill,” while thoroughly opposing it. During debate before the vote, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) denounced the bill, saying that “had this law been in effect 20 years ago she might not be here, because she was one of those women who needed an emergency abortion to save her life.” (rhrealitycheck.org, Oct. 13)

Among its provisions, which would deprive millions of women of benefits they receive today, the law would force insurance companies to drop comprehensive coverage in state health insurance exchanges. This would prevent women from paying for health insurance, even with their own money, if it includes abortion coverage. And it would allow states to pass laws stipulating that health plans can refuse to cover preventive services, including birth control, even though the Department of Health and Human Services announced Aug. 1 that all preventive care for women, including birth control, should be provided at no extra cost in insurance plans.

All the major women’s health and rights organizations are fighting the good fight. For instance, the Center for Reproductive Rights won injunctions in Oklahoma, North Carolina and Texas to stop anti-choice laws from going into effect. Planned Parenthood has mounted an information campaign asserting that though it is a major abortion provider, no government funding is used to pay for abortions.

United fightback needed

But more is needed to defend women’s rights and ensure reproductive justice for all women in this climate of political reaction. Nowadays, lawmakers would rather use state power to impose paternalistic, life-threatening limits on women’s right to life and health than to pass bills that create real jobs or that tax millionaires.

It’s instructive to note that in an essay posted Oct. 27 on rhrealitycheck.org, Loretta Ross, an African American who has devoted 35 years to the struggle for reproductive justice, advocated that the coalition fighting Initiative 26 link that struggle with the fight against Initiative 27, which mandated government-issued identification in order to vote. The Feminist Majority Foundation calculated that passage of similar laws nationally could prevent 35 million women from voting. Ross raised the slogan: “Two no’s make a right.” Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and the voter ID exclusion act passed.

After calling the defeat of Initiative 26 “a peoples’ victory, a triumph in which people of all backgrounds, races, professions and religions came together,” Ross wrote in the Nov. 9 rhrealitycheck.org, “Millions of dollars of staff and resources poured into Mississippi from around the country to defeat 26. … What if those same resources had been equally devoted to defeating 27? … Could we have saved the right to vote in Mississippi at the same time we saved (at least temporarily) the right to obtain an abortion?”

It’s time to link the fight for women’s rights with today’s fightback movement led by Occupy Wall Street, the unions and community groups. A broad-based, united struggle is needed to win justice on all issues for all people.

Communist Workers Party of Tunisia: Statement on the Elections

Declaration on the Elections to the Constituent Assembly
On the evening of October 27, 2011, the Superior Independent Election Commission (ISIE) published the provisional results of the elections to the Constituent Assembly. The Ennahdha movement came out on top, followed respectively by the Congress for the Republic (CPR), the Democratic Forum for Labor and Liberties (FDTL), the People's Petition for Freedom, Justice and Development… the Communist Party of the Workers of Tunisia (PCOT) won only three seats, in Sfax, Kairouan and Siliana.

The PCOT has noted that these elections, the first since the revolution, were pluralist, open to all parties and all political and ideological trends. However, it cannot help pointing out the irregularities that tainted them, in the interests of truth, far from the hypocrisy of the Ben Ali era, which excels in praise and conceals the truth from the people.

1. According to the official figures of the ISIE, the rate of participation did not exceed 48.9%, which means that the majority of voters (3,867,197 out of 7,569,824 voters) did not take part in the election. One should question what are the causes of this low participation, particularly in view of the general political and social circumstances in which the vote took place.

2. Money played a dirty and dangerous role in these elections, by "political advertising" which did not escape anyone, by large-scale corruption in the form of "gifts" to the electors and “charitable and social services". These acts persisted up to the day of the elections and in the face of which the ISIE proved impotent.

3. The media still under the control of the agents of the former regime, including the public media, promoted certain political forces to the detriment of others. They did not allow public opinion to understand the issues in the elections to the Constituent Assembly; rather, they focused on secondary themes and sowed confusion about issues relating to religious beliefs.

4. During these elections religion has been seriously exploited in the mosques and public spaces. For example, most of the sermons on Friday, October 21, only two days before the elections, called implicitly or explicitly for a vote for certain parties against others, under the pretext that they represent the religion or that their members pray, which reminds us of the practices of the Ben Ali era.

5. The exploitation of religion goes along with base campaigns of slander against the revolutionary and democratic forces, such as our party. Orchestrated by reactionary and counter-revolutionary forces, these campaigns diverted the attention of the people from the real political, economic, social and cultural issues but also their division based on religious criteria.

6. Several irregularities were committed on the day of the vote, including by members of the polling stations. Private buses and cars were used to transport voters, especially those who were not registered voluntarily, the election campaign continued until election day, including in front of the polling stations to encourage people to vote for certain lists, food and drinks were distributed inside the polling stations, etc.

Reported by watchdog agencies, independent reports and observers, these violations of the principles of democratic elections sully the honesty and transparency of the elections. One way or another they influenced the results of the elections. The attempt of the ISIE to minimize their importance reveals its inability to thwart them.

7. The successive reports of the announcement of the results call into question the transparency of the elections. The coming days may reveal the causes of these multiple postponements.

8. The PCOT, which participated in this election, was the first to call for the election of a Constituent Assembly to break with the tyranny. It led a clean campaign on the financial and political but also ethical plane. It focused on its proposals and programs, relying on the will of its activists. It was also faced with a very defamatory campaign and suffered from a flagrant media blockade.

The results obtained by the PCOT are weak; they do not reflect its involvement on the ground, its roots, its militant history and its vanguard role in the Tunisian revolution against the dictatorship. While it is true that these results are related to the above-mentioned general climate, the organs of the party never failed to evaluate and analyze our responsibilities.

9. Besides these results, the PCOT will continue to fight tirelessly, alongside the workers and the popular strata, for the fulfillment of the objectives of the revolution and the establishment of a genuine democratic, patriotic and popular change.
In this campaign, the PCOT was able to win many supporters, convinced by its program, its positions, its credibility and its principles; they will form the solid basis of a new start in order to meet future challenges.

On this occasion, the PCOT wishes to thank all those who supported it and gave it their vote, it assures them that its representatives in the Constituent Assembly will strenuously defend the mission for which they were elected.

Communist Party of the Workers of Tunisia
44, rue de Palestine
1002 Tunis, Tunisia

Egyptian Communist Party: Continue the Revolution, Protect It From Conspiracies

From: Egytian Communist Party - Google Translation

From this rather poor translation via google, what I gather is a strong rejection of calls simply to amend the 1971. The Communist Party is rather calling for a new constitution. Secondly, they are stressing that the sectarian, religious based violence going on is possibly linked with the remnants of the Mubbarack regime and could be used as a pretext for counter-revolution.

The Communist Party of Egypt was re-founded in 1975, and from what I can gather, seems to be ideologically in line with the Communist Party of Greece, promoting Anti-Revisionism. From what I can gather, the only other party in Egypt currently advocating worker's power is the "Revolutionary Socialists", an organization linked with the International Socialist Tenency of "neo-Trotskyists" such as the British SWP and the US ISO.

However, many groups promoting "Arab Socialism" or "Islamic Socialism" are present in Egypt, preaching politics similar to the former Nationalist Pro-Soviet Egyptian President Abdul Nasser or Mummar Gaddafi in Libya.

- Caleb T. Maupin


At a critical moment passes in which the country bridge the transition from dictatorship and corruption to the state of democracy and the rule of law and social justice; and after the triumph of the revolution and its success in achieving some of its demands and continuity in this critical transitional phase of drafting a new constitution and to provide freedoms and the elimination of remnants of the institutions of the former regime.

