"U.S. Out Of The Philippines!" Mic Check in NY Consulate

From: Asian Journal

NEW YORK -- As the formal resumption of joint military exercises between the US and Philippine governments known as Balikatan commenced last Monday in the Philippines, members of BAYAN USA, the International League of Peoples Struggle (ILPS) and the International Action Center (IAC) staged a surprise protest action inside the lobby of the Philippine Consulate in New York City to condemn US military buildup in the Philippines and demand the junking of the US-RP Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).

The action was part of a larger call from BAYAN USA for similar actions across the US and an international call from ILPS, a global anti-imperialist formation with members in over 40 countries. On the same day, nationwide protests in the Philippines against the joint war games were spearheaded by BAYAN Philippines.

Protesters practiced the "people's mic" to condemn the Aquino regime's welcoming of greater US military intervention over territorial disputes in the South China Sea between the Philippines, China, and other neighboring countries. The stated the Balikatan exercises as supported by unequal military agreements such as the VFA play to the intention of the US government to provoke military aggression against China.

"We denounce all foreign intervention our country, whether China or the US. It puts our country in unnecessary danger of being caught in the crossfire between China and the US," stated the protesters in the lobby led by Yves Nibungco of Filipino youth group Anakbayan New York/New Jersey. "These military exercises are a provocation for war," the protesters also declared.

Consulate officials were unsuccessful in their attempts to silence the protesters and force them to exit the building.

"As a US citizen, I don't want my tax dollars to murder Filipino people. US out of the Philippines!" stated Caleb Maupin of the International Action Center national office in New York City, who also participated in the surprise action inside the Consulate.

The action was preceded a day before by a community teach-in on the history of US military presence in the Philippines, it effects on the Filipino people, and current implications of the 28th Balikatan exercises in the Philippines in line with the Obama administration's declaration of a so-called "rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region" in its new US defense strategy.

But a infographic recently released by research think tank IBON Foundation illustrates the US military pivot to the region as early as 2001, when the Bush administration declared the Philippines as the so-called "Second Front to the War on Terror". The infographic also challenges claims by both the US and Philippine governments that continuing US military presence in the Philippines under the US-RP Visiting Forces Agreement is temporary and respectful of Philippine national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

(BAYAN-USA)

Óró Sé do Bheatha 'Bhaile - Irish Anti-Imperialist Anthem From 1740s

English Translation:

Oh-ro You're welcome home,
Oh-ro You're welcome home,
Oh-ro You're welcome home...
Now that summer's coming!

Welcome oh woman who was so afflicted,
It was our ruin that you were in bondage,
Our fine land in the possession of thieves...
And you sold to the foreigners!

Chorus

Gráinne O'Malley is coming over the sea,
Armed warriors along with her as her guard,
They are Gaels, not French nor Spanish...
And they will rout the foreigners!

Chorus

May it please the King of Miracles that we might see,
Although we may live for a week once after,
Gráinne Mhaol and a thousand warriors...
Dispersing the foreigners!

The spirit of Kim Il Sung lives on

By Deirdre Griswold
Published Apr 11, 2012 8:46 PM

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is preparing to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, an amazing revolutionary who for more than 60 years led the Korean people’s struggle against imperialist domination.

His life began in April 1912, shortly after Japan had formally annexed Korea as its colony. His political development included years of anti-colonial struggle and the building of an anti-imperialist armed guerrilla force that finally achieved liberation of the north in 1945.

Kim Il Sung had to reorient the struggle after the defeat of Japan, when the United States sent troops to occupy the southern half of Korea and tried to roll back the socialist revolution in the north. The Korean people knew from direct and bitter experience what Japanese colonial rule had meant. But they were to discover that U.S. imperialism was just as brutal and just as intent on controlling and exploiting Korea, albeit under the name of “democracy.”

We cannot do justice in one small article to all that Kim Il Sung accomplished for the Korean struggle and the world movement for socialism. In this piece, we will focus on why Kim became a communist, as explained in his autobiographical series of books entitled “Reminiscences with the Century.” (Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang)

Kim came from a family of poor farmers who sacrificed much to give their children an education. His family was proud of having fought foreign aggressors: “When the U.S. imperialist aggressors’ ship General Sherman sailed up the River Taedong and anchored at Turu Islet, my great-grandfather, together with some other villagers, collected ropes from all the houses and stretched them across the river ... to block the way of the pirate ship.” The ship opened fire on the people of Pyongyang, but the villagers set it ablaze and it sank with all hands aboard. This struggle in 1866 resonated in the Kim family for generations.

Kim Il Sung described his father, who died at the early age of 31, as “a pioneer of our country’s national liberation movement.” His father was an early organizer for the Korean National Association, which was building resistance to the “living hell” created by Japanese imperialism. One of Kim’s first political memories was, at the age of six, visiting his father in a Japanese-run prison. The next year, during an uprising for independence, he saw for the first time the killing of a Korean by troops of the colonial regime.

In this period, many Korean patriots fled to China and Siberia, where there were large Korean communities. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, “when the combined forces of imperialism and the internal enemy who followed their dictates pounced upon the Soviet Union ... thousands of Korean young people gave their blood and lives with arms in hand either in the guerrilla ranks or in the Red Army in order to defend the socialist system,” Kim wrote.

Inspired by the proletarian revolution

This revolution of the workers and peasants in Russia inspired the anti-imperialist movement in neighboring Korea. Kim remembered his father explaining his idea of the proletarian revolution “as the building of a new society which would provide rice to those who had no food and ... clothes to those who had no clothing ... [and thus] he awakened the workers, peasants and other working masses to a progressive idea and united them into one revolutionary force.”

The Korean Communist Party had been founded in 1925 but “ended its existence as an organized force in 1928 owing to the cruel suppression on the part of the Japanese imperialists and the factional strife in its highest circles,” Kim wrote.

While still in his teens, Kim Il Sung became immersed in the political debates roiling the Korean exile community in Manchuria, a province of China. The Korean nationalist movement and the communist movement often were in struggle with each other, and Kim looked for ways to bring the best of them together.

The Korean revolutionaries in China also had to respect the fact that they were in another country and had important relations with the Chinese Communist Party, which itself suffered big setbacks in 1927.

Different groups of communists vied for recognition from the Comintern, based in Moscow, which dissolved the Korean Communist Party in 1928. It was in this period that Kim began developing the view that later became known as “Juche,” or self-reliance. Of his group of young revolutionaries, he wrote, “We came to the conclusion that it would be impossible to found a revolutionary party by rebuilding the party that had been dissolved or by relying on the existing generation that was infected with the vicious habit of factional strife.”

Rather than being discouraged by these problems, the new generation of revolutionaries in 1930 formed the Society for Rallying Comrades, in which “the communists from among the new generation overcame the mistakes made by the communists of the preceding generations and pioneered a new way of winning over the masses and employing the art of leadership. The heroic fighting spirit and the revolutionary fighting traits displayed by the communists of the new generation became the motive force enabling us to defeat the Japanese imperialist aggressors.”

The leadership of the DPRK today is imbued with this spirit of resistance to foreign domination and reliance on the masses of people to build a socialist society. It is this spirit that has enabled the Korean Revolution to endure despite a century of Japanese and later U.S. imperialist aggression.

When Outrage Can Lead To Rebellion

By Larry Holmes
Published Apr 11, 2012 9:27 PM

Based on a presentation at a Workers World Party forum in New York
on April 6.

Why do some atrocities get a bigger mass response than others?

Hurricane Katrina got some reaction, but not what might be expected from such a devastating event. James Byrd was dragged to his death in Texas. Oscar Grant was killed in the BART transit system in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sean Bell was gunned down in his car in Queens, N.Y. These outrages drew mostly local reactions.

Compare these to the tremendous response that Trayvon Martin’s killing has aroused. Not only in Sanford, Fla., but in New York City, Atlanta, Detroit and Los Angeles where thousands came out in protest and in Baltimore where thousands took City Hall. Thousands mobilized wearing hoodies.

Young people see this murder as something they want to identify with. Even professional sports teams were doing it. Former Black Panther Bobby Rush, now in Congress, spoke wearing a hoodie and had to be dragged out of Congress by racists. What accounts for the strong reaction?

Maybe it was because there was no arrest. Even the ruling-class media have brought that up.

Maybe it’s because it was so familiar to millions of Black and Brown people, especially to young people. No person of color has grown up in this country and has not been profiled at one time or another. They feel lucky if it’s one of the less lethal. but still humiliating forms of profiling.

Someone asking, “Are you lost?” when you’re walking in the “wrong” neighborhood. Or “How can I help you?” repeatedly, as you’re just looking in a store.