We view the counter-revolution by spreading chaos and intimidate citizens and lawlessness

And the use of the ugliest and most dangerous weapons fanning the flames of sectarianism, which reflected in the crime of burning and destruction of the Church of Saints in the village of access Batfaih and the subsequent violence and bullying has killed a large number of dead and wounded was meant to stoke the fires of sedition in the country and abortion revolution, the Egyptian people, and this counter-revolution led by elements of state security and the remnants of the National Party and businessmen of the stakeholders in the return of the old system and who use bullying and some of the forces disguised religion who Qdo their lives in dealing with the state security service and those who Kano until recently denied exit to the Governor and even disbelieve who takes him or pretend to him as According to the fatwa against one of their leaders and national youth demonstrations, which stood against Mubarak, such as the Revolution also use some of the elements of those falsely claiming the defense of Egyptian Christians and were satisfied with their cases on the trading screen satellite TV.

It is known that whoever is behind all this are the counter-revolutionary forces and their allies of the reactionary regimes and third parties hostile to the revolution, the Egyptian people.

There is no doubt also that the viability of state institutions to use the same old ways of Tboois beards and customary meetings have proved unsuccessful in practice in the treatment of these serious issues.

We stress that the face of this sedition and inciting them not only at activating the principle of citizenship and non-discrimination and rule of law and trial deterrent to the perpetrators and instigators of and change the general climate in the areas of education, culture and information and the need for religious institutions and political forces and civil society organizations in turn spread the values ​​of religious tolerance and freedom of thought, conscience and equality, rationality and scientific thinking. On the other hand, we warn against the misuse of the weapon sit, especially in the field of liberalization - the symbol of the revolution - the weapon which was the most important and spent Enas success and continuation of the revolution 25; so we reject the use of this weapon of some groups are individually, allowing the forces of counter-revolution in the revolution and tarnish the image of millions of peaceful demonstrations and Atsamtha heroic managed to impress and respect for the peoples of the world.

The insistence on the continuation of the sit-chaotic despite an agreement by all the forces and communities revolt against the suspension has led to the exploitation of other conspirators against the revolution in the provocation of Egyptian citizens and seek to involve the armed forces to use violence against citizens, we call upon all political forces and popular gatherings and youth need to respect Tools and means of revolution and use the form, which helps to ensure their success in achieving its objectives. I have met all the bats of darkness to form a single row of counter-revolution, which works on the demolition of the Egyptian revolution great and ignite the fire of sedition between the sons of one nation and bring us back to back and try to re-impose dictatorship and the corruption of the National Democratic Party of Egypt through the ignition chaos in order to keep the masses of the Egyptian people to discuss urgent issues of the revolution, especially the need to develop a new constitution and reject any amendments to the Constitution of 71, which was dropped by the revolution.

Continuation of the revolution start now requires a constitutional declaration for a transitional period and the formation of a presidential council of civilian and military (or the election of a civilian president for a transitional period selected)


And the election of Constituent Assembly representing the Egyptian people, all walks of life and trends in the political development of a new constitution and amend laws to ensure that the freedom to form parties and trade unions, associations, and the law on political rights and to hold parliamentary elections on the basis of existing comparative non-conditional with the need to define a clear timetable for this transition period ranging from one year to year and a half ago.

The home in a delicate stage you need to awareness and action, organized to educate the masses and to mobilize and organize new forms of democracy behind the demands of the revolution.

We therefore call upon all honest nation and people to uphold the demands of the revolution was great, and we call on the masses of the Egyptian people to participate in the march millions tomorrow Fri Constitution and national unity to thwart the conspiracies of the counter-revolution and the emphasis on the vitality and the continuing revolution of the Egyptian people to achieve the most important demands for a new constitution to achieve democracy and social justice.

Long live the revolution of January 25! Long Live Egyptian people's struggle for freedom and justice and human dignity!

March 10, 2011 the Egyptian Communist Party

Law Exposes "Pregnancy Centers"

Published Mar 13, 2011 10:42 PM

Special to Workers World New York

On March 2 the New York City Council voted to regulate so-called "crisis pregnancy centers." These are centers set up to look like a doctor's office or clinic where pregnant women can seek care for pregnancy, abortion or contraception, including the morning-after pill. But their only mission is to convince women not to have abortions. ??

These centers usually have no licensed medical personnel on site and, until now, were not licensed or regulated in any way. Privacy laws safeguarding the confidentiality of patient information do not apply to these centers. Women who go there have to perform their own pregnancy tests -- using a pregnancy test kit sold over the counter in pharmacies -- because the centers are not licensed to do medical tests or procedures. ??

The new law requires that these phony centers notify clients whether or not there are licensed medical personnel on site; clearly state that they do not provide or offer referrals for abortion care, the morning-after pill or any form of contraception; and ensure confidentiality of all information collected from clients. The law requires this notification at the centers and in all advertising, both in print and online. Taking into account the special vulnerability of non-English speakers to the deceptive tactics used, all notifications must be in Spanish as well as English.?

These sham centers are often located near or even in the same building as Planned Parenthood or other abortion providers in order to lure women with unintended pregnancies and subject them to anti-abortion propaganda. They do not provide medically accurate information about pregnancy, contraception or abortion and promote discredited notions about links between abortion and breast cancer. ??

Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, says abortion foes' free speech is not curbed by the new law. "But they don’t have the right to dress up as doctors and masquerade as health care providers and deceive women into thinking they’ve been to the doctor when they have not.” (New York Times, March 2)
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Glenn Beck Admits He Hates Freedom & Loves One Party Dictatorships and Monarchies!

In the above clip, Glenn Beck discusses his fear that various pro-U.S. governments in the middle east will fall as their people rise up in revolution.

It is ironic that Beck calls himself such a patriot and "constitutionalist" when the governments he seems to adore and fear for include the following:

Jordan - An absolute monarchy with a King, no elections at all.

Egypt - A brutal U.S. backed dictator, magically has won every election in two decades, and has a secret police force that tortures anyone suspected of seeking reform. U.S. embassy estimates that thousands are tortured daily in wiki-leaked memo.

Saudi Arabia - Another absolute monarchy, and the only country in the modern world to practice beheading. Death penalty for homosexuals. Women are not allowed to leave their homes, even for medical care. Squads of armed thugs with clubs patrol the streets looking for "infidels" who question the government.

Yemen - Another U.S. backed dictator, who has magically won every election since 1978. He also has a squad of secret police who torture and execute dissidents.

Ironically as well, most of these regimes have Islam as the state religion. In fact, Saudi Arabia is a religious state run by the Whahabia sect of Islam.

Beck, for some reason, believes that the movements throughout the middle east that are demanding "democracy" are a danger. Instead, Glenn Beck thinks, as stated above, that overthrowing these brutal dictators will lead to disaster.

Does Glenn Beck love Democracy? Not in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, or Yemen.

Does he hate radical Islam? Not in Saudi Arabia or Jordan.

Does he oppose monarchy and absolutism? Not in Jordan or Saudi Arabia.

Does he believe in free elections? Not in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Yemen.

Remember when he was telling us we had to invade Iraq in order to "bring democracy." Remember when he called Obama a "dictator" for wanting everyone to have health insurance?

I think I will send him this personal letter:


Dear Glenn Beck,

Why do you hate freedom? Why do love absolute monarchy in Jordan and Saudi Arabia? Why do so adore one party dictatorships that massacre their people in Yemen and Egypt?

Aren't your pep rallies called "Tea Parties" in honor of the overthrow of a King? I guess now you like Kings, as long as they let U.S. oil companies and banks do as they please.

You must like "radical Islam" and Sharia law now too, as it seems you are terrified of it leaving Saudi Arabia.

You lying hypocrite! Do you ever stop and read what is on your tele-prompter? Do you really love Absolute Monarchy and One Party Dicatorship? Or are you just a fool?

-Caleb T. Maupin

ZIonist Settler States His Views Openly on Camera

An open confession, if ever.

Russian Communist Party's Leader Gives Christmas Message

Gennady Zyuganov, Chairman of the Communist Party of Russian Federation

From: Voice of Russia

Greetings to Our Compatriots on the Feast of the Nativity!

My countrymen, my dear friends:

Once again, the great joy of the holiday of the Nativity of Christ Christmas comes to Russia, to our Russian homeland. I greet you upon this day, one of the most beloved holidays of our people; it gives us hope for spiritual renewal, the elimination of injustice, the healing of our ills, and a belief in a better life. Without a doubt, Orthodoxy has always been the spiritual foundation of our age-old Russian culture; it’s been the core of our national identity for over a millennium. Throughout history, it’s been the moral foundation of the Russian character. I wish happiness, health, peace, and love to all of your families; on this day, I want all of us to remember with particular intensity those who are having hard times. This holiday, these people lack heat and light, they live in poverty and insecurity. Such ills in our contemporary Russian society are the result of an unjust socio-economic policy, of a split society; it’s a sign of its moral ill-health. Despite all of that, I hope and believe that our great country and its hardworking people will overcome all the adversity now facing us. The Nativity… has shown to the world the light of wisdom… is another reminder of the evangelical admonition that we all need to work together. If we draw upon the ancient traditions of our people, it would help us to build up the ideals of labour, social justice, and brotherhood; it would help us to achieve a decent life, peace, and happiness for each and every one of us.
С Рождеством Христовым! To the Feast of the Nativity of Christ!

Wikileaks, the printing press, and the Bible

By Sara Flounders
Published Dec 22, 2010 11:21 PM

New forms of technology are inherently destabilizing to the established order.

This is the whole basis of a materialist understanding of history. But this reality can sometimes be confirmed in a manner that catches everyone by surprise. Dominance that was once unchallenged is suddenly contested on all sides. The struggle for change breaks out in new and unexpected ways.

U.S. imperialism cannot put back into the box or shut down what has been opened by WikiLeaks. Instead, the struggle to contain WikiLeaks has the potential to bring millions of people into political consciousness and conflict with the established order.

The effort to suppress the release of information on WikiLeaks by the arrest of Julian Assange and calls for his assassination or trial on terrorism charges; the imprisonment of Bradley Manning and the threats against WikiLeaks activists; along with the cancelation of its services by Amazon, PayPal, American Express, MasterCard, and U.S. and Swiss banks is radicalizing many highly skilled youth internationally. Hundreds of thousands of cyber attacks were organized on the multinational information corporations and banks that attempted to shut WikiLeaks down.

Every effort to shut it down has only served to spread it further and make it far more widely available. Thousands of mirror sites were set up within days of the effort to close WikiLeaks.

Even if the U.S. government succeeds in temporarily shutting down WikiLeaks, millions of people worldwide know that it is possible to break U.S. government and corporate secrecy. Many new sites are sure to follow.

The denunciations and attacks on the courageous individuals who have helped to provide access to government and corporate secret information will inspire many others who may have access to restricted information on all kinds of criminal and corporate skullduggery to join in leaking it.

All this undercuts the endlessly polished image of U.S. imperialism as an invincible power with all the most advanced technology at its disposal.

So much of cyber warfare is dominated by theft of information for profit or espionage. The impact of many thousands of cyber activists all over the world working simply for the idea that information and communication should be free and available — not kept secret or owned for private profit — has revolutionary implications.

WikiLeaks has exposed government secrets through the cooperation of courageous, highly skilled individuals who are able to communicate and willing to risk everything in the name of freedom of information. But those forces alone would not have had the mass access of the corporate media.

The choice of documents and the steady, well-publicized daily release of hundreds of documents provided by WikiLeaks on the front pages of newspapers in Germany, France, Spain and Britain may reflect that the U.S.’s own imperialist allies are no longer willing to just be pulled in tow by the U.S.-dominated military alliance known as NATO.

In the past these imperialist countries and their corporate media have been willing to ignore clear evidence of U.S. crimes and conspiracies. Previously, these crimes were not even considered newsworthy or relevant.

Now these imperialist countries — long-time thieves and robbers themselves — can see that today U.S. imperialism is in a long period of decline and decay. It is unable to prevail in a long ground war in Central Asia against one of the poorest, least-developed countries in the world: Afghanistan. It is unable to reverse the global capitalist economic crisis or solve the growing unemployment faced by millions of workers. Its industrial capacity is now a mere fraction of global production.

It is hardly a secret that in order to maintain its deteriorating monopoly on power, U.S. imperialism has used invasions, occupations, coups, bribery and military dictatorship. To hold in place an archaic, corrupt system of exploitation, it has openly engaged in the most repressive measures, including mass raids, disappearances, secret detentions, targeted assassinations, preventive prosecutions and frame-ups.

Both the Bush administration and now the Obama administration have politically defended the use of the most brutal forms of torture, including waterboarding, sensory deprivation, solitary confinement and electric torture. And they have used and sold weapons of torture around the world, from stun guns to white phosphorous and anti-personnel grenades.

Much of the information and even some of the pictures, videos and documents now being released were already known both in some specifics and in general outline. But concrete information can have radical consequences.

To understand how futile the U.S. efforts to shut down WikiLeaks are, it is worth looking back to a struggle at the dawn of capitalism against the old feudal order in Europe.

In the 16th century the Roman Catholic Church was the largest landowner in feudal Europe, controlling a third of all land. As an institution, it had a stranglehold on enormous amounts of property, privilege, titles, inheritance and especially ideas. The privileged clergy had a total monopoly on law, politics, science and “salvation.”

But new technology, trade and communication were bubbling beneath the surface. It was the newly invented printing press and its ability to widely disseminate information that broke the authority not only of the Catholic Church but also of feudal class relations.

The printing press & indulgences

In 1440 Johannes Gutenberg built the first wooden press, which used movable metal type. It took another 15 years, until 1455, to develop the rudimentary technology of movable type, metal molds, a special press and oil-based inks that together created mass production of the first printed book: 200 copies of the Bible. By 1499 — less than 50 years later — printing houses had been established in more than 2,500 cities in Europe. An estimated 15 million books had been printed of 30,000 titles, including hundreds of political and religious-political tracts which were distributed far and wide.

This new technology broke the monopoly of information once available only to a select few who had access to handwritten manuscripts that took years to individually copy or produce by laboriously inking carved wooden blocks.

The cost of Gutenberg’s first run of a two-volume printed Bible was the equivalent of approximately three years’ wages for an average clerk. This was far cheaper than a handwritten Bible, which could take a single monk 20 years to transcribe.(ideafinder.com)

As Gutenberg was developing the technology to print an entire book, he sustained himself by mass producing for church officials tens of thousands of printed “indulgences.” These were printed slips of paper sold by the Catholic Church that promised to remit punishments in the afterlife. These aggressively marketed notes could only be sold by agents or commissaries, who bought the rights to sell them from the pope in Rome.