But is there something deeper that’s provoking the reaction? It was a young African-American journalist, chief editor of Politic365 website, Krystal High, who is often invited on CNN and MSNBC panels, who said of Martin, “People say, hey, he is our Arab Spring,” meaning that the case — the outrage — is a “call to action” for the African-American community.

A lot is at issue now as we approach April 10. This will be a massive national day demanding justice. In New York there are two days of demonstrations in Union Square on Monday, April 9, and Tuesday, April 10. Martin’s family will be there Monday. We have lots of responsibility on Tuesday.

Will the grand jury be convened? If not, will the special prosecutor do something? If there is no arrest, what will be the mass reaction? Might it be a rebellion?

I think we have to be ready for that. It should be uppermost in our minds to be ready to explain, defend and help such a rebellion, should it occur.

In Tunisia a young worker, a street merchant, set himself on fire. That was the catalyst that evoked something deeper, that provoked millions to rise up and then the movement to spread throughout the region. That’s what the Arab Spring means to me.

It happened in Britain last August. A London cop killed a person of color, with roots in the West Indies. A rebellion started in London and spread. Outrage started it, but austerity drove the rebellion.

Unemployment is the big issue

What are the issues for working class youth like Trayvon Martin? They are 45-50 million strong. Many young workers, from their teens to their 30s, are unemployed.

There is a war against Black and Brown youth. What is that war? In many cities, more youth are in jail than holding a job. The drug laws, like the Rockefeller law in New York state, have created an assembly line sending people of color to jail.

They face austerity and are deprived of education. The problem is systematic. The big issue is devastating hyper, depression-level unemployment. Officially it’s maybe 30 percent, but it’s more like 40-70 percent really. Few jobs exist, and most that do are low-paying — jobs with no future.

Unemployment has been around a long time, but no one has been able to make it the big issue. Those benefiting from the capitalist system don’t want it to be an issue because unemployment can’t be solved under capitalism. Capitalism can’t solve it.

The rulers have written off this section of the working class. They are closing schools and eliminating housing. Capitalism can’t create a basis for exploiting large sections of the working class, so it has condemned them to social and political death.

What’s the question now? How does a section of our class, condemned to social death, fight back? Do they rise up and say “I demand”?

History of struggle

Black people in the United States have a history of hundreds of years of struggle. Ever since the first enslaved people were brought here, they fought back. The struggle against national oppression is constant, deep, but the rulers try to ignore the day-by-day resistance. It needs a rebellion to be noticed.

The Civil Rights movement had an impact because the ruling class was forced to try to buy time by making concessions. Some 45 years ago, it took the 1964 rebellions in Harlem, the 1965 rebellion in Watts in Los Angeles, the big ones in 1967 in Newark and Detroit, and in more than 100 cities in 1968 after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered to shake up the capitalist ruling class to do something.

Even though underlying the rebellions were bad housing, unemployment and systemic racism, police violence was the catalyst. Repression opened it up, but other things were at the roots of the struggle.

In 2006, the immigrants had their spring. They rose up and held the biggest general strike in 100 years on May Day.

Black and Brown youth are facing not exactly the same conditions, but there are similarities in how extreme the crisis is. Though a generalized rebellion is not guaranteed, we should at least plan a contingency for a big struggle, so we are not taken by surprise.

A cry for revolutionary optimism

If it is an Arab spring — that is, a generalized rebellion of the oppressed — it would be great for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Those activists are in motion, and the Black struggle would push OWS in the direction of solidarity with the oppressed.

Don’t think it was a coincidence that Trayvon Martin’s family went to Union Square, where OWS had relocated, and why they’re going back there on April 9, where many forces are involved.

I differ with those who say OWS is going away. There’s a difference now from the conditions during the Vietnam War when many white activists were propelled into struggle. Then, when the war ended, most went back to their normal lives and back into the system.

Now that option is no longer promised, even for white youth. It doesn’t matter how savvy they are, the jobs aren’t there. A little while ago they thought they had a future; now they are shocked that it has vanished. The knowledge they have, their education, their savvy — they can only use them for resistance and rebellion.

We know the Arab Spring is filled with contradictions. The imperialists took advantage of the opening to overthrow the government of Libya and are now intervening against Syria. When we talk of the good part of the Arab Spring, of OWS, of the outraged activists in Spain, we mean how they connected Tahrir Square in Cairo to Plaza del Sol in Madrid and to Union Square and Zuccotti Park in New York.

The deepening of the capitalist crisis on a world scale has opened up the possibility of struggle on a world scale. Of course, as revolutionaries, we have to be optimistic. The global capitalist crisis has created conditions for all the forces in the working class to be pushed together in solidarity.

We need to understand that and imagine a synthesis of forces that can come together. Otherwise we base ourselves on experiences where this didn’t happen.

We look at the objective process moving the forces. With all the pitfalls of organizing, the ups and downs, the conditions won’t go away. We hope they will push forward solidarity and unity in ideology against imperialism.

There is too much at stake to be stuck in old habits. The crisis is pushing us together. This is not clear to all, but it has to be clear to us.

Even if it’s a false start, even if there is an outside chance it will develop into a sustained rebellion, we have to respond as revolutionaries to help it go as far as it can.

Holmes is First Secretary of Workers World Party’s National Secretariat.

32 County Soveirgnty Movement Commemorates Easter Rising

2012 Easter Statement of 32 County Sovereignty Movement

From: 32 CSM Fermanagh


The 32CSM would like to thank all of you for attending and all who travelled from near and far to be here. We send solidarity greetings to fellow Republicans and to all those who struggle against oppression and Imperialism. We would also like to pay special tribute to our honorary National Secretary Marian Price who may be absent here today, interned in a British cell but who is always in our thoughts.

It has been nearly 100 years since the Irish Volunteers and their comrades in the Irish Citizens Army marched out in unison to declare a Republic and to defend it through any means necessary. We are here today to remember their sacrifice and the sacrifice of all those who died struggling to realize that aim.

The past 100 years have seen many changes, however the underlying political problems which motivated the men who marched out that April morning remain. The twin presence of imperialism and capitalism continue to cast a long shadow over the lives of the Irish people. Republicans stand here today continuing to defy those who demand submission.

The past year has highlighted the extent to which the six county state remains an outpost of British oppression. We have seen the continuing harassment of Republican families, the return of the supergrass system, internment and the inhumane treatment of Republican prisoners in British jails. The targeting of our families has shown up the PSNI as the inheritors of the RUC’s shameful legacy.

Children are being brought into a political conflict, not through the actions of Republicans but by the trauma they have suffered at the hands of the PSNI. The searching of children as young as five and six has been admitted as a regular occurrence by this police force that we are expected to embrace as one which is here to defend our community. The actions of the PSNI have not only resulted in a new generation rejecting their presence it has also shown that no British force in Ireland will ever be utilized for anything other than to repress dissent.

The 32CSM challenges those who defend these servants of the crown, to explain what Republican argument exists that defends the right of the PSNI to traumatise children and harass activists promoting the Republican political message.
The return of supergrass trials is a timely reminder that little has changed in the six counties. Old tactics are being revived despite being totally discredited and contrary to the very notion of due process. Although these efforts have so far been aimed at Loyalists it is obvious that should they prove useful they will then be utilized against Republicans. The 32CSM stands resolutely against this system of paid perjury.

As in the case of Marian Price the British government have already proved that should there be no case to answer in court then they will dispense with the judicial process. Internment is alive in 2012 and its victims are filling the wings of Maghaberry prison. Marian has been interned now for the best part of a year in isolation for her political opposition to the Stormont regime.
She was intended to serve as an example by the British, a warning to all who dare challenge their right to rule in Ireland. Instead Marian stands today as an inspiration to all who refuse to bend the knee in the face of oppression. The 32CSM will continue to rally around Marian and we urge all Republicans to do likewise. We also send greetings to the prisoners on protest in Maghaberry. They have shown that in the words of Volunteer Bobby Sands “They have nothing in their whole imperialist arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who refuses to be broken”

The prisoners in Maghaberry are standing by the Republican position. This is the same position that the 32CSM has always stood by, that the Republican struggle is a legitimate political one whose adherents will not be criminalised. The 32CSM has since our inception put forward a consistent and logical political argument. We believe that the fundamental source of conflict in Ireland remains the violation of Irish Sovereignty through the occupation of the six counties. As such all our actions, positions and future endeavours are underpinned by the reality of the occupation.

In the past two years there has been a clamour of numerous individuals, religious figures and political personalities rushing to call for Republicans to engage in dialogue. They have presented Republicans as unwilling to talk or as criminals devoid of any political argument. This is a distortion of history and an attempt to mask their true intentions. The 32CSM has sent our policy positions which are publicly available to all political parties In Ireland. No one can claim that we have failed to make public our position. Those seeking to engage in dialogue with Republicans have given no basis for which such talks should take place. This is because they have no intention of addressing the core issues of the conflict.