Indulgences quickly became an enormous new source of wealth for Rome — a commodity that could be bought and sold. It was a new form of extracting profits: onerous taxation and mass exploitation for all who wished for salvation. For 50 years it appeared that the wealth and power of Rome was growing based on indulgences, the currency of the age.

All these enormous changes — a new marketable source of wealth, an emerging capitalist class, new technology, new communication, a beleaguered peasantry and growing numbers of poor, urban workers — were brewing when a monk, Martin Luther, challenged Rome’s absolute authority.

Nailing a declaration of 95 theses to the cathedral doors in Wittenberg in 1517, Luther opposed the buying and selling of indulgences and demanded the right to interpret the Bible. This bold challenge to papal authority is credited with unleashing 100 years of revolutionary upheaval known as the Protestant Reformation.

Luther’s translation of the Bible from Church Latin into the vernacular German spoken by common people had an even more revolutionary impact.

The Peasant War

For hundreds of years historians described the resulting wars that convulsed Europe as religious wars. The burning issue that moved millions of people to revolutionary action was the freedom to read the vernacular Bible and the right to interpret it. It was a break with the absolute power of the Catholic Church and its privileged clergy.

In the small book, “The Peasant War in Germany,” Fredrick Engels shed new understanding on this period of upheaval with his explanation of the class forces emerging that challenged the authority of decaying, corrupt Rome. Local princes, lower nobility and landlords could quickly grasp the advantage of breaking with Rome and thereby lessening its enormous taxation and tithes. It was an opportunity to seize the wealth of church lands and be free of the burden of buying indulgences.

By 1524 large sections of the besieged German peasantry, who were being hammered by the tithes and taxations of both the church and the feudal lords, took the right of each person to interpret the Bible to heart, along with the right to seize the lands of the church and free themselves from ownership by lords and abbeys.

A radical challenge to property took root. The idea that all wealth of the church and the local lords should be held in common led to peasant uprisings that convulsed Germany for two years.

Thomas Munzer, the leader of the most radical thinkers, merged his biblical interpretations with the Anabaptist movement, a peasant-based, communist mobilization with the rainbow flag as its symbol. In this struggle millions of peasants and plebeians acted for the first time in their own interests, though following a religious program. They built a revolutionary army and contended for power.

Munzer, the Anabaptists and their movement were militarily defeated within two years. To make an example to other insurrectionary efforts, the leaders were horribly tortured and publicly executed. But revolutionary peasant uprisings continued across Europe.

The upheavals spread to Scandinavia, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, the Netherlands and England. The peasant movements, too disorganized, unskilled and illiterate to prevail, were again and again defeated by a bloc of the newly rising capitalist class and frightened princes and landlords.

The Catholic Church used every form of repression to reclaim its authority and privilege. Inquisitions used secret detention, horrendous forms of torture, mass campaigns of terror and witch-hunts that consumed thousands in flames. Whole countries faced papal excommunication — a punishment similar to sanctions today.

Rome financed military campaigns and invasions, such as the Spanish Armada’s attempt to invade Britain in 1588 in an effort to reverse the British monarchy’s break with Rome. But no form of threats, terror or torture could restore the Church’s uncontested position in feudal Europe.

Technology cannot be turned back. And the new ideas that arise from a society changed by technology cannot be stamped out by threats and repression.

No turning back for U.S. imperialism

U.S. imperialism cannot shut down the flow of information or the drive it ignites for wider access and the end to the impossibly narrow constraints of private property and ownership of information and communication. The U.S. military may have originally developed the Internet for its own emergency military communication in time of war. But the Internet has long since escaped those bounds.

U.S. corporate power cannot shut down the Internet without totally disrupting their own businesses, production and marketing. The contradiction is that the immediate financial interests of the bourgeoisie make the Internet ever more accessible.

The much bigger problem for U.S. imperialism is that today, as consciousness grows and access to communication technology expands to include the whole world, it is not facing an isolated, illiterate and oppressed peasantry.

It is facing the increasingly educated and skilled multinational working class whom they created. This class will come to a consciousness of its own interests in unexpected and uneven ways. But this class is a force that cannot be stopped by feudal or modern repression and threats.

The rising consciousness of millions of the powerless can be more powerful than technology.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Omali Yeshitali: "Jesus was a Revolutionary!"

Lucius Walker, Presente!

Pro-Choice Activists Drive Right-Wingers From Clinic

ublished Aug 6, 2010 11:00 AM

Pro-choice activists successfully defended the Family Reproductive Health clinic for a week in July in Charlotte, N.C. The facility, which provides a wide range of medical care for women, including check-ups, testing and treatment, family planning and abortions, has been under siege for eight years by the right-wing Operation Rescue/Operation Save America.

OR/OAS not only opposes women’s reproductive rights but rails against lesbian/gay/bi/transgender individuals and people living with AIDS. Their bigotry has extended to protests outside of mosques where they harass Muslims.

On July 24 the strength of pro-choice activists caused the right-wingers to pack up their bus and leave. The National Organization for Women, which helped to organize the clinic defense, reports that this was the first Saturday in eight years when the clinic was “free of harassment and terror threats from the extreme anti-abortion rights group OR/OSA.” (now.org)

Following is an eyewitness report written by Cathey Stanley and Scott Williams, activists with Raleigh Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST), who traveled to Charlotte to defend the clinic and women’s reproductive rights on July 24.

“Trust women,” “Keep abortion safe and legal,” and “This clinic stays open” were among the signs we saw bordering the entrance of the Family Reproductive Health clinic on July 24. The facility is one of many in Charlotte that have been under attack.

Operation Rescue/Operation Save America had targeted Family Reproductive Health for attacks from July 17-24 and culminated its weeklong convention in Charlotte on July 24. For the entire week, these right-wingers, who aim to end abortion rights for women across the United States, harassed clinic staff and the women who depend on that facility.

In anticipation of their arrival, 80 advocates for women’s reproductive rights gathered in solidarity at Family Reproductive Health on July 24 to support the patients and clinic workers.

Members of groups, including the Feminist Majority Foundation, the National Organization for Women, Raleigh FIST and University of North Carolina-Charlotte Students for a Democratic Society, were there. Many of the groups also helped defend the clinic throughout the week.

Reporting from Charlotte, Cathey Stanley said she traveled to support this clinic because “Women’s reproductive rights are an indication of where we stand in society. The right to choose indicates that we are adults who are fully capable of making decisions about our bodies and lives. Taking that choice away suggests that we are like children, incapable of making such decisions about what is best for our own lives. Taking away reproductive rights takes away our autonomy as fully functional human beings.”

Mary Johnson, who lives in Charlotte, explained to these reporters that she was there because “I had a friend who didn’t believe in abortion and she had one. I’m out here so that every woman has the right to choose like her. For her, the baby wouldn’t live after birth, so I thought that it was important that she should have the right to choose. So now I’m here to defend every woman’s right to an abortion. In the past few decades, North Carolina went from having some of the most pro-woman abortion laws to limiting abortion services for women, especially minors.”

These reporters also spoke to Francisco Chavez from Mexico, who is a member of UNC-Charlotte SDS and Feminist Union at UNCC. He expressed his solidarity with women activists and said, “We need total equality through awareness, education and action with men and women. In a men-dominated society, women’s issues are connected to all issues of oppression. It’s very scary that people are so against reproductive rights. These people are attacking women seeking medical services and only contributing to the oppression of women.”