The narrative that is being peddled by the establishment is one of Republican violence and refusal to engage politically with the Stormont regime. Republicans however have consistently pointed to the British presence as the source of conflict. The only legitimate basis for engaging in discussion is to talk about the removal of the occupation. Other secondary issues can then be engaged with as outlined in our policy.

Today we say to the British government, their allies in Stormont and those calling for dialogue, the IRA are not the source of conflict, they are a response to an illegal occupying force. The suppression of republican political activists by the state is no accident. They seek to undermine the political nature of Republicanism. They fear our argument not only because it is consistent but because there is no way to accommodate it within the occupation. Republicans cannot and will not engage with the institutions of partition and those who do have no right to claim the label Republicans.

We are fast approaching the centenary of the Easter Rising; however next year will mark 100 years since the 1913 strike and lockout. In 1913 it was Irish capitalists supported by the British government supressing the working class. Capitalist oppression has no limitations of nationality. These coming years should be a time for Republicans to reflect on the social struggle and its intertwining with the goal of national liberation.
Irish Republicans have not always given the social struggle its proper place within the wider movement. This has been to the detriment of our cause and has seen us too willing to make compromises which have betrayed the working class from which we draw our support. The 32CSM has committed itself to the establishment of a sovereign Republic. We accept the analysis of James Connolly, that without the twin destruction of Capitalism and Imperialism in Ireland then there can never be true freedom.

The inescapable conclusion for all Republicans must be that just as Imperialism is politically bankrupt so is Capitalism morally bankrupt. We do not believe that replacing the union jack with a tricolour will be a sufficient resolution for the ordinary people of Ireland. We also recognize the reformist and anti-revolutionary nature of constitutional nationalism. They will wrap themselves with the green flag whilst enacting Tory and IMF cuts. Whilst we recognize the integral role of the class struggle in National liberation we lament the failure of the broader socialist movement to recognize that without the removal of British occupation there will be no defeat of Capitalism.

The 32CSM understands that these are not easy times to be a Republican. We firmly believe that we have a solid framework available that provides for a New and better society in Ireland. We have placed ourselves at the heart of our communities to better defend their interests. We feel that increasingly republicans are faced with the option of doing what is right or doing what is easy. The unavoidable conclusion to reach when looking at former comrades in Stormont is that there is simply no constitutional path to a United Ireland.

In the coming months we will be expanding upon our social program and we ask all 32CSM activists and supporters to give their input into this effort. We salute the continued resistance efforts by the volunteers of the IRA, their courage and resilience in the face of such odds stands as an example to all Republicans. We urge all of you to go from here today and to continue your activism on the streets and in our communities. We will continue to grow and our message will continue to serve as an opposition to those who urge conformity instead of resistance, subservience instead of revolution and slavery instead of freedom. Onwards to a Sovereign Republic

Beir Bua

Larry Holmes: "Trayvon Martin, An Arab Spring for Black Youth?"

"We Get Confused When The Law Changes Every Day!"

Read entire article here:
Gothamist: "Union Square: The Very Model of a Modern Police State





"Ask yourselves," one young protester implored a cluster of stoic young officers, "Why are you here? There have been fights and drugs here in Union Square forever. It's never been shut down. But as soon as someone wants to stand up for a political cause there are tons of cops here." Another activist, Caleb Maupin, told us, "They make up the laws as they go along here. One night they say we can't have cardboard. Another night we can. Tonight there's fewer people here so they push us all the way off the sidewalk. But I've seen much worse than this tonight."

NO ONE KNOWS WHERE! OWS and the Role of Communists

A Response to Jay Rothermel

The truest brilliance of Marxism-Leninism is not its analysis. Prior to both Marx and Lenin, an understanding of one class owning the means of production, and the other class selling their labor, existed.

Marxism-Leninism puts this understanding into a historical context, giving it a direction, understanding the laws of historical development, and how one of these classes can triumph over the other.

Spontaneity and Revolution

Leninism, specifically, is the development of the strategy and methods of achieving this goal. The brilliance of Leninism, is that it clarifies the Marxist concept of “historical inevitability.” Leninism lays forward the understanding that workers will not simply awaken one day, magically moved by material conditions to rise up and overthrow the capitalist system.

Rather, Marxist-Leninists understand that a disciplined vanguard party, made of the most advanced elements of the working class, must push the rest of their class forward, providing the leadership needed to overthrow capitalism.

Lenin pointed out that “spontaneity” cannot create a revolution. Workers will, in certain instances, develop “spontaneous uprisings.” They will confront their oppressors, but in doing so they will lack any clear understanding of who is oppressing them and why. This basic hostility, left to its own devices, without any clear leadership, will only lead to “trade union consciousness.” Only a revolutionary party can elevate it to a higher, revolutionary consciousness.

So, with this understanding, the approach to OWS currently being utilized by myself and Workers World Party, and criticized so harshly by Jay Rothermel’s Marxist Update, The Militant, Worker's Vanguard, and other Marxist publications, is correct.

Occupy Wall Street is a textbook example of spontaneity. Youth, primarily the children of the former Labor Aristrocracy and the Petty Bourgeoisie, have poured into the streets. They say “We are the 99%.” They denounce corporations and bankers in the most elementary form of pre-class consciousness ever.

Their only unifying message is “the people with all the money are screwing us over.” This is not incorrect, of course, but it is, as Marxists know, just the tip of the iceberg.



With “we are the 99%” as their rallying cry, they do battle with the New York City Police Department on a Semi-Daily basis. They seize pieces of capitalist property. They shake society. They capture the imagination of millions of working class people, who share their basic, pre-class conscious sentiments.

This is spontaneity.

The job of vanguard party, is thus, to intervene. It must support this struggle, and in the process, attempt to purify and cement its politics in a revolutionary direction. The job of a revolutionary party is to turn every spark into a “general conflagration.” Failure to do so, is failure to carry out the job of a revolutionary party.

How Do You Influence A Mass Movement?

OWS is a spontaneous uprising, and sadly, so much of Marxist left approaches it OWS with the same sectarian habits they take to all spontaneous uprisings.

In New York City, I have read more leaflets, newspaper articles, and pamphlets than I count with the same message:

Its not 99% v. 1%. It’s the bourgeoisie v. the proletariat. Read Marx, kids! We Communists are so much smarter than you!

These endless screeds, most of them harshly attacking OWS, and criticizing it in an extremely condescending manner, have no impact on the OWSers. They go in one ear and out the other, with speed to equal to the Limbaugh fans who scream "get a job!" from their taxi cab windows.

They all read the same, no matter whether the Spartacist League, International Bolshevik Tendency, Socialist Workers Party, or whoever printed them.

These screeds all approach OWS in the manner Lenin approached the Socialist-Revolutionary Party or the Narodniks. They all act as if OWS is not a spontaneous uprising, but a developed opportunist political tendency. They would believe that “mathematicism” of “99% and 1%”, is a contrary ideology to Marxism with “bourgeoisie and proletarian.”

This is a fatal error. OWS is not an ideological current. OWS is a spontaneous
uprising.

Marxists should not approach “99% and 1%” with correction. Rather, they should approach it as a “fill in the blank.”

99% and 1% can be defined in any manner desired. Marxists are free to define it as bourgeoisie and proletarian.

The hostile, corrections coming from the sectarian left, are no different than approaching a striking worker who has a sign against “the boss” and saying: “You idiot! Its not the boss, it’s the bourgeoisie! Haven't you ever read 'Wage Labor and Capital!'”

The worker, with a spontaneous understanding, knows who the boss is, but not the class relationship. Does the Marxist feel he or she will gain influence by correcting the worker in a hostile manner?

Or why not join the workers picket line, chant “Kick the Bosses in the Ass!” with him, and in the process of being in the trenches, offer him a vision of a world without bosses?

The Political Evolution of OWS

In the early days of OWS, anti-Communism was very present. Those who walked with signs bearing the name of Communist groups were met with hostility. They were told “why are you trying to take this over?” "This isn't about parties, dude." They were asked “how much do the Cubans pay you?”

Furthermore, racism and extreme insensitivity showed its face. Statements flat out denying national oppression were frequent. Ron Paul’s minions and John Birch Society members walked with the protesters as brothers, while Marxists were treated with hostility.


But this has changed, almost completely.

Why has it changed?

Because the John Birch Society is gone. The wealthy liberal foundations which spewed “don’t let the Communists take over” are gone. The NGOs are gone. The Democratic Party is gone.