We saw that morale was high among clinic supporters as a steady crowd of people remained at Family Reproductive Health from early morning to late afternoon. We noted that although pro-choice activists had signed agreements of “non-engagement” and “non-violence,” they were ready to stand their ground if there was opposition from the right-wingers. Although we saw a few individuals walk through the pro-choice crowd or stand on the sidewalk opposite the clinic holding signs or spewing anti-choice rhetoric, the women’s rights activists far outnumbered them.

As they defended the clinic with their bodies and their signs, the pro-choice advocates spoke with one another, made contacts for future events and shared their own stories of how they came to fight for reproductive justice. The pro-choice protest at Family Reproductive Health was a successful event that fostered an environment of solidarity and continued action to promote women’s reproductive rights.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Sucessful LGBT Pride March in Moscow

The Pope, pedophilia & the class struggle

By Sara Flounders
Published Apr 25, 2010 7:31 PM

More than 150 years ago Karl Marx explained that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Patrician and plebian, lord and serf, in a word oppressor and oppressed.” The struggle is an “uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight.” With modern society come “new conditions of oppression and new forms of struggle.”

A fierce struggle has gripped the Catholic Church for the past 25 years as some of the most oppressed survivors of childhood sexual abuse have increasingly demanded an accounting against individual priests and ultimately against the powerful church hierarchy, including bishops and cardinals who consistently protected the abusers.

This demand for justice erupting from below has now done the unthinkable. It has exposed the role of the present pope, Pope Benedict XVI, in a monstrous international criminal cover-up.

Marxism is a science for understanding the class issues that underlie social developments which can seem obscure and far from the immediate workers’ struggle. The present controversy, although hidden in clerical garb, is in every way a class struggle within the Catholic Church. It is one small part of a global class struggle for full equality, rights and empowerment.

What was once accepted, because there seemed to be no recourse, has become intolerable. Thousands of the survivors raising the charges of pedophilia were loyal working class believers who were utterly powerless until years later to resist or even tell their own families of the crimes being committed. They were abused as children in orphanages, reform schools, schools for Deaf and disabled, local parish schools and churches.

This challenge from below against secrecy and repression was a sharp break from the past. Abuse had been unchallenged because religious authority was unchallenged. In many parish schools, although sexual abuse was hidden, physical and psychological abuse and humiliation were so routine that they seemed part of the curriculum.

As survivors began to speak out, any priests who sided with the abused were silenced and removed from teaching or positions of authority. But the church hierarchy, a small grouping that holds absolute religious authority, has not been able to silence or stop this movement.

Almost every exposé has come not from the outside or from secular authorities, who were fearful of offending such a powerful institution, but from presumably powerless Catholics within the church who refused to remain silent. They filed grievances, depositions and finally lawsuit after lawsuit. They called press conferences, set up websites, organized demonstrations and support groups, and leafleted Sunday services. Whether they see themselves as part of the larger struggle for rights and dignity or not, they have used many of the same tactics that countless other struggles have used.

The church hierarchy, in fighting to defend its undisputed authority, wealth and privilege, has demanded absolute silence, threatened excommunication of those raising the charges and demanded that secular officials comply. This effort to maintain the absolute authority of the priesthood is part of a larger internal struggle over whose interests this powerful religious institution should serve.

This international scandal rocking the Catholic Church now involves detailed evidence of tens of thousands of cases of child rape and sexual abuse, committed by thousands of priests. The charges span decades. The struggle erupted in its fiercest form in cities that previously had the strongest religious believers in the U.S. Next it broke out in Ireland, followed by Italy and then parts of Germany with large Catholic populations.

What is new and now receives almost daily media coverage is the evidence seeping out from every side showing the personal responsibility of the present Pope Benedict XVI in decades of suppression, cover-up and quiet reassigning of sexual predators. The strongest condemnations are coming from those who still consider themselves part of the Catholic Church.

Liberal Catholic theologian Hans Keung described Pope Benedict XVI’s role in allowing the abuse to flourish, covering it up and ordering silence: “There was not a single man in the whole Catholic Church who knew more about the sex-abuse cases than him, because it was ex officio (part of his official role). ... He can’t wag his finger at the bishops and say, you didn’t do enough. He gave the instruction himself, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and repeated it as Pope.”

The National Catholic Reporter editorialized on March 26: “The Holy Father needs to directly answer questions, in a credible forum, about his role — as archbishop of Munich (1977-82), as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1982-2005), and as pope (2005-present) — in the mismanagement of the clergy sex abuse crisis.”

Before his elevation to the top of the Catholic hierarchy in April 2005, Pope Benedict XVI was known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. His opponents referred to him as a pit bull and as “God’s rottweiler.” Ratzinger was an extremely right-wing political appointee of Pope John Paul II, who was determined to enforce discipline, conformity and church authority in an institution in the midst of a profound upheaval.

For 24 years Ratzinger headed the most powerful and historically repressive institution in the Catholic Church, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This body was known for centuries as the Holy Office of the Inquisition. It was the church institution responsible for establishing religious courts for the charging and torture of tens of thousands of people accused of witchcraft and heresy. It led the pogroms and mass expropriations of Jews and Muslims. Through this office within the church Pope John Paul II tried to install a modern-day Inquisition.

Documents expose vast cover-up

The scale of the criminal international conspiracy of silence to protect serial molesters and to put church interests ahead of child safety and well-being was fully revealed over the past year in the handling of sexual abuse in Ireland, an overwhelmingly Catholic country.

After years of demands by abuse survivors for church action and government prosecution, and a series of exposes in the Irish news media, the Irish government commissioned a study that took nine years to complete. On May 20, 2009, the commission released a 2,600-page report.

The report drew on testimony from thousands of former inmates and officials from more than 250 church-run institutions. The commission found that Catholic priests and nuns had terrorized thousands of boys and girls for decades and that government inspectors had failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation. The report characterized rape and molestation as “endemic” in Irish Catholic church-run industrial schools and orphanages. (www.childabusecommission.com/rpt/)

The scale of the abuse in Ireland and the force of the movement demanding an accounting forced Pope Benedict to issue a weak apology on behalf of the Catholic Church that blamed local Irish bishops. This abdication of all responsibility for his own well-known senior role that had insisted on silence enraged millions of sincere and believing Catholics and further inflamed an opposition that has grown inside the church for decades.

Preaching in Springfield, Mass., a long-time critic of the church cover-up, Rev. James J. Scahill, responded to the weak apology by describing some in the clergy as “felons” and calling for the resignation of Pope Benedict.

“We must personally and collectively declare that we very much doubt the veracity of the pope and those of church authority who are defending him or even falling on the sword on his behalf. It is beginning to become evident that for decades, if not centuries, church leadership covered up the abuse of children and minors to protect its institutional image and the image of priesthood,” said Scahill. (New York Times, April 12)

Scahill said he began to speak up after his own parishioners came to him in 2002 during the exposure of decades of sexual abuse in Boston and told him that something had to be done.

Cardinal Bernard Law of the Boston Archdiocese clearly played a role in protecting child-molesting priests from punishment by religious or secular authority and quietly transferring them. This became a national scandal in 2002 when a judge in Massachusetts permitted the release of thousands of pages of documents, memos and legal depositions. The documents showed a clear pattern of cover-up, protecting perpetrators and marginalizing victims, revealing that more than 1,000 children had been abused by 250 priests and church workers in the Archdiocese since 1940. Cardinal Law was forced to resign his post in disgrace and the Boston Archdiocese was ordered to pay a settlement of between $85 million and $100 million to settle 552 cases.