However, thousands of youth still remain. Thousands of youth for whom this system has no future, remain in the streets, despite the rhetoric of all the “non-leaders” who tell them: “good work, now go home and vote for Obama.”

The mis-leaders are trying to crush this uprising.

But a small section of the Revolutionary Marxist-Leninist movement is still there.
OWS has gone from a movement that bragged about starting on “constitution day”, to being a movement that is calling for a General Strike on May 1st.

Among the occupiers now at Union Square, the common point of observation is “where have all the lap tops gone?”

All the liberal bloggers are gone. All the hipsters and Democratic party lackeys have vanished.

OWS has evolved to be a largely multinational grouping, no longer majority white. It has given the boot to the “professional left” of NGO funded liberals. It has either scared away or recruited their minions.

Crusty punks, Anarcho-Syndicalists, laid off middle aged workers, and straight up revolutionary activists now sit at the center of this movement.

For years the sectarian left has been proclaiming “General Strikes” as the only answer, and now thousands and thousands of youth are calling one. They are calling it on International Workers Day. They are holding a joint rally with immigrant workers and with labor unions, while demanding “No Work! No Shopping! Into the Streets!”

They have embraced the cause of Trayvon Martin as their own. The phrase “you are the 99%” is no longer chanted at the police. Instead a song entitled “You ain’t nothin’ but a bad cop!” to the tune is Elvis Presley’s classic “Hound Dog” is hurled at Bloomberg’s private army.

Red Flags fly. “Class War” signs and banners are prevelant. Chants of “Just like Ho Chi Minh, Occupy is Gonna Win!” are heard ringing out at rallies.

The 1960s anti-war movement took 5 years to evolve from the politics of Norman Thomas to those of Bernadine Dorhn. OWS has done it in several months. So, not surprisingly, Todd Gitlin has emerged.

The Role of Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges is a response to the political maturity and advances of OWS. Hedges has never been a Marxist of any type. He was bourgeois scribbler who hailed the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. During the Bush years he proclaimed that confused working class people who joined the Christian revival movement were equivalent to Brownshirts, getting him a lot of praise from the Daily Kos crowd.

Hedges, suddenly now an “Anarchist”, has demonized the Black Bloc. His favorite target is Occupy Oakland.

Why?

Because Occupy Oakland just won a union contract for the International Longshore Warehouse Union (ILWU), one of the most longstanding militant, Marxist led unions in the country.

Hedges role is to separate and divide OWS. He seeks to pull all who have been recruited into what is becoming a purely anti-capitalist struggle away from it.

He uses all the classic tricks in the book.

What “violence” has the Black Bloc engaged in? Window breaking? Overturning trash cans? “Resisting arrest” while Bloomberg’s thugs club heads, sexually molest women, break ribs, and mace people?

What here can justify such outrage?

OWS has evolved so much. The march, beginning in Union Square, of Black Nationalists, Revolutionary Activists, and others joining OWS in seizing the streets chanting “We Are Trayvon Martin!” was beautiful. Seeing the chant of “The Cops, the Courts, the Ku Klux Klan, All Just part of the Bosses Plan!” catch on was also a beautiful thing.

It is exactly what Hedges fears the most.


“No One Knows Where…”

OWS is taking on a character that no on ever expected.

The Battle of Seattle lasted for less than three days. The Iraq Anti-War Movement consisted of numerous weekend parades, but never boiled into a general conflagration that many hoped.

Little sparks have happened during the last decade, but they fade away into nothing. Their politics never evolve, and the energy drains.


OWS breaks this pattern. OWS started on September 17th, and has not yet ended. Street fighting continues. It politically evolves. It changes, reshapes, and bursts forth in new different ways.

It is a movement which by definition can encompass every progressive and leftist demand. As Larry Holmes, First Secretary of Workers World Party said at the movements birth:

“Its like a neon sign has been put up in the sky, proclaiming to everyone ‘Rise up! Rise up!’”

The sign is still up in the sky. Its getting brighter. Like Dr. Frankenstein, the liberals, Moveon.org, and NGO forces are shaking in their shoes thinking “what have we done?”

Anna Louise Strong, the brilliant Marxist journalist and leader of the 1919 Seattle General Strike spoke of a similar situation. In her leaflet, distributed among I.W.W. and Socialist Party affiliated dock workers, most of whom joined the Communist Party which was formed several months later, summed up the sentiment all workers should express toward OWS.

Exchange “Labor” for “99%” and one will read the words every OWSer needs to hear from a comrade, close by in the trenches with them against the police:

“Labor can feed the sick! Labor can raise the young! Labor can run the world on its own, without the parasites… We are setting on a course which is headed… NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!”

An Occupier's Open Letter To Chris Hedges

Published Mar 30, 2012 9:39 PM

Chris Hedges, a writer for The Nation and former New York Times reporter, spoke at the Left Forum’s closing plenary on March 18 in New York City.

As someone who was among the thousands of youth on Sept. 17 when the occupation of Zuccotti Park began; as someone who attended some of the early General Assemblies prior to that historic day; as someone who was arrested as part of the OWS Martin Luther King Day actions; as someone who is currently involved in the continuing occupation of Union Square in preparation for the May 1st General Strike, I must say loudly and clearly that you, Chris Hedges, do not speak for me.

The speech you gave at the Left Forum this year, in which you presented yourself as someone with authority and wisdom needed by OWS, said things that are the opposite of how I and many other OWSers feel.

First of all, the police brutality rained down on OWS by police departments around the country, coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security, is not the fault of the Black Bloc anarchists or any other elements inside OWS. Before a single window was broken or trash can turned over, the NYPD was brutalizing OWS activists. The blood of OWS activists has been spilled by the NYPD without pause or remorse since the beginning of these demonstrations.

By engaging in particular tactics of resistance, correct or incorrect, the Black Bloc is not responsible for the NYPD’s behavior. The NYPD has killed Ramarley Graham, Sean Bell and countless other African Americans without any provocation. They need no excuse for their viciousness. Don’t blame the victims.

In Oakland, Calif., and all across the U.S., many OWS activists are facing serious criminal charges. Why would you divide the movement by trying to label one section as “violent” and “dangerous”? Why would you aid the state in isolating some sections? Aren’t the Wall Street bankers the real criminals?

Secondly, the remarks you made about the events of 1989-1991 in Eastern Europe were way off.

When the USSR collapsed and the socialist governments of Eastern Europe were overthrown, this was a huge victory for the 1% against the 99%.

Things like the right to health care, education and employment were abolished. Life expectancy in the Eastern European countries went down by big numbers. Right now, the women of Eastern Europe, who once had paid maternity leave, guaranteed employment, and birth control and abortion on demand, are sex trafficked at higher rates than ever.

The events you described in your speech as being so glorious were simply the 1% taking control of Eastern Europe for themselves. Things for the working class have gotten worse since Wall Street recolonized a big chunk of the globe, with your confessed assistance.

I don’t want to model our movement on the events that led to economic catastrophe and mass suffering in Eastern Europe. Rather, the political movements I look to as inspiration for the OWS are the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution of 1949, the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and other socialist revolutions where the 99% took power away from the 1%.

In addition, I think much can be learned from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, where young people like us fought to prevent capitalist restoration.

Likewise, the anti-war movement, the Black Liberation movement, the Unemployed Councils and sit-down strike waves of the 1930s have real lessons for OWS on how to fight and win against the 1% here in the U.S.

Many within these movements, just like many of us in OWS, thought of capitalism and U.S. imperialism as the true enemy of humanity. They saw their movements, as we see OWS, as a place to fight to overthrow the system and create a society where the 99% rule.

A new chant has been catching on at OWS rallies in New York. It was on our lips in Union Square on March 21 when they tried to evict us. We also chanted it when we took back Zuccotti with crowds of Left Forum activists.

We chanted, “Just like Ho Chi Minh! Occupy is gonna win!”

When the Vietnamese people kicked the Wall Street bankers out of their country, it was a great victory for all humanity. It took a great deal of militancy and relentless years of heroic sacrifice on the part of the Vietnamese people.

I have no doubt that it will take a similarly long and relentless struggle to bring down the 1% in the U.S. But I’m confident that just as the Soviet people drove the Nazis out of Eastern Europe, the Chinese Red Army drove Japanese imperialism out of their country, and the people of Cuba still stand strong, that just like Ho Chi Minh, we too will win and defeat the 1%!

— Caleb T. Maupin
OWS activist and Workers World Party youth organizer

PressTV: "Crack Down on 99%ers"

Watch Video Here

A political activist says the US one-percent ruling class “is really threatened by the rising movement of oppressed people,” responding with a rise in police crackdowns.


On the six-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement on Saturday, anti-corporatism demonstrators gathered together to launch a new series of protests in New York, Los Angeles and the Midwest.

US Occupy protesters have called for solidarity rallies in a show of support to express discontent with the US police brutality and the detention of dozens of demonstrators during the movement.

The protesters have been using the slogan, "We are the 99 percent" to distinguish themselves from the one-percent of Americans that are in possession of the greatest portion of the nation's wealth.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Caleb Maupin from the International Action Center to further discuss the issue. The following is a transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Do you think it's quite significant that these solidarity marches now have more than one message overlapping each other? -It's the anti-Wall Street demos doubled up with a wave of dissatisfaction against US police brutality.

Maupin: Yes. I was actually in the park last night, last evening, when the attacks happened. It was ridiculous. There were people demonstrating in the park, minding their own business in the park which they have the right to do, which there have been numerous court rulings now that said they have the right to be in the park as long as they don’t setup tents, and the result was the police declaring the park to be closed arbitrarily and going in and acting extremely violently.

At one point there was a woman having a seizure on the ground, and the police kept her in handcuffs. There were trained medics who ran up to try and help the woman who were blocked by the police.

And this really shows that the ruling class in this country is really threatened by the rising movement of oppressed people. They chose to respond this way.

They’re so threatened by the idea that people in the US just like to get together and gather in a park and denounce capitalism. They’re threatened by that because they know their system is very weak. At one point in the demonstration people were chanting, “just like Ho Chi Minh, Occupy is going to win,” making clear they were in solidarity with the oppressed people around the world that are fighting against the US bankers and the corporations. That’s a beautiful thing.

Occupy Wall Street is a symptom of a global movement, and the fact that such brutality has been cracked down has been showing what this government has been all about.

Press TV: Overall how would you asses the resolve and motivation of the 99-percenters, given the police tactics used, the wave of arrests and let's not forget the recent signing of the Federal Restricted Buildings act by President Obama?

Maupin: Well, if we know anything from the last six months, it’s been every time they viciously attack Occupy Wall Street, what happens it gets bigger.

And you know, New York City can get very cold in the winter, but the winter’s over. It’s heating up, it’s getting warm here and I think this is just the beginning of a broad Occupy Spring.

All over the country people are getting ready. There’s even a push for a general strike on May 1st - ‘A day without the 99-percent’.

People are saying they will not sell their labor to the Wall Street capitalist class as protest on May 1st - the International Workers’ Day which started here on May 1st which started here in the United States and has not been practiced here in the United States for a long time until it was revived in 2006 by the immigrant workers.

But now it’s been taken up by the entire 99-percent here in the US. Things are rapidly changing here and Occupy Wall Street is a symbol of that. People are ready to fight and it’s very inspiring.

GMA/JR

Contradictions In Capitalism

Published Feb 13, 2012 9:35 PM

Following are excerpts from a talk given by Workers World Party organizer Richard Kossally at a WWP forum in New York City on Feb. 3.

Out of feudal society arose the bourgeoisie, a new class that was to dominate society.

Succeeding social systems are birthed by the social system immediately preceding them. The bourgeoisie came out of a privileged middle layer that developed in feudal society. Karl Marx states in Chapter 31 of “Capital,” “Doubtless many small guild-masters, and yet more independent small artisans, or even wage laborers, transformed themselves into small capitalists, and (by gradually extending exploitation of wage labor and corresponding accumulation) into full-blown capitalists.”

For a time the conflicting modes of feudal and capitalist production existed side by side, but one had to win out. The capitalist mode of production requires the freedom of capital. This was incompatible with feudal ties to the land, with the secrecy of the trade guilds, and with the general organization of feudal society.

The feudal organization of society was doomed.

Before the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, products were made from start to finish on an individual basis. As manufacture was introduced, the old mode of production fell by the wayside.

Manufacture, with different workers doing different tasks on the same product, was superior to the whole product being made by a individual worker, as it required less labor time to produce a given product. The commodities of the two different modes of production had to be sold on the same market. The individual producer could not compete and had no choice but to become a wage worker.

With the constant upgrading of machinery characterized by capitalism, the product of the individual worker decreased even more in market value, not because the quality of the product produced was poorer, but because it required too much labor time as compared to the social product of the factory.

Bosses expropriate what the workers produce

Under capitalism, production became socialized. That is, many workers hired by a capitalist and their collective labor, combined within an establishment with a definite production plan, produce useful commodities for exchange in order to make a profit for the capitalist. None of the products that are produced by the workers belong to them; they all belong to the capitalist. The workers receive a fraction of the value of what their labor produced in the form of wages.

This is one of the major contradictions within capitalism: the individual capitalist appropriates to himself or herself that which was produced socially by many workers. The worker is a wage slave. The product of his or her labor belongs to another. The wage of the worker in general is just enough for him or her and his or her family to make it to the next payday. He or she is a wage worker for life.

The profit of the capitalist, on the other hand, serves to further enslave the worker. Some of it will be used to further revolutionize the means of production, by investing it in better and/or more machines to expand the capitalist's enterprise, and still have enough left to live very high on the hog.

This capitalist does not exist alone. In whatever industry, the capitalists who produce the same or similar thing engage in fierce competition and always try to undersell each another. They use different tactics to cheapen the products that the workers produce. They buy more sophisticated manufacturing machines, and they intensify the exploitation of their workforce by making the workers work harder and/or longer.

The constant perfecting of machinery also displaces workers, as fewer workers are needed with the new machinery. As Frederick Engels said, “The very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation.” The threat of replacing workers is a very powerful tool that the capitalists possess. They use this threat as downward pressure on the wages of the employed and to extract as much as they can out of each worker. So under capitalism, the increased productivity of the worker leads to still further exploitation.

Anarchy built into capitalist production

It is necessary for the capitalists to drop the price of the product in order to outsell their competition. But if prices are lowered, then many more items have to be produced and sold for the capitalist to maintain or increase his or her profits. Production soon outpaces consumption, as this competition eventually leads to more products on the market than can be sold at a profit.

If the capitalist has more items than can be sold profitably, then factories are closed and the workers laid off, left idle and without income. They cannot buy back the products they have made. There is a protracted stagnation until the market glut eases, the excess products are finally sold off, and production picks up again. This state of overproduction is the result of what we communists refer to as the anarchy in production.

The individual capitalist will very accurately figure out how much raw material and machinery are needed and how many workers to exploit in order to have so much end product, but they have no general plan for meeting the needs of society. Their only goals are profit and survival.

The competition that did away with the feudal mode of production has turned into competition between capitalists. It ever intensifies, and the weaker ones are always under threat of ruin. This, however, is not the kind of ruin that the workers face. A capitalist enterprise might be absorbed by a stronger enterprise or have to close shop and have its capital employed somewhere else. In any case, the ruin of any capitalist is not worth the shedding of any worker's tears.

The system itself is unstable. These competing capitalists are driven by an underlying law of capitalism — expand or die. At a time of protracted stagnation the stronger capitalists absorb the weaker ones. The suffering of the workers intensifies. As Engels states, “The mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence”.

War is not one of the inventions of capitalism, but under capitalism the instruments of war have been revolutionized to a degree that could not have been imagined before production became socialized. A single device today can kill more people than were killed in entire wars of earlier periods. The capitalist governments are not shy about employing their weapons. They are on a permanent war footing.

Capitalism breeds monopolization

The capitalists that survive these cyclical crises and emerge as victors are fewer in number and bigger and stronger — monstrous beasts that further exploit workers' labor power. So the anarchy in production in capitalist society leads to monopoly. Today, the capitalist class, through just a few hundred banks, corporations and other institutions, controls the commerce of the entire world.

In search of markets and resources, the capitalists have shown that they will do anything. As the famous words of a Mr. Dunning quoted by Marx go, “A certain 10 percent [profit] will ensure the employment of capital anywhere; 20 percent certain will produce eagerness; 50 percent, positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample all human laws; 300 percent, and there is no crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.”

These days, though, hanging or any other punishment is less of a possibility for the capitalist. After all, it is their system and as such, it is designed to serve them. The rapid advance of the productive capacity of the world with the means of production primarily in the employ of the capitalist class has concentrated such absurd wealth in the hands of the capitalists as to be beyond obscene.

Capitalism was a dialectical inevitability in the evolution of human society. Previous social systems developed slowly. Capitalism has developed the means of production very rapidly, but in a relatively short time has outlived any usefulness. Capitalism cannot absorb the masses of unemployed workers. It has reached a point where there is now a new situation: We are living in the era of the jobless recovery.

The fundamental contradictions of capitalist production lead to other serious contradictions. These contradictions of capitalism are inherent in the system itself: Capitalist competition inevitably leads to crisis. These contradictions cannot be done away with within the bounds of the capitalist system. They occur independently, outside the will and control of the capitalists themselves.