This multi-million-dollar settlement, growing scandals in other cities and the media coverage forced the U.S. bishops to issue a “Charter for the Protection of Children and the Young People” that declared a “zero tolerance, one strike and you are out” policy for offending priests. It did not propose any action against bishops who covered up the crimes.

Even this modest effort to develop a clean-up policy by U.S. bishops was opposed by then-Cardinal Ratzinger at the Vatican. He demanded that all abuse charges be referred to the office he headed — the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — before priests could be expelled from the priesthood. One of his first acts as Pope was to elevate Cardinal Law of Boston to a prestigious Vatican post.

In an often quoted, infamous letter sent to bishops in 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger used his position to order that sexual abuse allegations be kept secret under threat of excommunication. Priests accused of sex crimes and their victims were ordered to “observe the strictest secret” and be “restrained by perpetual silence.”

Former Vatican lawyer Father Tom Doyle denounced this top Vatican policy by saying: “What you have here is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy and to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen. When abusive priests are discovered, the response has been not to investigate and prosecute but to move them from one place to another.”

Negligence or criminal complicity?

How extensive are the sex abuse crimes committed against youth? Are the church hierarchy guilty of ignoring the problem — meaning criminal negligence? Or are they guilty of criminal complicity by refusing to take action even when crimes were brought to their direct attention?

A memo personally signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, when he headed the powerful Vatican office where all charges of abuse were centralized, was exposed this April and has aroused a new outcry. Ratzinger overrode and stopped any action against the predator priest Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy.

Reverend Murphy was accused of sexually abusing more than 200 boys at a Milwaukee School for the Deaf, despite appeals for his expulsion even from his bishop. For decades the former students had used sign language and written affidavits in meetings with bishops and secular officials to demand that Father Murphy be charged and prosecuted.

At the same time, the story broke in Italy that 67 former pupils of another school for the Deaf in Verona had accused 24 priests, brothers and religious laymen of sexually abusing them from the age of 7 years.

In Germany, more than 250 suppressed cases of abuse have surfaced in the last two months, including in districts directly overseen by Pope Benedict when he had been the bishop.

International publicity surrounding the Boston suit over sexual abuse of children and the multi-million-dollar settlement gave many other victims of abuse the courage to also speak out and seek justice. More than 4,000 priests have been accused of molesting minors in the U.S. since 1950 and the Catholic Church here has paid out more than $2 billion in settlements to victims of abuse. In 2007 the Los Angeles Archdiocese announced a $600-million settlement to about 500 plaintiffs. Six dioceses have been forced into bankruptcy and many dioceses have been forced to sell substantial church assets to pay settlements.

Many of these cases are detailed by an organization called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. SNAP describes itself as the oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims.

Not only children have been the victims of abuse. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of Jan. 4, 2003, a national survey conducted by researchers at St. Louis University was paid for, in part, by several orders of Catholic nuns. It estimated that a “minimum” of 34,000 Catholic nuns, or about 40 percent of all nuns in the United States, have suffered some form of sexual trauma.

It is important to take note that overwhelmingly the testimony, lawsuits, inquiries and exposés of sexual abuse have come from within the Catholic Church itself, from survivors of abuse. Many other ordinary, but outraged, Catholics have joined in demanding an accounting from a privileged, clerical hierarchy bent on protecting their position, authority and wealth and not on protecting children.

Throughout Europe there is a growing call to criminally prosecute Pope Benedict at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the grounds that protecting the church, not its victims, is a criminal offense. Geoffrey Robertson, U.N. Justice Council member and president of the Special Court in Sierra Leone, says he believes it is time to challenge the pope’s immunity.

In an article in the London Guardian of April 2 headlined, “Put the pope in the dock,” Robertson wrote: “Legal immunity cannot hold. The Vatican should feel the full weight of international law. Pedophilia is a crime against humanity. The anomalous claim of the Vatican to be a state — and of the pope to be a head of state and hence immune from legal action — cannot stand up to scrutiny.”

Of course, it is important to remember that the International Criminal Court has to date brought charges only against four African countries that are targeted by imperialism.

U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Israeli crimes against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians have been ignored by the ICC. A bulwark of U.S. imperialism on a global scale, it is unlikely that the Vatican will face charges any time soon.

War on global movement for justice

What role does the Vatican play in class society that is of particular value to U.S. imperialism?

While absolving, covering up and transferring thousands of priests who were guilty of child abuse, Pope Benedict XVI used his position for 25 years as head of the most powerful church institution, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to remove from parishes, schools and all positions of authority thousands of priests, bishops and religious persons who were in any way progressive or concerned with advocating for the rights and dignity of poor and oppressed people.

Dissident Catholic theologians, teachers, writers and intellectuals were prevented from writing, publishing and teaching in church institutions. Bishops who attempted to use their authority for social change were investigated for loyalty and forced to resign. They were replaced by the most politically reactionary clergy who were concerned mainly with preserving religious authority and dogma.

This was a right-wing effort to stamp out a progressive religious current known as “liberation theology,” which sought to align the church with the liberation movements and anti-colonial and revolutionary struggles sweeping Africa, Asia and Latin America and the civil rights movement in the U.S.

Priests such as Father Camilo Torres in Colombia, who wrote, spoke and organized around the effort to unite revolutionary Marxism and Catholicism, were considered a direct threat to capitalist exploitation. Father Torres joined the armed struggle against the U.S.-supported dictatorship and died in combat.

Activist nuns who led the sanctuary movement to provide assistance and safe transit to Salvadoran immigrants fleeing death squads were targeted. So were Philip and Tom Berrigan, priests who continually risked arrest and served jail time with a militant Catholic grouping opposed to the Vietnam War.

Liberation theologians, such as the charismatic Leonardo Boff of Brazil, were prohibited by the Church from speaking or writing. Priests who sought to serve the poor, like Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, were expelled from their religious order and forced to resign for the crime of “glorification of class struggle.” Bishop Samuel Ruiz of Chiapas, Mexico, was ordered to refrain from “Marxist interpretations.”

It was a witch-hunt and a purge that targeted anti-racist and social justice activists. Yet the reactionary breakaway Bishop Richard Williamson, who publicly denied the Holocaust, was welcomed back into the church.

Faced with growing opposition on every level, this powerful institution that has for centuries protected the property and privilege of the Western ruling classes increasingly chose to elevate the most fanatically reactionary forces to do battle with those urging change, opening, equality and attention to the needs of the poor and oppressed.

Under Pope John Paul II and then Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church was a staunch ally of U.S. imperialism opposing socialist construction in Eastern Europe. In turn the powerful U.S. media played an active role in promoting and giving favorable coverage to the church while demonizing Muslims and other religions of oppressed people.

In 2006 Pope Benedict gave Catholic support to the anti-Muslim propaganda that Washington had consciously enflamed in order to justify war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a major papal address he quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who said that the Prophet Muhammad had brought the world only “evil and inhuman things.”

The alliance with U.S. imperialism forced the Catholic Church to revive the most reactionary excesses of its own dark past. Members of groupings tied to death squads and military dictatorship throughout Latin America and to fascism and extreme reaction in Europe, such as the secretive Opus Dei and Legionnaires of Christ, were promoted to top offices in the Vatican and around the world.

Two fascist clerics, Josemaria Escrivá, who sided with Hitler during World War II and organized fascist gangs to hunt down communists and revolutionary trade unionists in Franco’s Spain, and Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac of Croatia, who helped establish extermination camps for Jews, Serbs and Roma people, were proposed for sainthood.

It is not a contradiction that priests who abused children were protected and hidden while those religious forces who sought to defend the rights of the oppressed and ally with their movements were forced to resign. Leniency to criminal thugs and harsh repression of progressives are two sides of the same class policy of defending the authority of the established hierarchy. The same approach played out on every social issue.

Repressive view of all sexuality

From the Roman slave state to European feudal society and then as a major instrument of imperialist conquest, this is a religious institution rooted in class society and patriarchy. This patriarchal heritage is the basis of its repressive views toward all forms of human sexual expression. Gay or straight, married or unmarried, the Catholic Church asserted the right to legislate to society as a whole all forms of human sexual expression.

While taking no action against sexual predators because this threatened the authority and sanctity of the priesthood, Ratzinger was the leading enforcer of archaic religious doctrines on sexuality and the subordinate role of women in the church and in society as a whole. No liberalization on issues of birth control, abortion, divorce or recognition of homosexuality was allowed. Within the church these rules were enforced through focus on sin and guilt. Gay Catholics, Catholics who remarried, practiced birth control or had an abortion were denied the sacraments, barred from the church or excommunicated.

The full weight of Church institutions with large amounts of funding and political leverage were aggressively used in secular society to oppose liberalization of divorce laws and a woman’s right to birth control and to abortion. The Catholic Church organized and funded political campaigns against same-sex marriage and adoption of children by gay couples. But while proclaiming their religious duty to protect the “unborn child,” they refused to protect children directly under their control.

As the storm of protest over the attacks on children under their care grew, this reactionary grouping tried to turn its criminal cover-up into a struggle against gay people by linking pedophilia, meaning sexual abuse of young children, with homosexuality between consenting adults.

On April 14, Pope Benedict’s top appointee, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, blamed pedophilia on homosexuality, which he called “a pathology.” Pope Benedict in a well-known letter to bishops in 1986 described homosexuality as an “intrinsic moral evil.” He went so far as to justify and even encourage violent attacks on gay people by stating that “neither the church or society should be surprised if irrational and violent reactions increase” when gay people demand civil rights.

These crimes against all movements of oppressed peoples must be included in the anger directed at the church hierarchy.

The years of repression, witch-hunts and organized bigotry have given the Catholic hierarchy less and less a basis of support. They are more out of touch with their own congregation and totally out of touch with the values of society as a whole.

Despite every effort, they cannot go back to their absolute hold of 500 or even 100 years ago, when priests and bishops did not have to account for crimes against women or against slaves, serfs, peasants or illiterate workers.

Carefully crafted apologies that accept no blame and scripted public relations meetings with a few selected abuse survivors will not solve the crisis facing the reactionary leadership of the church.

Today those who have suffered abuse have found their voice and have found allies.

The writer attended/survived 14 years in Catholic schools.

Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

American Recently Deported From the DPRK, TELLS THE TRUTH!!!!!

FROM: The Proletarian

What is especially interesting to note is that since the DPRK magnanimously released Robert Park, a Korean American who illegally entered the DPRK carrying printed materials demanding that Kim Jong Il step down from power and be put on trial for war crimes, he has not retracted this statement. Nor, it would appear, has he made any statements against the DPRK, despite, we can be quite sure, very considerable pressure to do so, and much to the embarrassment of such anti-communist bodies as Christian Solidarity Worldwide, who noisily campaigned for his release.

American national Robert Park was detained for trespassing on the northern border of the DPRK in December last year.

He was interviewed by KCNA at his proposal while he was under investigation by the relevant organ of the DPRK.

During the interview, he said that he was taken in by the false rumour spread by the West and committed a criminal act in the end.

He went on to say:

“I trespassed on the border owing to a wrong understanding of the DPRK. This was caused by the West’s false propaganda.

“The West is massively feeding Children of the Secret State, Seoul Train and other documentary videos with stories about non-existent ‘human rights abuses’ and ‘mass killings’ in the DPRK, along with stories of the ‘unbearable sufferings’ of Korean christians and the like.

“This false propaganda led me, a christian, to entertain a biased view of the DPRK.

“I didn’t know what to do at that time, so I just prayed and fasted. That was my initial response, but, year by year, more news reports and international media reports came and there were more videos saying the same thing. In fact, they were saying that it was getting worse, and so that’s why I started to become more and more distraught.

“I thought that if there are people in concentration camps, if christians are dying like this, if there is starvation, I have to die with them. If I help them, I would go to heaven but if I don’t help them, I would go to hell.

“At last, I made up my mind to go to the DPRK.

“Upon trespassing on the border, I thought I would be either shot to death by soldiers or thrown behind bars. However, the moment I crossed the border, the attitude of soldiers toward the trespasser made me change my mind about the false propaganda I had believed.

“Not only service personnel, but all those I met in the DPRK treated me in a kind and gentlemanly manner and protected my rights.

“People have been incredibly kind and generous here to me, very concerned for my physical health as never before in my life. I mean, my family, of course, is concerned about my physical health, but people here have been constantly concerned, and I’m very thankful for their love.

“Another shocking fact I experienced during my stay in the DPRK is that religious freedom is fully ensured in the DPRK, a reality different from what is claimed by the West.

“Being a devout christian, I thought such things as praying are unimaginable in the DPRK due to the suppression of religion.

“I gradually became aware, however, that I was wrong.

“People neither regarded praying as something unusual nor disturbed it. I was provided with conditions for praying every day as I wished.

“What astonished me more was that a bible was returned to me.

“This fact alone convinced me that religious freedom is fully ensured in the DPRK.

“I came to have stronger belief as I had an opportunity to attend the service in the Pongsu Church in Pyongyang.

“I worshipped and there, there was the preacher, there was a pastor, there was a choir, they knew the hymns, they knew the word of God. That’s why I was completely amazed. I began to weep and weep in the christian service, because I learned that there are churches and christians such as Pongsu Kyohoe (church) in different cities and regions all throughout the DPRK. They worship, pray and preach freely the word of the Bible and Christ’s word.

“What I have seen and heard in the DPRK convinced me that I misunderstood it. So I seriously repented of the wrong I committed, taken in by the West’s false propaganda.

“I would not have committed such a crime if I had known that the DPRK respects the rights of all the people and guarantees their freedom, and that they enjoy a happy and stable life.

“I have felt shock, embarrassment, shame. Here, I’m in the land where people respect human rights, and, not just respecting human rights, they have actually loved me and showed me more than just human rights. They have shown me grace.

“I repent and ask for forgiveness to the DPRK for my misunderstanding of the country’s reality and my criminal illegal behaviour. Had I known the reality of the DPRK, what I’ve learned here, what I have been shown here, what I’ve been taught here, what I’ve been informed by all the kind people here about the DPRK, I would have never done what I did on 25 December and I repent and I’m very sorry.”

Finally, he, as a Christian, expressed his will to earnestly pray so that reunification may be achieved and peace settle on the Korean Peninsula as early as possible.

"Science and Change" by Hillel Cohen

A well written text on Marxist-Leninist philosophy, dialectical materialism, etc. To read/print Click Here.

Video: Speech to Baldwin-Wallace Atheist Humanist Agnostics

Ohio students sit-in LGBT rights

By Caleb T. Maupin
Cleveland
Published Feb 18, 2010 10:02 PM

John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio, was recently the site of a protest for lesbian/gay/bisexual and transgender rights. The university was founded in 1886 as St. Ignatius College by members of the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic order commonly known as “Jesuits.”

The Jesuits are sometimes referred to as “God’s marines” due to their role in helping in the conquest of Native peoples. In addition to the thousands of soldiers and slave traders who traveled the world enslaving Indigenous people for the colonial empires of Europe, this religious order went along as well. The Jesuits reinforced the oppression of Indigenous peoples, often with forced conversions to Roman Catholicism and brutal repression of Native religions and practices.

The Jesuits also took part in the brutal “counterreformation” movement in Europe, where moves away from feudalism, absolute monarchy and Catholic theocracy were put down with violence and torture.

John Carroll University is run by this archaic religious order, though it is also a center of leftist activity, including struggles against repression in Latin America, illiteracy in the U.S. and for health care reform.

There was anger among the students when university president Robert L. Neihoff declared that “traditional Catholic moral teaching properly locates sexual activity within the relationship of a man and a woman united for life through marriage as husband and wife.” This explicitly anti-LGBT language was released as a supplement to the university’s nondiscrimination policy.

In addition to making this condemnation of LGBT people, the statement offered no protection for the LGBT community in its discrimination policy. In October 2008 the faculty voted “very strongly” to change the policy to include LGBT persons. The college defended the exclusion. Vice President Jonathan Smith said the university “strives to achieve a much higher standard based upon its Jesuit and Catholic mission and teachings.” (cleveland.com, Feb. 13)

On Feb. 4, 15 students took action. As half time of a basketball game between John Carroll and its historical rival Mount Union College was about to end, the students walked onto the court. They sat down at midcourt, waving rainbow LGBT liberation flags and holding signs demanding protection of the LGBT community from discrimination.

When confronted by college officials, the students defiantly held their ground until finally being removed gradually by the police. The response of the crowd was mixed as some booed, yet others cheered in support of the students’ civil disobedience. Video of the protest has circulated on the Internet, drumming up more support for the students.

In response, the administration met the following week with over 200 faculty and students who oppose the bigoted language of the president and the lack of protection for LGBT students. Many are hopeful that the policy will finally be changed as a result of the students’ action.

Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Elizabeth Trisler: "How Dare I Not Be Given An Award By The Government For My Ability To Preach A Specific Political Viewpoint!"

WTF?

Elizabeth Trisler wins a contest for Anti-Choice speeches. For some bizarre reasons she's going to be given an award in the OHIO STATE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. (????!!!!)

But now, she is persecuted because she can't get an award from the Government of the State of Ohio for it. See the below clip.

I think I am going to start a "Communist Speech Contest." If the Ohio House of Representatives does not allow me to give the award ceremony on the floor while the house is in session, I will cry persecution, loudly, demanding that the government endorse my views by letting the winner of a Pro-Communist contest speak in a government building, during a session of a governing body.

If I am denied this, will I get to go on FOX News and whine about it how persecuted Communists are for not being endorsed by the State Government? I sure hope so. That looks like a lot of fun.

You see "persecution" to a right-winger is defined as "not being universally endorsed and blindly praised by absolutely everyone", and also "being challenged with a different viewpoint."

Christian kids are persecuted if there is no openly endorsed school prayers.

Republican kids are persecuted if their teacher presents them with the reality of Global Warming.

Fundamentalist Christian kids are persecuted, if they are made aware of the fact that the theory of evolution exists and is accepted.

However, the 1940 Smith Act or the Communist Control Act, which set up REAL FEMA CAMPS for Communists, and JAILED PEOPLE FOR THEIR POLITICAL VIEWS, are just "functioning democracy."

What is wrong with this world?

How come every time I've been confronted by views I disagree with, or better yet, not been openly endorsed by a government body I don't get a national TV audience to listen, and the sympathy of Steve Doocy.

Am I really a fool to think Communists are persecuted under capitalism? Am I really a fool to think that the super-rich control the media?

Has Glenn Beck Ever Read The Book of Matthew?

Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.


Matthew 10: 34-39

If calling on children to question their parents was immoral, why did Jesus do it?

Isn't Glenn Beck an ultra-christian and born again Mormon?

Sen. Scott Brown, in the pocket rightists, bankers

By Fred Goldstein

Published Feb 7, 2010 8:09 PM
The Democratic Party suffered a severe political setback in Massachusetts with the loss of the U.S. Senate seat, held by Ted Kennedy for almost 50 years, to Scott Brown. A stealth right-wing politician, Brown rode around the state in a pickup truck claiming to be an independent and “man of the people.”

Right now Brown is playing things soft and cagey, not wanting to sound like a right-wing ideologue. He distanced himself from the Tea Party movement on Barbara Walters’ ABC-TV show on Jan 31.

But whatever Brown’s politics turn out to be in Washington, in Massachusetts he was supported by a combination of right-wing groups and big banks and financial institutions. Brown climbed to victory on their funding and on the confusion and disillusionment of the population over the failure of the Obama administration to come to their aid in a time of economic crisis.

The combined efforts of such right-wing organizations as FreedomWorks (an umbrella group for the Tea Party amalgam of racist riffraff), the American Liberty Alliance and Redstate.com helped secure his victory. (nytimes.com, Jan. 21)

These groups were the organizers of the “town hall” meetings and Tax Day protests in which a conglomeration of various right-wing forces poured out racist slurs, anti-communist slogans and anti-immigrant agitation directed against President Barack Obama. Tea Party forces were on the ground in Massachusetts and funds flowed into Brown’s campaign over the Internet from their networks.

As for being a man of the people, in reality Brown was more like a man of the banking elite. He received close to $450,000 from the financial industry in the last week of the campaign, according to the Boston Globe online. (boston.com, Feb. 1)

In the Massachusetts race, Brown received about $442,000 from Jan. 11-16, while Martha Coakley, his Democratic opponent, got $92,000 from financial industry workers during the same period.

“Nearly 80 percent of the money Brown got from financial workers came from outside of Massachusetts, in places with a concentration of financial firms, such as New York City, Greenwich, Conn., Chicago, and San Francisco. In addition to financial giants such as Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, the donors included executives from hedge funds and private equity firms.”

Workers should take careful note of the fact that in the Massachusetts election there was a convergence of interests and efforts between the extreme right wing and a section of big business that ranks high up in the ruling class.

It was the health care industry, particularly the insurance companies, that funneled money into FreedomWorks and the town hall attacks on Obama. And it was the oil companies, coal companies, utilities and other sections of big business that used FreedomWorks and its town hall model to organize so-called “grassroots” meetings around the country to agitate for legislation that would prevent the Obama administration from agreeing to reduce carbon emissions at the world meeting on climate change in Copenhagen.

In those cases, industries funneled money directly to the ultraright. In Massachusetts, the bankers and hedge funds gave directly to Brown. It is an example of an objective collaboration in which the right wing comes out stronger.

These reactionary forces were able to triumph because there was no alternative for the population other than the bankrupt program of the Obama administration. Under the Democratic Party leadership, Washington has shoveled money at the bankers, let them take huge bonuses and profits, made backroom deals with insurance and pharmaceutical companies, escalated the war in Afghanistan and failed to come up with any serious program to create jobs.

Coakley, who failed to campaign in the oppressed communities of Boston, was no alternative. She campaigned on the Obama program and represented the imperialist, pro-capitalist interests of the ruling class, just as Ted Kennedy had for two generations.

This is a clear message that organizations struggling to mitigate the different parts of the crisis facing the workers and oppressed — demanding jobs; fighting foreclosures; for food, education, health care; stopping the war, the death penalty and police brutality — must come together and give a genuine alternative. Only by building unity in struggle and putting forth a working-class, anti-capitalist political program can the right wing be beaten back and the economic crisis dealt with at the same time.


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