Irrational system creating its gravediggers

Capitalism is not a rational system. Capitalists serve no necessary function in present society and are responsible for just about all the problems of society. The atrocities committed against the planet in their reckless pursuit of riches are mind boggling. The pursuit of oil and natural gas without study or precaution against potential risks is among the most harmful. The very air that we breathe and the water that we drink, two of the essentials that support life, have been poisoned by the capitalists. It is an amazing contradiction that capitalist competition causes them to be so reckless that they cause a reduction in the quality of the water that we drink and the air that we breathe. I presume that they drink the same water and breathe the same air.

My favorite contradiction of this rotten system is this: By constantly revolutionizing the means of production, communication and commerce, the capitalists have created a massive world proletariat. This class, our class, will be their undoing. They have created their own gravediggers. The historical task of the proletariat is the abolishing of capitalism and the construction of socialism.

Thinking rationally, the increased productivity of labor should not create misery for the producers nor should productivity lead to scarcity. Abundance should not be the source of distress and want. As long as the social product of the working class is stolen by the capitalist class, society cannot advance in any meaningful way.

No country as yet has achieved the goal of socialism, but those that have attempted it, and those that are aspiring to the socialist construction of society have more than proven that a planned economy is what the people of the world need. A major lesson learned by the attempt at state power by the Paris Commune in 1871 is that the capitalist must be uprooted. There has to be revolutionary change and there has never been a revolution without a revolutionary party. Welcome to Workers World.

The entire talk can be seen at www.workers.tv.

Libya: Attacks Rise Against Imperialist-Backed Regime

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Published Feb 5, 2012 10:27 PM

A series of attacks have been launched against the U.S.- and NATO-installed National Transitional Council in Libya. The most significant events occurred on Jan. 23 when local forces still loyal to the former government of slain leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi retook the city of Bani Walid, located 120 miles southeast of Tripoli.

During the battles to reclaim the city, four people were reportedly killed and 20 others injured. Reports indicate that heavy weaponry was used by several hundred Libyan loyalists, including 106 mm anti-tank launchers.

The liberation of Bani Walid took place after a gun battle with the NTC rebels that lasted only a few hours. Immediately, green flags were hoisted. These flags are a symbol of the Jamahiriya government that was driven from power by a seven-month bombing campaign carried out by the U.S.-NATO forces.

NTC soldiers patrolling Bani Walid had recently arrested supporters of the former government, prompting outrage among the population. The city had been one of the last to fall during the war against Libya, which lasted for eight months and resulted in the wholesale destruction of the country’s infrastructure and the theft of its national wealth.

After holding out for many months against the U.S.-NATO forces and the NTC rebels, the local loyalist forces agreed to allow the Western-backed gunmen to enter the city. However, tensions have remained extremely high.

Just last November, gun fights erupted when NTC rebels entered the city in an attempt to arrest pro-Gadhafi supporters. On Jan. 23, loyalist forces attacked an NTC militia garrison, killing several guards before moving to occupy the center of the city.

Reports say it may be very difficult for the NTC to exercise authority over Bani Walid. Sentiments against the Western-backed “rebels” have not subsided.

Journalist Taha Zargoun wrote: “Taking back control of the town will be challenging because it has natural defenses. Anyone approaching from the north has to descend into a deep valley and then climb up the other side, giving defenders an advantage.” (Reuters, Jan. 23)

Bani Walid liberation
part of broader unrest

In various regions of Libya the NTC has been rapidly losing any semblance of control. Other attacks by loyalist forces have taken place in the eastern city of Benghazi, the base of the counterrevolution, and in Tripoli, the capital.

In Benghazi, pro-Gadhafi fighters mounted offensives against NTC rebels, killing at least three. In the capital of Tripoli, guerrilla units loyal to the former government launched attacks against NTC personnel in several neighborhoods across the city.

Overall dissatisfaction with the imperialist-backed regime is increasing daily. Even elements that supported the counterrevolution have rapidly grown disillusioned with the NTC regime, which has failed to rein in the militia groups that roam areas of the capital and other cities, committing atrocities against the people.

The Associated Press wrote on Jan. 23: “The bold attacks are the latest breakdown in security, three months after Gadhafi’s capture and killing. Protests have surged in recent weeks, with people demanding that the interim leaders deliver on promises of transparency and compensation for those injured in the civil war.”

There have also been reports of attacks launched by loyalist forces in the western Nafusa mountains. This has prompted the NTC rebel regime to heighten security in Misrata, setting up checkpoints in order to secure entrance into the city.

After the fall of Tripoli in August, many loyalist units took refuge in Bani Walid and other areas in the west of the country. Reports of clashes have been consistent from the area.

Imperialist media ignored
human rights violations

Since the beginning of the rebellion against the Gadhafi government last February, there have been gross human rights violations against people in Libya. Foreign nationals, Black Libyans and loyalist forces were subjected to harassment, beatings, illegal imprisonment, torture and deaths at the hands of the NTC rebels and their imperialist backers.

During the course of last year’s bombing campaign, 26,000 sorties and 10,000 air strikes were carried out between March 19 and Oct. 20. Estimates of deaths during this period range from 50,000 to 100,000.

At least 7,000 people remain imprisoned inside the country, including the son and heir-apparent to Gadhafi, Seif al-Islam. He was captured by the NTC in the south of the country late last year and has been held incommunicado since then.

Seif al-Islam reportedly had a hand severed and is not allowed to seek legal counsel. The International Criminal Court, which had indicted Gadhafi and Seif al-Islam for alleged war crimes during the bombing of the country, has now said that the son can be tried on Libyan soil under the purported laws of the NTC rebels.

A January report released by several human rights organizations says there are still widespread abuses, unjustified imprisonment and torture being conducted by the NTC rebel regime. The document, entitled “Report of the Independent Civil Society Fact-finding Mission to Libya,” reveals that there are victims of NATO and NTC war crimes in numerous areas throughout the country, including Tripoli, Sibrata, Khoms, ZIlten, Misrata, Tawergha and Sirte.

The authors of the report include the Arab Organization for Human Rights, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the International Legal Assistance Consortium. The document further confirms the deliberate targeting of civilians during the bombing campaign between March and October 2011.

Farirai Chubvu wrote of the findings: “The report exposes the human rights and democratic pretexts employed by the U.S., France, Britain and their NATO accomplices to carry out a colonial-style war of conquest. It makes clear that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, imposing a ‘no-fly zone’ and arms embargo on Libya supposedly to protect civilians from repressive actions by Moammar Gadhafi, was in fact used to carry out a ruthless air war waged in coordination with ‘rebel’ forces on the ground.” (The Herald Online, Jan. 27)

Imperialist states cannot be relied upon to protect the basic human rights of peoples within countries where they are carrying out wars. When President Barack Obama boasted during his State of the Union address recently that the government of Gadhafi had been overthrown, no mention was ever made of the horrendous crimes committed by the U.S. and NATO against the people of Libya.

Anti-war, peace and social justice organizations in the U.S. and other Western countries must continue to speak out and organize against imperialist wars being waged against oppressed peoples. Despite their false claims of concern for human rights and civil rights, it is the Western states that are the main purveyors of violations of fundamental rights throughout the world.

Hondurans Organize Amid Growing Resistance

By Heather Cottin
Published Feb 5, 2012 10:23 PM

When the New York Times publishes an op-ed piece stating that Honduras is “descending deeper into a human rights and security abyss” and adds that this is “in good part the State Department’s making,” something is changing. (Jan. 26)

Since the U.S. government-sponsored military coup on June 28, 2009, the State Department has spread a smokescreen to justify the kidnapping of legally elected President Manuel Zelaya Rosales and the brutal military takeover of this country of more than 8 million people.

Conditions in Honduras, the second-poorest Central American nation, have only deteriorated since the coup. Sixty-seven percent of the population — more than 5.5 million people — live below the poverty level. The unemployment rate is almost 30 percent. (hondurasnews.com, Jan. 3) The oligarchs and transnational corporations have taken total control, exploiting the people and resources, even privatizing the country’s rivers.

Since the coup, Honduras has become the center of U.S. military operations in Central America. The Soto Cano Air Base (Palmerola), to which Zelaya was flown during his kidnapping, has received an infusion of up to $45 million in construction funds since 2009. (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)

Violence and drug trafficking in the country also spiraled upward during the same period. As a result of killings carried out by the military and military-trained police forces, Honduras has among the highest murder rates in the world. (southcom.mil) According to a report of the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, there is “generalized impunity for human rights violations” and the return of death squads. (October 2010)

Lucy Pagoada, a representative of Honduras Resistencia USA, told Workers World: “The leader of the coup, Roberto Micheletti, and Miguel Facussé, the country’s richest oligarch and uncle of Honduras’ U.N. Ambassador Mary Flores Facussé, are the leading drug lords of Honduras.”

Facussé is alleged to have stolen vast tracts of land from the Indigenous and Garifuna (Afro-Honduran) people, and his death squads have killed, kidnapped and tortured dozens of peasants in the Aguan Valley. Facussé brought in the Honduran Army’s U.S.-trained 15th Infantry Battalion and private security guards to attack the Aguan peasants. A 17-year-old boy and five security guards were killed in 2010. (Honduras Solidarity Network, Aug. 19, 2010)

The New York Times piece said that the U.S.-backed coup and Washington’s support for the sham election of Porfirio Lobo Sosa in November 2009 placed a regime in power that was quickly recognized by the Obama administration. The Lobo government “threw open the doors to a huge increase in drug trafficking and violence, and it unleashed a continuing wave of state-sponsored repression. … The judicial system hardly functions. Impunity reigns. At least 34 members of the opposition have disappeared or been killed, and more than 300 people have been killed by state repression.”

According to Human Rights Watch, 18 journalists have been killed since the coup.

Repression breeds resistance

But the Honduran Resistance Movement has been in the streets, facing down the police and army in the cities and countryside. In February 2011, they held a large representative assembly and then went back to their communities to organize to take power.

For the national election set for November 2013, “Peasants, students, Indigenous peoples, teachers and workers have organized a party in direct defiance of the two traditional parties of Honduras, the National Party and the Liberal Party,” said Pagoada. “We call it ‘LibRe’ — for Liberty and Reformation. We have decided to take a political direction. Xiomara Castro Del Zelaya, the wife of Manuel Zelaya, will be our candidate, and a poll taken on Jan. 28 showed that she is the leading candidate.”

Fearing this overwhelming groundswell of resistance, the U.S. government appointed Lisa Kubiske ambassador to Honduras. On Jan. 26, Kubiske whisked President Lobo off to Miami for 10 hours of high-level talks. That resulted in his decision to support unprecedented legislation that would enable the U.S. to extradite suspected Honduran drug traffickers, specifically Miguel Facussé and Roberto Micheletti, to the United States. Lobo also ordered the arrest of police officers believed responsible for the murder of the son of a leading academic. The police then miraculously escaped from prison, Pagoada noted.

On the same day, Honduran lawmakers proposed a bill that would establish an independent monitoring body tasked with reforming the country’s notoriously corrupt police force. (insightcrime.org, Jan. 27)

“Few articles admit that all the poverty, murder, drug trafficking and corruption are the direct results of the U.S.-sponsored coup,” Pagoada told Workers World. “What is clear is that the coup has failed.”

Pagoada informed WW that “Xiomara Castro Del Zelaya is coming to the United States to speak in New York and Washington. She will also address the United National Antiwar Coalition convention in Stamford, Conn., in March [23-25]. We will hear a powerful message of resistance, democracy and peace from the Honduran people.”

Why People's Korea Should Be Defended

By Stephen Millies
Published Jan 21, 2012 3:45 PM

Is there another country more demonized by the U.S. government and corporate media than the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, also known as north Korea?

The 1% need to lie about oppressed countries and peoples to justify wars and massacres.

The lies told about John Africa and the MOVE organization paved the way for the May 13, 1985, holocaust in Philadelphia. Five children and six adults were killed after Philadelphia police — helped by the Pentagon and FBI — dropped a bomb on the MOVE house.

The only adult survivor, Ramona Africa, was then sent to prison for seven years.

From 1950 to 1953, all of Korea was turned into a MOVE house by the Pentagon. At least 3 million Koreans were killed. Hundreds of thousands were burned alive by napalm. The 400,000 people in north Korea’s capital of Pyongyang had 420,000 bombs dropped on them.

South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated that south Korean puppet Syngman Rhee executed 100,000 to 200,000 political prisoners.

Despite these massacres, the U.S. war machine wasn’t able to conquer the DPRK. Chinese volunteers fought beside their Korean sisters and brothers. Among the Chinese soldiers who gave their lives for Korea was Mao Anying, a son of Mao Zedong.

Wall Street continues to occupy south Korea and targets north Korea with nuclear weapons.

The U.S. Army’s Yongsan Garrison occupies 620 acres in the middle of Seoul, south Korea. It’s as if a foreign army occupied Central Park in New York City. What sort of independence is that?

146 years of U.S. aggression against Korea

The capitalist media won’t tell you that the heavily armed U.S. merchant ship “General Sherman” tried attacking Pyongyang in 1866. The invaders were thrown back.

Ulysses S. Grant, whose troops won the U.S. Civil War, capitulated to the defeated Southern slavocracy after he became president, refusing to give land to formerly enslaved people who had tilled it for generations. Yet he sent warships to Korea in 1871, trying to open it up to U.S. markets. More than 200 Korean soldiers were killed defending their country.

This U.S. invasion helped open the door for Japanese aggression against Korea in 1876. In 1905, President Teddy Roosevelt practically gave Korea to Japan in the peace treaty he brokered between the Russian czar and Japanese emperor.

At least a quarter of the human beings incinerated by the U.S. in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 were Korean slave laborers. The same U.S. military-industrial complex that dropped these atom bombs refused to drop any bombs on the German railroads that the Nazis used to transport millions to their deaths in Auschwitz.

Socialists should defend the oppressed

The history of the Korean people fighting back should be known and spread widely by socialists. But very little of that appears in a long article called “Socialism in one dynasty,” by David Whitehouse, recently published by the International Socialist Organization in their newspaper, the Socialist Worker.

Instead, Whitehouse attacks People’s Korea, using gossip and phrases lifted from the capitalist media. He also complains that in the DPRK, “the state has to provide health care, education and housing, because there are no institutions outside the state. …” (socialistworker.org, Jan. 12)

This sounds like Ron Paul or the Tea Party attacking Medicare and Social Security. Millions of poor people and unemployed workers would love it if they were provided by the government with jobs, health care, education and housing instead of being fired and evicted by the capitalists.

One of the article’s sources is Atlantic magazine, which was a big cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Michael Kelly, the Atlantic’s editor, was killed while participating in the assault.

The Whitehouse article attacks WWP, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization and the Party for Socialism and Liberation for defending the DPRK. He calls it “satire” that WWP sent condolences to the Workers’ Party of Korea upon the recent death of its leader, Kim Jong Il.

As communists in the belly of the imperialist beast, Workers World Party respects all leaders of people fighting the U.S. empire.

Mocking oppressed people and their leaders is nothing new. John Africa, Marcus Garvey and Kim Jong Il were all ridiculed by the capitalist media. It should be ABC that socialists shouldn’t repeat the slanders of the 1%.

Korea and Cuba, two revolutionary beacons

Korea has a rich revolutionary history. Two million Koreans joined the March 1, 1919, movement for independence from Japanese rule. More than 7,000 were killed.

The Korean people launched an armed struggle for freedom. The most famous guerrilla commander was communist leader Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of north Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong Un. After Che Guevara toured the world in 1960, he said that the most remarkable person he met was Kim Il Sung.

But you won’t find any pictures of Che Guevara in the Socialist Worker newspaper. Cuba, like People’s Korea, isn’t considered to be socialist by this grouping. In fact, there isn’t any country that had a socialist revolution that’s considered socialist by the ISO.

The group supported the Libyan “rebels” who lynched Black people while serving as front men for the U.S./NATO invasion of the African country.

Leningrad, the cradle of the Russian Revolution, endured a 900-day siege during World War II. At least 1 million people died there of starvation and disease. But Leningrad never surrendered to the German imperialists.

The DPRK has been besieged for decades. Great hardships have been endured since the Soviet Union was overthrown in 1991. The U.S. was able to cut off much of the north’s foreign trade, including oil supplies. But Koreans, like the people of Leningrad, will never surrender.

In a besieged fortress, unity is essential. The Workers’ Party of Korea won’t allow imperialists to split their country. That is why the DPRK should be congratulated for its swift action in naming Kim Jong Un to succeed Kim Jong Il as the leader.

Cuts in Benefits Spur Fightback

By Joseph Piette
Philadelphia
Published Jan 19, 2012 9:54 PM

Pennsylvania has declared war on the poor. During the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression, two recent state decisions have made it more difficult to qualify for programs that benefit the working poor and those without jobs.

On Jan. 10, the Department of Public Welfare announced that people under 60 with more than $2,000 in savings and other assets would no longer be eligible for the food stamp program — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. For people over 60, the assets limit would be $3,250.

Homes and retirement benefits would not be counted as assets. One vehicle would be exempt, but any additional vehicle worth more than $4,650 would be counted.

A senior center worker told Workers World that a DPW staff person said that they are “just getting started,” and that state officials “indicate they are looking at asset tests for many programs, not just food stamps.”

The asset test comes on top of a Pennsylvania Unemployment Compensation law change that became effective on Jan. 1. Now severance payments above $18,000 will offset unemployment benefits until the severance is used up.

Most states do not count such benefits against unemployment benefits, recognizing that the extra cash often allows victims of the weak economy to continue payments on their mortgages and other debts. The state’s plan to enforce this statute has not been announced.

In Delaware, the entire severance, even if paid in a lump sum, is divided into weekly payments equal to the laid-off worker’s salary. Only after those weekly payments have ended can unemployment benefits start.

Fightback begins

A fightback movement is starting to emerge. An overflow crowd met at the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger offices on Jan. 13 to map out opposition to the asset test. Advocates for the poor and Philadelphia city officials have condemned it. Letters to the editor printed in major establishment newspapers and messages posted on Facebook evince opposition to this terrible rule. The Occupy Philly movement is taking up this issue.

The union representing county assistance workers has also criticized the state’s plan, which would require workers to review the assets of 1.8 million Pennsylvania residents who receive food stamps. “We already have a backlog of cases, and there’s purely not enough workers,” said Donna Scarboro, business agent for Services Employees union Local 668, to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The number of caseworkers statewide has been cut from 1,800 to 1,400 in the last three years. (Jan. 15)

Individual states administer SNAP programs and are permitted to apply asset tests as long as the minimum amount of assets is set no lower than $2,000. That limit has not been increased since 1980. If allowed to rise with inflation, that figure in 2012 would be $5,715.23. Four states have raised their minimum allowable assets to $5,000 or more.

There were 439,245 Philadelphians on food stamps as of December 2010, but only 71 percent of those eligible applied for food stamps. Across the U.S., 46.3 million people get SNAP benefits, which is one out of every seven residents.

The federal SNAP program sends $2.5 billion annually to Pennsylvania. This not only benefits needy children and seniors but is also a boon to the food industry. Every dollar of public funds spent on food stamps increases the gross domestic product by $1.73.

Because of the potential economic losses to businesses, even executives, such as Jeff Brown of Philadelphia ShopRite, have called the DPW decision “mean-spirited” and “bad business strategy.” Brown says that he will lose revenue as 40 percent of his sales depend on food stamps. (Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 10)

Overwhelmed emergency food agencies in the state oppose the new policy. Bill Clark, executive director of Philabundance, the largest hunger-relief agency in the region, told the Inquirer: “I’m very pessimistic about our ability to meet people’s needs … this will be a mind-boggling, self-inflicted wound. It makes no compassionate, political, or economic sense.” For many elderly especially, $3,250 in the bank serves as “the poor man’s medical insurance,” he said.

Carey Morgan, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger, said: “So it’s not only inhumane, but counterproductive to force people to drain their savings before they can get any help. Someone with less than $2,000 in the bank would easily be wiped out by one visit to the emergency room.” (Philadelphia City Paper, Jan 10)

The state recently won a federal award for running its program efficiently, with a fraud rate of one-tenth of 1 percent, but food stamps have become a hot political issue. Right-wing Republicans vying to be their party’s presidential candidate are appealing to their political adherents by whipping up racist attacks on oppressed communities as they call for cuts in food stamp programs — even though white workers and their families make up half of the benefits’ recipients.

As Joel Berg, the executive director of the New York Coalition against Hunter has stressed, today the food stamp program is “the only thing left” in the safety net. The food stamp program is a necessity for working-class families in Pennsylvania and throughout the country during this economic crisis.

It must be defended by all progressive people and should be expanded without restrictions and limitations to everyone who needs food assistance.

Video: J16 - Occupy 4 Jobs March!

The Unemployed Workers' Movement

By Dolores Cox
Published Jan 13, 2012 2:43 AM

The history of economic depressions and joblessness in the U.S. can be traced back to the 19th century. Tens of thousands of people rallied in 1837, 1857, 1873, 1884 and 1893 to demand a public jobs program from the federal government. They opposed high food and rent costs, and big business.

Protests in local communities originated in sporadic street demonstrations, rent rebellions and the disruption of relief centers. Initially, local grassroots organizations were loosely structured, held together mainly by periodic demonstrations. But these groups gathered momentum from direct action victories that yielded public assistance money and food and stopped evictions. Protesters were often confronted by federal, state and local troops, who aggressively dispersed their actions.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was a period of economic crisis that drastically affected the daily lives of millions of people, who faced massive unemployment. The economic collapse also impacted those with low-wage jobs. Industries were devastated, as were the towns where they were located.

The 1930s produced the largest movement of the unemployed and poor that the country had ever known. The jobless rebelled against the inequalities produced by capitalism, an institution of rising profits for the wealthy ruling class. Protest movements emerged that pitted the rulers against those who were ruled — those whom the system had failed.

Beginning in 1929, Communist Party activists formed “Unemployed Councils” (renamed “Unemployment Councils” in 1934). The organizers worked the bread lines, flop houses, factories, relief offices and employment office lines. The CP declared those out of work to be “the tactical key to present the state of the class struggle.” Party organizers concentrated on direct action in the streets and relief offices, seeking out opportunities for leafleting and pamphleteering as well as inciting mass actions and agitation. They held mass meetings and focused on a dual approach of community and trade union unity.

Political demonstrations by the unemployed in big cities marched under Communist Party banners with slogans like “Fight—Don’t Starve.” The Unemployed Councils also led mass protests against police oppression and brutality. Mounted and unmounted cops used bare fists, night sticks and tear gas in mass arrests and even killings to disperse the crowds.

Rising anger led to defiance and resistance. Communists declared March 6, 1930, to be International Unemployment Day, and led marches and rallies of the unemployed in most of the major cities in the U.S. Several thousand marched to factories and auto plants to demand jobs and unemployment insurance. Thousands of unemployed veterans descended on Washington, D.C. Millions of unemployed Blacks and whites marched together, sometimes leading to bloodshed instigated by the cops. Federal troops made war on unarmed people, while the mainstream press branded the demonstrations as “riots.”

During the 1930s, the Communist Party played a leading role in fighting for the demands of African Americans — who were devastated by the Great Depression — and helped mobilize them for their struggle. Thousands of them joined the CP. The CP also undertook food collections in the Black community of Harlem, N.Y., where unemployment had risen to as high as 80 percent. In many places, CP activists organized squads to turn utility services back on.

Communist Party-led trade union organizations fought against the white chauvinistic policy of the American Federation of Labor, which excluded Black workers, and demanded a united labor movement based on equal rights for all workers. In the Black Belt South, they also led the sharecroppers union, which fought courageously against the tyranny of the planters. Members of the Black working class subsequently became leaders of the Black liberation movement.

The Unemployed Councils’ headquarters served as meeting halls and places where tired job searchers could rest and talk. Demonstrations soon became more massive and well organized; they gained momentum and grew in size and frequency. Joint rallies comprised progressive trade unions, communist activists and alliances of communities. They called for the “abolition of the profit system.”

In 1936, most major groups of the unemployed merged, and a national poor people’s alliance was formed that agitated and protested to get legislation implemented. Protesters sought to achieve more substantial reform via organizational and electoral pressure for legislative reforms.

Due to people’s unrest, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” administration put forth more liberal relief policies. Instead of direct public assistance, he called for a public works program.

While the Works Project Administration did provide jobs, the actual number of jobs fell short of the number promised. At the WPA’s peak, only about one in four persons actually gained employment. Job quotas fluctuated wildly with no apparent relation to unemployment, and workers never knew when they might be laid off.

Organization leaders conducted work stoppages and demonstrations on WPA projects, protesting layoffs and demanding more adequate security wages. These leaders were also recognized as the official bargaining agent for WPA workers. They contacted President Roosevelt with reviews of the economic situation, deplored WPA cuts and called for the expansion of the WPA.

A Wealth Tax Act, Wagner Act and Social Security Act were implemented. Under the 1935 Social Security Act, the federal government paid a share of state and local public assistance costs. A Civilian Conservation Corps, designed to stimulate the economy, provided jobs as well.

Local grassroots protests began to decline in militancy as a result of the Roosevelt administration’s more liberal public assistance policy and the absorption of local leaders into bureaucratic roles. The unemployed became less of a threat because they were divided, and the most skilled were absorbed into the WPA. As a result, the government took the stance that less had to be done for them.

By 1936, 2.5 million WPA jobs had been provided, but nearly 10 million people were still unemployed. In 1939, WPA funds were cut, WPA wages were reduced, and workers who had been on WPA payrolls for 18 continuous months were terminated.

Source: “Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail” by Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward.