Genocide in Gaza

Following are the articles received from A World To Win News Service on the genocide of palastinians

Gaza: The political goals of both sides and possible outcomes of this war



12 January 2009. A World to Win News Service. Gaza suffered terrible civilian casualties during "stage one" of Israel's assault, the aerial bombardment of one of the world's most densely populated areas. As Israeli ground troops moved in for "stage two", the number of dead and injured grew enormously, as did the proportion of civilian casualties among the overall dead and wounded. Children under 16 and women accounted for 40 percent as of 11 January, according to Gaza medical personnel (Al Jazeera, BBC). Many families dare not move through the streets to take their dead to hospital.



Unbearable atrocities



As the Israeli army added tank, mortar and sniper fire to the weapons being used against Gaza, they began to commit atrocities even more horrendous than the initial bombings. Among them were:



• Three shellings of schools run by the UN being used as civilian shelters. Israeli mortars killed more than 40 people outside one school in the Jabalya refugee camp. The Israeli armed forces had been informed of the geographical coordinates of these schools. The head of the United Nations refugee relief agency (UNWRA) in Gaza refuted Israeli claims that the school had been used by Hamas, and called for a war crimes investigation. Israel responded by releasing a video purportedly showing Hamas fighters in the building, but later had to admit that the footage was from 2007, when the UNWRA was not using the school. (Haaretz, 9 January)



• The shelling of homes in Zeitun, near Gaza City. Israeli troops surrounded the area, building earthen barriers and keeping out rescue teams for four days. When paramedics eventually entered 7 January, in one destroyed home they found four half-dead children clinging to the corpses of their mothers in the rubble.



• In a warehouse, they found the bodies of about 25 members of the Samouni extended family, 10 adults and the rest children. Israeli troops had destroyed five of their homes, and then told them to take shelter in the unfinished building. Some of them were escorted there by Israeli soldiers. When a small group ventured outside the next day to bring in other relatives, they were hit by a tank shell. Then another shell or a missile hit the roof. When the survivors came out, carrying improvised white flags and shouting, "We have kids" in Hebrew, Israeli soldiers shot at them. The soldiers later gave some children first aid, but detained some adults in their firing positions to use as human shields. Not long after the rescue convoy led by the International Committee of the Red Cross arrived, Israeli gunfire forced them to flee without searching for more bodies (as many as 70 of the 100 family members may have been killed). Some injured were reportedly left behind.



• Israeli snipers have been filmed shooting at ambulances and medical personnel on foot trying to reach the wounded and dead lying in the streets. The World Health Organisation counted 21 medical workers killed as of 12 January. (UK Telegraph, 8 January; Independent, 10 January; UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)



• The UN temporarily suspended aid conveys ferrying emergency supplies into Gaza when Israelis fired at several of them, killing three drivers, even though the Israeli army had cleared the trucks to enter at the border. A tank shell killed a forklift driver as he loaded supplies for one of these convoys. The International Committee of the Red Cross also suspended operations when Israeli troops fired on a convoy transferring intensive care patients to Egypt, again after the Israel army had cleared the vehicles to travel. (Independent, 9 January)



• Amnesty International accused the Israelis of "frequently" forcing civilians to remain in the ground floor of their homes while using the upper floors for sniper positions or as observation posts for extended periods. It also charged Hamas with firing at the invaders from homes, but refuted Israeli claims that this justifies attacking civilians: "The army is well aware gunmen usually leave the area after having fired and any reprisal attack against these homes will in most cases cause harm to civilians," an Amnesty director said.



• When asked on Al Jazeera (11 January) to confirm or deny reports that his government was using white phosphorous bombs in Gaza, Israeli spokesman Mark Regev implicitly confirmed them by arguing that his government was not using any weapons banned by international law, and that at any rate, Nato forces, too, are equipped with the substance and have plans to use it (as the U.S. did in Falluja, Iraq). While it is true that international conventions do not prohibit the use of these incendiary bombs for illumination or to produce smoke to hide troop movements, their use against humans is illegal, especially civilians, because they set fire to everything they touch until the phosphorous burns itself out. The tell-tale dazzling white plumes over Gaza City visible to the whole world on television verify what hospitals on the ground have reported: that the Israelis are burning human flesh.



These atrocities are not just the inadvertent side effects of Israel's targeting of Hamas, which is itself a crime, since Israel is admittedly trying to kill anyone associated in any way, armed or not, with the elected government of Gaza. They are an integral part of the strategy guiding Israel's war: the collective punishment of all of Gaza's people in order to weaken the influence of Hamas. Israel is trying to bend or break Hamas, but it is doing more than that. It is trying to teach the people of Gaza a lesson: submit or die. In this sense, Israel massacres in Gaza serve the same purpose as the year-and-a-half- long blockade before the massive assault began.



What goals these atrocities serve



All wars and armed actions are meant to achieve political goals. Israel's central and long-term aim is unchanged from what it pursued before this war: "The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people." (Moshe Yaalon, then chief of staff of the Israeli armed forces, in 2002, quoted by professor Rashid Khalidin, International Herald Tribune, 9 January 2009)



At the same time, it's impossible to understand Israel's ferocity without taking the broader context into account. Many commentators have said that Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak at first resisted pressure from others in his government to invade Gaza, although when he decided to do so, he went all out. ("Ending the war in Gaza," International Crisis Group, 5 January 2009) The New York Times wrote, "Barak never took Hamas as serious as many others did, considering it a relatively small strategic challenge whose rockets and arms build-up could be tolerated for a while to allow bigger problems to be handled... 'His eyes are focused on Iran,' noted Gilead Sher, who was Barak's chief of staff when he was prime minister a decade ago. 'Hamas and Hezbollah largely worry him in relation to Iran.'" (NYT, 9 January 2009).



By attacking the much weaker and geographically isolated Hamas, Israel wants to get revenge and prove its might after the humiliating setbacks it suffered at the hands of the Islamic movement Hezbollah in its 2006 invasion of Lebanon. "For Israel, it was important to persuade not only Hamas but others in the region that the Islamist movement could not extract concessions through violence — that it was not Israel's equal." (International Crisis Group)



Israel did not live up to the terms of its ceasefire with Hamas by opening Gaza's borders for food and other supplies because it did not want the Islamic organisation to show Palestinians that it could rule despite Israeli opposition. When in retaliation, Hamas let a few rockets be fired, and after Hamas responded to an Israeli attack by firing more in December in what the Crisis Group calls an armed attempt at obtaining a stronger negotiating position, Israel felt it had to prove that it alone had a monopoly on the use of violence. This is the point no matter what it decides to do next — whether Tel Aviv accepts a ceasefire that might weaken Hamas but lets it survive, for fear that no one else could restrain Palestinians like this Islamic group, a solution that the ICG favours, or whether, as the ICG warns, "the dynamics of warfare ... push the undertaking much further."



Hamas has its own political goals in this war. It never even dreamed of defeating Israel militarily at this point. It may need only to survive to gain a political victory, bolstering its standing as the leadership of any possible Palestinian resistance. In the ICG's analysis, Israel faces the contradiction that the more they attack Hamas, the more they improve its political standing. This could lead Israel to stop short at some point, or it could lead it to fight for a more drastic solution.



Either way, from the start Israel's decision to assault Gaza was intended to draw civilian casualties. A former senior Israeli defence ministry advisor told the Crisis Group, "Israel decided to play the role of mad dog for the sake of future deterrence." The fact that these massacres are a part of a cold-blooded strategy makes them all the more criminal.



What the U.S. and Israel share



As the U.S. government arrogantly admits, it has acted to prevent a ceasefire until Israel's aims are accomplished. If and when this particular assault halts, the U.S and Israel will continue to pursue those aims in new forms. Israel's war aims are shared by the U.S., which also shares the infamy for the deaths inflicted with American weapons and munitions. These aims include the protection of the Jewish state, the U.S.'s only thoroughly reliable outpost in a region whose population seethes with indignation. They also include confronting Islamic fundamentalism and the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is a central necessity in the US crusade to more thoroughly impose its will on the region and achieve the incontestable world hegemony on the political and economic fronts that has so far eluded the world's only superpower.



The U.S.'s unabashed support for Israel means that it also shares the risks inherent in this war: that it "will inflame the region, and Iran will take advantage of this," as a Hamas leader told the ICG. Hamas is just as logical in its thinking as Israel, both in its acceptance of the existence of Israel under present world conditions and in its hopes for what Israel fears, a radical change in that world situation.



The Crisis Group, an international advisory organisation whose aim is to maintain the present world order, which inherently means the imperialist economic and political system that underlies it, cynically fears that civilian deaths may bring "political damage (regional polarisation and radicalisation, further discrediting of any 'moderates' or 'peace process'… What is required is a Lebanon-type diplomatic outcome."



Certainly any diplomatic outcome will be as squarely aimed at the Palestinian people as this war has been. Israel can't solve its "Palestinian problem" without wave after wave of oppression and cruelty. Therefore, no matter what the terms are, more "radicalisation" seems possible. What form that radicalisation may take — what political goals and ideology guide it — is a critical question for the future of the Palestinian people and the region. That also applies to the mounting radical anger we have seen in protests on every continent.

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The Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews and Israel's massacres of Palestinians



12 January 2009. A World to Win News Service. The following is excerpted from a longer article in AWTWS 31 January 2005, with new beginning and final paragraphs.



It's intolerable for the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews to be used as an argument to support the murders committed by Israel. Now, as in the past, these imperialist powers and their leaders have never had any special love for Jews, and still less have they ever really opposed any oppression.



The truth is that the U.S. and UK failed to lift a finger to stop that genocide, covered it up while it was happening, and after the war protected the men who did it.



When the Nazis came to power in the German elections of 1933, they aimed to drive the Jews out of Germany. But few countries let them in. In fact, only one welcomed them in unlimited numbers: the then socialist U.S.SR. In 1938, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt convened the Evian Conference, a meeting of 32 countries held in France, to decide what to do about Jewish refugees. Although the U.S. and UK were admitting tens of thousands of a year, ten times more were applying for visas. The two main powers asked other countries to take them instead. France refused. The only country in attendance that agreed to increase its quotas was the Dominican Republic. The Nazi press saluted the conference as a sign that the world was coming around to its racial policies.



The SS Saint Louis departed Hamburg, Germany, in May 1939 bound for Cuba with 937 desperate refugees aboard, nearly all German Jews. Most had applied for visas to the U.S. Cuba had given them permission to land there while they waited for an answer. Just before they arrived, the U.S. pushed Cuba to change its mind and forbid the refugees to leave the ship. No other Latin American country would take them either. The ship sailed so close to American shores that passengers could see the lit streets of Miami at night. It waited offshore for a response to a cable sent to Roosevelt asking for humanitarian refuge. The U.S. government had already decided against them, but sent no reply. In June, the ship was forced to return to Europe, where many of its passengers ended up in Nazi death camps.



By 1941, when the Nazis officially forbade Jewish emigration, more than 80 percent of German Jews had already left. But the German invasion of Poland had brought Europe's main concentration of Jews under the control of the Third Reich. As the Nazi armies moved through Eastern Europe and into the Soviet Union, rampaging through heavily Jewish areas in Byelorussia and Ukraine, many millions of Jews came under their boot. In January 1942, at a conference in a leafy green suburb of Berlin called Wansee, they adopted a plan for "the final solution": all Jews would be sent to camps in the east. Those too weak to work would be exterminated. The rest would be worked and starved to death. Those who survived would also be exterminated.



The Western Allies knew about this, but kept it secret. When the World Jewish Council in Geneva sent the U.S. State Department a cable detailing the Wansee plans, the government not only ignored it but also told a leading American rabbi who had also received the report to keep his mouth shut. The Vatican knew the full story from the beginning through Catholic sources, but despite requests from below, Pope Pius XII refused to make a public statement against killing Jews, whom the Church still officially considered "Christ killers". Today the Vatican is trying to have that pope declared a saint.



In the Warsaw ghetto, a Jewish fighting organisation led by communists and other resistance forces sent scouts through the sewers and beyond the walls where the Nazis had locked them in. They followed the trains that were taking families away by the thousands to an unknown destination. At the end of the line was Auschwitz, where eventually more than a million Jews, 75,000 non-Jewish Poles, 18,000 Roma (Gypsies) and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war were to perish, killed by poison gas, their bodies burned in ovens.



A representative of the pro-British Polish government overthrown by the Nazis was brought into the ghetto to hear their story. They described the camp and told him that the trains were carrying 10,000 Jews a day to their deaths from Warsaw alone. Although not particularly inclined toward Jews, he agreed to slip out of Poland and tell the British and American authorities, thinking that as a political ally they would listen to him. He was the kind of man who expected to meet with Churchill, and he had a long talk with Roosevelt. Nothing happened.



Auschwitz, like the other concentration camps, was fed its constant intake of Jewish lives and coal by rail starting in 1942. Without those railroad tracks, the death factory would have ground to a halt and the gas ovens grown cold. Why didn't the Allies bomb them?

Auschwitz was approaching its infernal climax. Poland was emptied of Jews. The trains brought 440,000 Hungarians, half of the country's Jewish population, to their deaths over the course of only a few weeks in May and June. The U.S. and Britain merely watched.

In August and September of that year, the U.S. Air Force staged bombing runs on an industrial complex less than five minutes by air away from the gas chambers. An Auschwitz survivor speaking in a recent BBC documentary bitterly recalls how she and other prisoners watched hundreds of warplanes pass over their heads. They said to each other, Why don't they bomb this place? Even if they kill many of us, that's the only chance any of us have to live.

October 1944 saw one of the known prisoner revolts at Auschwitz. Hundreds of prisoners attacked the guards with axes and rocks. They used smuggled explosives to blow up a gas chamber and set a crematorium on fire. The Allies were considering airdropping guns on the camp. They never did.



In fact, the camps continued running without outside interference until 27 January 1945, when the Soviet Red Army arrived at its gates. They found about 7,000 survivors, all too weak to walk. The Nazis had taken another 58,000 with them on a death march as they fled to the west. They were determined that even if they were defeated, no Jews would remain alive.

The crimes of the U.S., however, did not stop on that date. Very few Nazi leaders and executioners were ever brought to justice for the simple reason that the U.S. protected them. Shortly after the war, the U.S. recruited many former leading Nazis as partners in their efforts against the Soviet Union.



The vicious Allied powers identified three million Germans as having committed crimes during the war. A million were tried. Eleven were sentenced to death. A few received short prison sentences. Most of the rest had to pay a fine or were briefly ineligible to hold public office. In 1951, almost all of them were amnestied. Big capitalists like Krupp whose factories had used concentration camp labour were given their fortunes back. The Nazi commandant at Auschwitz was hung. But of the 10,000 members of the elite Nazi SS who administered the murders there, only about 750 suffered even the slightest punishment.



As recently reaffirmed by the book U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis by Norman J. W. Goda, based on official American archives, thousands of Nazis and SS officers were brought to the U.S. where "they could be useful in countering communist leanings in immigrant communities, " as an Associated Press article put it. The Catholic Church and American military intelligence worked together to smuggle some of the most notorious Nazis out of Germany. In fact, Goda says, the CIA took a group of German officers who had been responsible for intelligence on the Eastern Front and used them as the core around which to build West Germany's future intelligence service, still at work today.



One big reason explaining the conduct of the U.S., UK, France and other Western powers during the war is this: If the truth about the extermination camps became known, public pressure to do something about it would have interfered with their freedom to set military priorities according to their overall war aims. They also believed, not without justification, that many Jews were sympathetic to the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks emancipated the Jews in a country, Tsarist Russia, which had been a hellhole for them for centuries. They welcomed Jews into the revolutionary movement and the public life from which they were previously banned. In the course of World War 2, the Red Army saved the lives of 1.5 million of the 4 million Jews in German-occupied or invaded territory. (Arno Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?)



If you want to know what the U.S.'s aims were, look at what came out of it when they won: America became the chief imperialist power, able to fatten on exploitation around the world. The UK, although taken down a peg from its former position, survived as a major power and became the U.S.'s chief partner. Germany and Japan, which had tried and failed to achieve the kind of global dominance the U.S. did achieve, had no choice but to become associate members in the U.S.-led crime syndicate. The U.S. and UK could not spare a single bomb to save Jewish lives because they had other aims. They protected Nazis after the war for the same kind of imperialist reasons.



Today, in one of history's most cruel ironies, the rulers of all the Western powers — today's representatives of the same monopoly capitalist ruling classes active or complicit in the genocide of Europe's Jews — use it to justify yet more murder: Israel's oppression and massacres of the Palestinian people. The U.S., in particular, with the support of all the other imperialist powers, has built up Israel as a key outpost in the enforcement of imperialist interests in the region, not because of supposed Jewish influence in public life but for the same reasons they allowed the Jewish genocide in the first place: imperialist interests.



Today's ruling reactionaries equate opposition to Israel with anti-Semitism in a cynical effort to cover up the real nature of Israel and the role it plays, which many Jews oppose. Israel does have a special relationship with Washington, as American politicians so often proclaim, because its citizens enjoy benefits from their country's services to the U.S., while people in other countries in the region reap misery from their country's subservience to it. But while equating Israel and Jewish people in general promotes Zionism, it also foments anti-Semitism, as if the reason for the crimes that fill most of humanity with revulsion were some supposedly inherent Jewish nature and not imperialism and its Zionist partners.



Some pro-Palestinian protestors in Europe have been carrying signs that cut to the heart of the matter: "Gaza = Warsaw ghetto". That's a correct position in the face of the efforts to use a genocide to justify massacres.



We shouldn't take events out of their historical context, like the promoters of Zionism do, and get lost in unscientific comparisons. But one profound lesson of the genocide of the Jews is the same as what we're seeing in Gaza and Palestine today: the imperialist system will produce horrors, again and again, in different forms and often beyond our imagination, until it is overthrown throughout the world. In building opposition to the crimes of today, we need to link this to ending a criminal system

50 YEARS OF CUBAN REVOLUTION

Yesterday world celebrated 50 years of Cuban revolution. On this occassion i post this article published in the website of Communist Party of Great Britian (ML)


New Year’s Day is a day for celebrating, not only as it is the dawn of a new calendar year but also as it marks the triumphant day on which the Cuban people ousted the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, so ridding themselves of the shackles of capitalism and setting out on the road toward socialism.

This New Year, 2009, is especially significant as it will be the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. No doubt there will be big celebrations across Cuba, and these are bound to be mirrored around the world by the masses of exploited and oppressed people who recognise the huge achievements brought about by the Cuban revolution and who hold dear the shining example of the Cuban people, who have demonstrated for half a century what working people are capable of when they take power.

A Spanish colony

Cuba spent some 400 years as a Spanish colony, having been ‘discovered’ by Columbus in 1492. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, a fierce anti-colonial struggle developed, lead by José Martí and the Cuban Revolutionary Party.

By 1897, the success of the independence movement seemed within reach, with the Spanish prime minister making the following statement: “After having sent 200,000 men and shed so much blood, we don’t own any more land on the island than what our soldiers are stepping on.” (Quoted in Prof J Cantón Navarro, History of Cuba)

However, just a few months later, in February 1898, the US battleship Maine blew up in Havana Bay and drew the US into a war with the Spanish. It is widely believed that the attack on the battleship was actually instigated by the US in order to pull Spain into a war for the ‘ownership’ of Cuba.

The US were the victors of that war, and so, in 1899, dominion over Cuba was transferred to the US, which granted nominal independence to the island in 1902, but retained economic control until the revolution in 1959.

A US neo-colony

The first half of the 20th century saw Cuba descend into a haven for drugs, prostitution and gambling, as the US ruling class, with the help of the Cuban comprador bourgeoisie, turned the small island into an offshore playground.

Successive Cuban governments showed themselves to be nothing more than puppets of US imperialism, maintaining the status quo and allowing the wealth of the land to be leeched by foreign imperialists while the average Cuban was left to serve the colonisers or starve.

Nevertheless, throughout this period, progressive forces continued to mobilise and struggle against the reactionary governments. The increasing strength of the movement was illustrated on 10 March 1952, when Fulgencio Batista, in a bid to prevent a communist candidate winning the elections, seized power by force.

Batista had been a military man for many years and had served the establishment well, suppressing uprisings during the 1930s and 40s. In 1940, he served a term of four years as elected president, during which time US trade relations increased and Cuba entered the second world war on the side of the allies.

Following the coup d’etat in 1952, Batista ruled Cuba with an iron fist. He abolished the constitution, dismissed the Congress of the Republic and firmly held open the door to US imperialism.

Fidel Castro, then a young revolutionary, denounced the coup and called on all Cubans to fight the dictatorship, warning: “once again there is tyranny, but there will also be men like Mella, Trejo and Guiteras [revolutionaries who had fought Spanish and US forces]. There is oppression in the homeland, but there will be a day of liberty again”. (Quoted in History of Cuba, op cit)

Moncada Barracks

Following this call to fight, Castro got together with a group of other revolutionaries who had fought in previous uprisings, with the intention of carrying out an attack on the military regime and thus providing a catalyst for further uprisings.

The target of this attack was to be the Moncada Barracks, the second-largest barracks in Cuba, located a fair distance from any potential back-up forces, as well as being on the outskirts of Santiago de Cuba, where the independence movement had always been strong.

During the night of 26 July 1953, a group of 131 combatants led in three groups by Fidel Castro, Abel Santamaria and Raúl Castro attacked the barracks. Despite extensive and secretive preparation by Fidel and others, the first attacking column was intercepted by an unscheduled patrol of Batista’s forces, sparking a battle and alerting the rest of the barracks to the attack.

Almost all the combatants were captured, eight being killed in battle while a handful escaped. The following day, a further 50 fighters were executed as a warning to others. The rest were tried, along with others who had been rounded up but had no involvement in the attack.

It was during the Moncada Barracks trial that Fidel gave one of his most famous speeches, now recognised by his final statement: “History will absolve me”. Fidel used the speech to expose the brutality of the Batista regime, the downtrodden existence of the Cuban people and the need to fight for liberty and freedom.

He also outlined five revolutionary laws that would have been proclaimed if the attack had been successful. These laws were to “return power to the people”, “give non-mortgageable and non-transferable ownership of land to all tenants”, “grant workers and employees the right to share 30 percent of the profits of all large industry”, “grant all sugar planters the right to share 55 percent of sugar production”, and to confiscate “all holdings and ill-gotten gains … of previous regimes … Half of the property recovered would be used to subsidise retirement funds for workers and the other half would be used for hospitals, asylums and charitable organisations.”

The success of the defence team, in spite of limitations imposed on them by the court, meant that only 26 were found guilty, and a large proportion of these were given lenient sentences.

Movement of 26 July

Fidel, however, along with several others involved in the attack, was sentenced to 15 years and imprisoned in Isle of Pines. Two years later, following continued protests for their release, and in the face of increasing unrest, Batista granted the release of Castro and the other imprisoned combatants.

On their release, they were greeted with great popular acclaim and determined to continue the work they had started. So, in June 1955, Castro and several other revolutionaries who had attacked the Moncada Barracks held an official meeting and formed the Movement of 26 July (M 26-J).

As M 26-J increased its activity, so too did the repressive measures of the Batista regime. By July, Fidel had decided that, in order to effectively organise, he needed to leave the country and train elsewhere.

Mexico and Guevara

Having relocated to Mexico, Castro and several others set up camp, specifically choosing remote terrain similar to Cuba’s in order to prepare themselves for the next stage of the struggle. It was here that they met Che Guevera.

Che had fled persecution in Guatemala and, having met some of the M 26-J comrades previously, was introduced to Castro and so began his involvement in the preparations for the Cuban revolution.

M 26-J members in Mexico maintained constant communication with the workers’ and peasants’ struggles taking place in Cuba. Fidel wrote manifestos for the movement analysing the struggle and the tasks ahead, which were distributed in Cuba.

While the revolutionaries trained in Mexico, hardships suffered by the Cuban population under Batista increased the support for the goals set out by the M 26-J.

Granma

After a year of mobilising troops and building up the forces both in Mexico and in Cuba, the M 26-J planned coordinated attacks across the country, with the Mexican contingent travelling across the Gulf to reinforce the eastern front.

On 25 November 1956, from the port of Tupax, Mexico, the Granma, only a small boat, carried 82 members of the M 26-J across the Gulf of Mexico, aiming for Cuba’s eastern coast. However, the heavy load on the boat slowed the journey, delaying its landing to 2 December, two days after the attacks of the M 26-J were to be launched.

This proved almost fatal for the insurrection as, despite the forces within Cuba mounting uprisings and making some gains, they had not been the outright victors. The delay of the Granma meant that Batista’s forces were at the boat’s landing site within an hour with all the planes and troops they could muster.

In the face of this military onslaught, and against all odds, the rebels continued towards the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. However, a large part of their contingent was captured and over 20 executed on the spot. The remaining 10 members moved deeper into the mountains and regrouped, ready to continue the fight against the regime.

During the next 24 months, the 10 members of M 26-J in the Sierra Maestra recruited workers and peasants from across the countryside and towns as a fierce war ensued against the regime.

As Fidel recounted on the 40th anniversary of the revolution: “the infallible tactic of attacking the enemy when it was on the move was a key factor [to success]. The art of provoking those forces into moving out of their well-fortified and generally invulnerable positions became one of our commands’ greatest skills.” (Speech made in Céspedes Park, Santiago de Cuba, 1 January 1999)

By December 1958, the rebel army, with Fidel as commander-in-chief, and Che Guevara, Camilio Cienfuegos, Raúl Castro, Juan Alemida and Celia Sánchez as leaders of the columns, led the forces across the country taking city after city and growing in number by the day.

Che Guevara’s Column No. 8, by this time made up of 300 well-armed and experienced troops, was joined on 29 December by 5,000 recruits trained in the Escambray mountains in the battle for Santa Cruz.

This was the dictatorship’s last and most powerful stronghold. The rebels captured enemy positions one by one, cutting off communication and finally taking all government troops prisoner and seizing control of the city.

At 2.00am on 1 January 1959, Batista fled the country, leaving the rebel army victorious. Thus it was, five years, five months and five days after the attack on the Moncada Barracks, that the programme publicised during the Moncada trial for developing a Cuba for the Cuban people was finally put into action.

Soy Cuba – depiction of Cuban life

For a real flavour of this struggle, it is well worth watching the beautifully filmed and choreographed epic Soy Cuba (I am Cuba).

Using the lives of several Cubans, from a farmer forced to sell all his land to the United Fruit Company to a young girl living in a tin shack having to serve opulent US and foreign ‘diplomats’, it shows graphically the disparity between the life of a Cuban and that of the foreign and comprador bourgeoisie under Batista.

The film aptly portrays the struggle in the towns by the students and workers and how this eventually combined with the guerrilla war led by Fidel, Che, Camilo Cienfuegos and the other fighters and the thousands of recruits who joined the guerrillas from the countryside.

The film ends with the triumphant scene of the guerrilla army advancing victoriously towards Havana.

The revolution continues

The revolutionary government began by addressing the poverty, hunger and illiteracy that had plagued the lives of Cubans for the past century.

The sentiment of the five revolutionary laws outlined in Fidel’s ‘History will absolve me’ speech was put into action. In May 1959, under the Agrarian Reform act, Cuba began expropriating land and private property for the benefit of more than 100,000 rural families.

Rental costs were reduced by 50 percent. Social security measures were extended across the entire population.

The revolution embarked upon creating 10,000 classrooms for the 10,000 teachers without jobs to be able to teach the 600,000 children not then in school. They also began training voluntary teachers, who were then sent to wherever they were needed, thus becoming part of the campaign to rid Cuba of illiteracy.

By 1960, the government had nationalised more than $25bn worth of private property in Cuba, and on 6 August 1960, Cuba nationalised all US-owned property, as well as all other foreign-owned property.

This move unsurprisingly brought the wrath of the already fuming imperialist power. The US government seized all Cuban assets abroad and tightened the embargo that it had imposed following the success of the revolution.

Since 1962, the US has maintained a full economic blockade of the country.

Bay of Pigs

Cuba became one of US imperialism’s most hated states, not only because it seized assets previously under the control of US corporations, directly hitting the US economy, but also because of the example it set to all the downtrodden exploited masses in the US and elsewhere of what is possible when power is seized by the working class and peasantry.

Thus it was that the wrath of US imperialism was not only felt economically through the embargo but also militarily.

In 1961, the US staged an attack on the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to oust Fidel and the Communist Party from Cuba. The invasion was defeated, however, through the coordination of the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (who rounded up all pro-Batista and US forces, preventing them from mobilising a coup within towns), combined with a strong military response led by Fidel.

Economic blockade and subversive attack

Having failed to get rid of socialist Cuba by direct invasion in 1961, US imperialism has not relented and continues to this day in its attempts to undermine the revolution.

This is done through encouraging and financing counterrevolutionary and terrorist activities against Cuba, from backing Luis Posada Carriles, the self-confessed terrorist who has attacked Venezuela and Cuba and now is protected by the US, to funding Hermanos al Rescate (Brothers to the Rescue [!]), a terrorist group created in the US to attack Cuba.

The period from 1959 to 1997 saw “5,780 terrorist actions against Cuba, 804 of them considered as terrorist attacks of significant magnitude, including 78 bombings against the population that caused thousands of victims”. (‘Fifty years of US terrorism against Cuba’, Voltaire.net, 15 December 2005)

This is in addition to the economic blockade that the US has held Cuba under for almost 50 years, which prevents a vast number of goods entering Cuba, from food to medicine, affecting every area of Cuban life. Estimates in 2004 calculated the total direct damage to the economy caused by the blockade at $80bn. (‘The US blockade of Cuba’, Cuba Solidarity Campaign)

In 1992, just after Cuba had lost 85 percent of her trade with the Soviet Union following the latter’s collapse, the US senate tightened the blockade passing the Cuban Democracy Act[!], known as the Torricelli Act. The act, as outlined by Congressmen Torricelli himself, was designed to “wreak havoc on the island”, extending the blockade to countries outside the US and thus preventing the purchase of vital goods by Cuba.

Then, in 1996, the US passed the equally inappropriately titled Cuban Liberty and Democracy Solidarity Act, aka the Helms-Burton Act, extending the embargo to penalise any foreign company that trades with Cuba. It also called for more active interference in the running of the country, through funding subversive activity as mentioned above and increasing the use of external radio and TV broadcasts into Cuba from Miami, notably Radio Marti and TV Marti.

The Helms-Burton Act also further restricted the sale of Cuban goods within the US, which for a moment in 1999 was broken following Cuba’s development of a vaccine against meningitis B. After an outbreak in the US, the Treasury Department finally relented and granted a licence in 1999, having refused to do so for over 10 years.

It is in the face of this that the Cuban people, led by the Communist Party of Cuba, have not only survived but made massive strides in improving the standard of living of all Cubans.

A Cuban diplomat at a recent meeting of the UN member states, at which, for the 17th consecutive year, an overwhelming majority of members (96 percent) voted to condemn the US blockade, stated: “[The US] will never be able to bring the Cuban people to their knees. Neither blockades nor hurricanes will be able to take away our spirit. There will be no human or natural force capable of subjugating the Cuban people”. (‘UN General Assembly condemns US economic blockade against Cuba for the 17th consecutive year’, Cuba News Daily, 30 October 2008)

Cuban achievements

The Cuban people enjoy a standard of living incomparable in the western world. Incomparable not because of the material goods they have, as these are undoubtedly limited, but because of the freedoms that they benefit from: the freedom that ensures every Cuban lives under shelter, has the right to universal free education and access to a healthcare system that is not dependant on income. In short, the freedom to live a full life no matter who you are or which family you are born into.

Housing

Decent housing for all is a right guaranteed by the Cuban constitution. Homelessness is unheard of. Housing costs in Cuba have been maintained at a low level, with many either owning their homes outright or paying an average of 10 percent of income towards their homes.

This is in stark contrast to the insecurity of many in Britain, one of the world’s richest countries, where mortgage rates are such that house repossessions have increased by over 45 percent, with estimations of over 45,000 homes being taken back by lenders by the end of the year. (‘Figures from house repossessions soar to 12-year-high’, The Independent, 8 August 2008)

Education

As for education, the initial ambition of the revolution to rid Cuba of illiteracy has long since been achieved, something not all so-called developed countries can lay claim to. Education is taken very seriously, with 10 percent of Cuba’s GDP being spent on providing free, universal education for all.

Education is compulsory to ninth grade, with one teacher for every 36.8 inhabitants, as compared to one teacher for every 802 inhabitants in the UK. (Figures from ‘Eye-witness to socialism: school education in Cuba’, Proletarian, February 2007)

Unlike the increasingly expensive university education that is a privilege rather than a right in the imperialist world, all Cubans can attend any of Cuba’s 47 universities free of charge. Scholarships are also open to less privileged students from Latin America, the Caribbean, and even the US and Europe, many of whom study medicine and are encouraged to return to their homelands after graduation to implement their skills there.

Health

Before the revolution, only 8 percent of the rural population had access to health care, but today Cuba can boast of a system that provides free health care to its entire population, as highlighted in the recent Michael Moore film Sicko.

The doctor to patient ratio in Cuba is higher than any other country, with a doctor for every 169 inhabitants. In Britain, on the other hand, the average doctor has to attend to 600 inhabitants. The effect of this is that general check-ups are far more frequent and monitoring for potential illness or disease is much easier in Cuba.

Consequently, Cuban life expectancy matches that of the US or Britain, and is way above other developing countries, yet for a fraction of the cost, since the emphasis is on preventative medicine and full health, rather than the system only dealing with those who are already sick and in need of expensive treatments.

The advances in medical research and techniques in Cuba have also been astounding. Not least, the meningitis B vaccine previously mentioned, which was developed in the 1980s, despite the blockade severely limiting the medical supplies that are allowed into Cuba owing to the extent of US patents on treatments.

It is to the credit of the well-managed, centrally organised socialist system that it is able to provide treatment and operations for 11.2 million Cubans despite these limited supplies from abroad.

Cuba puts paid to myth of the ‘inefficiencies of public money’ that has been peddled by our bourgeoisie to justify the dismantling of the NHS in Britain. If the will is there, the funding and results can be found.

The difference between Britain and Cuba is not that the doctors and nurses in Britain do not care, but rather that that, in a system where profit is the driving force, corners will be cut wherever possible, whether the company in question is making cars or providing health care. In socialist Cuba, where people come first, health care, education, shelter and security are the focus, and everything else comes second.

Cuban internationalism

The achievements Cuba has made have also benefited hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people across the globe.

During the 1960s and 1970s Cuba gave much-needed political and military support to independence struggles in Africa, not least those of Angola and Namibia. In 1979, Cuba’s military support to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua assisted them in the defeat of Somoza’s dictatorship.

Cuba’s medical expertise has been shared the world over, with over 25,000 doctors sent to 68 countries. This is in stark contrast to the ‘brain drain’ of doctors who are tempted away from third world countries to serve in the NHS in Britain.

Cuba has given support to many afflicted peoples at times of great need. After the south Asian tsunami, Cuba sent teams of medics to give support, as she did also in the aftermath of earthquakes in Pakistan.

It is also well known that after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2007, Cuba was one of the first countries to offer assistance in the form of 1,500 doctors. The US, despite a severe shortage, never accepted this offer.

In collaboration with Venezuela, the continent-wide Operación Milagro (Operation Miracle) has been underway for three years, treating vast numbers of poor people who have lost, or are losing, their eyesight, by providing free ophthalmology operations. Cuba provides the doctors and expertise while Venezuela provides transportation, accommodation and food, in effect giving sight back to over 6 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the potential for the programme to be extended even further.

As part of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americans), Cuba and Venezuela have also agreed to share expertise and goods. Cuba is providing doctors, who work in neighbourhoods across Venezuela as part of Mission Barrio Ardentro. In return, Cuba purchases crude oil at reduced rates.

Support socialist Cuba

The developments in Latin America as a whole have been tremendously positive for the small island of Cuba. From the collapse of the USSR in 1991 until recently, Cuba was an isolated socialist country, struggling alone in the Americas against the might of US imperialism just 90 miles to the north, with a host of US puppet regimes to the south.

Now, with Venezuela and Bolivia standing as strong allies, along with several other progressive Latin American countries, Cuba’s position has been strengthened. In addition, the increased trade links with China and Russia will also strengthen Cuba’s presence and stability in the region.

While capitalism is deep in crisis, the example that Cuba sets the working class and oppressed people should be broadcast as widely as possible. Cuba is a country that all progressive people should be proud of. When asked what alternative there is to capitalism, we should outline what the Communist Party of Cuba, supported by the people of Cuba, has been able to achieve in the face of constant imperialist aggression.

The proletariat in the imperialist countries must stand shoulder to shoulder with the Cuban people in their heroic defence of Cuban independence and socialism and against US imperialist bullying, trade blockades and threats of invasion and aggression.

Celebrate New Year’s Day this year with added vigour, remembering what has been achieved in Cuba and what could be achieved by a successful socialist revolution in Britain.

Bush in Baghdad: "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog"

The article given below is from A world to Win News Service


Bush in Baghdad: "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog"


15 December 2008. A World to Win News Service. U.S. President George W. Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad to say farewell to the country his government raped. The highlight, a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, was touted as proof of the improved situation for the occupation.



Just as Bush concluded his remarks, a young Iraqi journalist in the audience stood up and hurled a shoe at the U.S. president, shouting, "This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog!" Then he threw the other shoe, adding, "This is from the widows, the orphans and all those who were killed in Iraq!" Bush ducked and the shoes hit the U.S. and Iraqi flags behind his head.



Hitting someone with the sole of your shoe is an extreme insult in the Arab world. All Iraqis remember the way people pounded Saddam Hussein's statue and portraits with their shoes when he went down.



The journalist, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, was present as an accredited correspondent for a satellite television station that broadcasts from Cairo, and had passed a U.S. Secret Service background check. His family was known to have suffered arrests under the regime of Saddam Hussein. He was said to have been deeply shaken by the American outrages at Abu-Ghraib, and then by the dead children he saw as a reporter on the scene during the U.S. bombing of the Sadr City slums last March. His employer described him as a "proud Arab and an open-minded man."



Bush made light of the incident. "This is what happens in a free society," he said. People in Iraq were not so convinced about the "freedom" the U.S. has brought Iraqis. U.S. Secret Service agents and Iraqi security guards could be seen beating Zaidi in the press conference room and he could be heard yelling “My hand, my hand.” Apparently the beating continued out of sight in the next room. His brother told BBC that he had suffered a broken hand, broken ribs, an eye injury and internal bleeding.



The 28-year-old journalist wasn't speaking just for himself. Two other reporters present were also arrested and beaten after his act, reportedly for remarking that it was courageous.



The next day thousands of people marched in the capital's Sadr City, Najaf and Basra, brandishing shoes and demanding his release. Since then some Iraqis have taken to throwing shoes at passing American patrols. Support for him is said to be overwhelming among Iraqis, crossing religious and ethnic lines among all those opposed to the occupation.



He has been taken as a role model by other journalists across the Middle East. Many are wondering, half seriously, if from now on press conferences with American officials will be "socks only". Among the hundreds of lawyers who have volunteered to defend Zaidi, some are reportedly Americans. Many comments on the Al Jazeera Web site posted from the U.S., Canada and Europe said Zaidi spoke for them and “simple folk across the planet.” Tens of thousands of people have joined Facebook groups set up on the Web in his support.



Zaidi’s brother said he was outraged by the U.S.-Iraqi Status of Forces treaty (see AWTWNS 27 October) whose signing Bush came to Baghdad to celebrate. Part of what’s fuelling a new swell of popular anger in Iraq is that Bush may be saying goodbye, but the U.S. occupation does not seem about to end. In the days before the press conference, U.S. commanding general Ray Odierno, on whose judgment incoming president Barack Obama says he will rely, announced that although the treaty promises that American troops will withdraw from Iraqi cities and towns after June 2009, he intends to keep "thousands" in the capital and other urban centres by re-labelling them "enablers" rather than combat forces. He suggested that the Iraqi government might later change the treaty and allow the U.S. to remain for years to come after the 2011 deadline it calls for. Speaking in favour of that idea, a spokesman for the Maliki government guessed that might mean another decade of occupation.

And for those who think they missed the opportunity to throw their shoes at Bush, dont worry. Here is a chance for u too to throw the bastard

http://sockandawe.com/

Chief Seattle's Letter

With Barack Obama being elected president of the US, the question doing rounds is whether there will be a change in US. Is a sudden change possible in the Empire that rules the world. People like Fidel Castro thinks “it would be extremely naive to believe that the good intentions of an intelligent person could change centuries of interests and selfishness already created.” Yes centuries of interests and selfishness...

But has America always been like that? Definitely not. The letter written by a Red Indian chieftain in 1855 suggests that america had a different past too.

In 1855 the president of the United States Franklin Pierce wrote to Chief Seattle with an offer from the government to buy his people’s land. The US government was offering Seattle a considerable sum. And it was in reply to this Chief Seattle wrote the letter. The letter is also an eye opener to those who advocate to civilize the savage and bring them to the mainstream.

Here for my readers i post the famous letter

The Great White Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. He also sends words of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him since we know he has little need of our friendship in return. But we will consider your offer. What I say the Great White Chief can count on as truly as our white brothers can count on the turning of the seasons. My words are like stars: they do not set.

How can you buy or sell the sky; the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water, so how can you buy them from us? We will decide in our time, but every part of the Earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every glade and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know that the white man doesn’t understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the Earth whatever he wants. The Earth is not his brother but his enemy; and when he conquers it he moves on. He leaves his fathers’ graves behind and doesn’t care. He kidnaps the Earth from his children. His father’s graves and children’s birthrights are forgotten. His appetite will devour the Earth and leave behind a wasteland. The sight of your cities pains the eye of the red man. But perhaps this is because the red man is a “savage” and doesn’t understand.

There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. No place to hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insects’ wings. The clatter insults the ears. But perhaps I am only a “savage” and don’t understand. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lovely cry of the whippoorwill or the argument of the frogs around a pond at night? The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond, and the wind itself cleansed by the midday rain or scented with pinion. The air is precious to the red man for all things share the same breath: the beasts, the trees, the man. The white man doesn’t seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for days, he is numb to his own stench.

If I accept, I will make one condition: the white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers. I am just a “savage” and don’t understand any other way. I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a “savage” and do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo whom we kill only to live. What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone then men would die from a terrible loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth.

Our children have seen our fathers humbled in defeat. Our warriors have felt shame. After defeat they turn their days in idleness and contaminate their bodies with sweet food and strong drink. It matters little where we pass the rest of our days; they are not many. A few more hours, a few more winters, and none of the children of the great tribes that once lived on the Earth, or that roamed in small bands in the woods, will be left to mourn the graves of a people once as powerful and hopeful as yours. One thing we know that the white man may one day discover: our God and your God are the same. You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land, but you cannot. He is the God of man and his compassion is equal for the red man and the white. The Earth is precious to him, and to harm the Earth is to pour contempt on its creator. The whites too shall pass, perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your own bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses all tamed.What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by telegraph wires. Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift and then hunt, the end of living and the beginning of survival.

We might understand if we knew what it was that the white man dreams, what hopes he describes to his children on long winter nights, what visions he burns into their minds so that they will wish for tomorrow. But we are “savages”. The white man’s dreams are hidden from us. And because they are hidden we will go our own way. If we agree, it will be to secure the reservation you’ve promised. There, perhaps we may live out our brief days as we wish. When the last red man has vanished from the Earth, and our memory is just the shadow of a cloud passing across the prairie, these shores and forests will still hold the spirits of my people, for they love the Earth the way a newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat.

If we sell you our land, love it as we’ve loved it. Care for it as we’ve cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land, as it is when you take it. And with all your strength and all your might and with all your heart preserve it for your children, and love it as God loves us all. One thing we know: our God is the same as yours. The Earth is precious to him. Even the white man cannot be exempt from common destiny.

Afghan Maoists: On the military situation of the Taleban and other Islamic anti-government forces

The article given below is from A World to Win News Service. For those who r not subscribers of AWTWNS, i post it here.

Afghan Maoists: On the military situation of the Taleban and other Islamic anti-government forces

1 December 2008. A World to Win News Service. Following are edited excerpts from issue no. 19 (July 2008) of Shola Jawid, organ of the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan. The explanations in parentheses are by AWTWNS.



The Taleban made little use of guerrilla methods in their war against the "Islamic Interim State of Afghanistan" headed by Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmed Shah Massood (the warlord regime that came to power after the fall of the pro-Soviet regime in 1992 and eventually fell to the Taleban in 1996). For the most part their offensives took the form of conventional warfare.



In their initial confrontation with the U.S. and UK (after the October 2001 invasion), they used the same methods and suffered heavy losses. After two months of putting up more resistance than the invaders expected, they quickly retreated from the regions under their control. At that time they were unable to reorganise their forces to fight guerrilla warfare and continue fighting in the villages or mountains. In addition to these organisational and military questions, other major factors behind their inability to sustain the fighting were the lack of mass support and low morale in their own ranks due to the general assumption that it was impossible to resist the superior military forces led by the U.S. This defeat caused a relatively large section of the Taleban forces to defect and join the puppet regime.



The Taleban did not mount significant military operations between that time and the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq in 2003. The beginning of resistance in Iraq brought with it scattered guerrilla resistance by the Taleban and the growing activities by the (historically and organisationally distinct) Pakistani Taleban and Arab and non-Arab groups related to Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.



The widespread movement in the Western countries against the U.S. and UK invasion and occupation of Iraq increasingly turned its attention to the Afghanistan situation too. Previously the occupation of Afghanistan was not a big issue in these protests, in comparison with the war in Iraq. Further, the Iraq war widened the cracks among the imperialists, in particular between the U.S. and Russia, and somewhat intensified their contradictions. Moreover, the Taleban were able to gain manoeuvring room because of U.S. threats against Iran, on the one hand, and on the other Pakistan's alarm at the increasingly close relations between the U.S. and India, which Islamabad considers a threat to Pakistan's security and even to its existence. These factors created new conditions for cooperation between the Taleban and certain political forces and sections of the ruling classes in Iran and Pakistan.



However, the most important factor in sparking the revival of the Taleban was the consequences of the imperialist occupation and the rule of the regime they installed. This is the main reason why by 2006 the Taleban were strengthened to the point of becoming a relatively large force with bases in much of the country. In particular, the failure of the imperialists' reactionary reconstruction efforts in the political, economical, cultural and social spheres greatly helped the once-defeated and hated Taleban to regain influence among the masses and extend their military activities.



The Taleban made the most of the masses' increasing discontent with the occupiers and their puppet regime. Partly by relying on the masses in certain regions and with direct and indirect foreign support, they were able to give a more organised form to their scattered activities against the regime and the occupation armies, and win over new forces as well.



A report by the county's main security agency (the General Supervision of National Security) given to the regime's parliament largely reflects the intensification and expansion of Taleban military activities. The total number of Taleban operations recorded by this agency are as follows:



In 1383 (20 March 2004-20 March 2005) 1,466 actions

In 1384 (21 March 2005-20 March 2006) 1,796 actions

In 1385 (21 March 2006-20 March 2007) 3,012 actions

In 1386 (21 March 2007-20 March 2008) 4,118 actions



These figures include ambushes and assaults, sabotage, kidnappings, suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks, but not all Taleban military operations. For example, they do not include the numerous cases where, without fighting, the Taleban have seized villages briefly or even for a longer time. These operations are very important for the Taleban. When the regime loses control over these villages, the Taleban can enforce their own rules. They close girls' schools and establish their version of the Sharia (religious) justice system, impose Islamic taxes and collect donations. They also take over the security of poppy-growing farms, heroin production and drug trafficking. They have more freedom to run their religious schools and recruit from the people.



The Taleban recruiting methods are simple. They invite the inhabitants to join the jihad (holy war) against the kafir (infidels). They arm these volunteers and organise them into their ranks. In regions where they have more stable control, they demand that every certain number of families (for example 20) offer one person as a fighter, or that they pay the annual living expenses for one soldier. This kind of primitive recruiting has made it easy for spies and informers to infiltrate their ranks. The secret services have used the information they obtained in this way to inflict serious blows on the Taleban, including killing some of their leading commanders. But instead of changing their recruiting methods, the Taleban have tried to prevent infiltration by brutally punishing any spies and informers they can catch. Often this means beheading. Such terror has produced some results and seems to have hindered infiltration somewhat, but it has not been very effective. Moreover, it has given rise to so much discontent among the masses that recently Mullah Omar (the Taleban leader) ordered a halt to beheadings.



Taleban fighting tactics



The Taleban base their military tactics on the experiences of Afghanistan's previous wars, and, additionally, the methods used by Al Qaeda in Iraq. The operational methods used to occupy villages and districts are basically the same as during the war against the Soviet occupation. Suicide operations, however, were unknown in Afghanistan until recently. It is said the initial training for suicide attacks in Afghanistan took place in Iraq. The main Taleban guerrilla operations in urban areas are suicide bombings. The 27 April attack in Kabul that forced the Hamid Karzai government to cancel its celebrations (of the victory against the Soviet Union) in the capital and elsewhere – an operation with worldwide political impact – was meant to be a suicide attack. The regime is in such crisis that the members of its security forces ran way when the shooting started, so the attackers did not find it necessary to detonate their bombs and got away alive after their successful operation.



The Taleban fighters have no air defence weapons. Their arms and equipment come from three sources: the material remaining from their years in power, and that which they get from Iran and Pakistan. Certain sections of the ruling powers in these two countries support them to a certain degree. In addition, the Taleban have developed an almost nation-wide network for buying arms and ammunition. This is the only Taleban activity that is not limited to Pashtun areas.



It is impossible to have an opinion on the exact number of Taleban fighters. The occupiers and regime put their numbers at 15,000 – 20,000, but these statistics are far from reliable. The Taleban themselves have not put out figures, and in fact it is likely that they themselves do not have an accurate count. This is because most of their fighters are not permanent. Even their full-time fighters are not organised separately into a regular army. Many fighters are either part time or enlist for a limited time frame (often defined by harvests). Despite their relatively broad international connections, the Taleban and their fighting forces have mainly kept their tribal character. This is an impediment to combining their forces into a single army.



The Taleban suffer from an incurable limitation: they are known as the most violently Pashtun chauvinist organisation in Afghanistan. (At roughly 42 percent of the population, the Pashtun are not only by far the single biggest ethnic group but historically the country's oppressor nationality – Afghanistan means "land of the Pashtuns" in Farsi.) During their "Islamic Emirate", they acted with an extraordinary ruthlessness and brutality against non-Pashtun people. They harshly suppressed the people in general in non-Pastun regions and non-Pashtuns in the mixed areas in the north. In the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif they waged a brutal war of ethnic cleansing. That is why the Taleban forces are almost entirely Pashtun. In addition to the country's south and east, where Pashtun are the majority, they are also active in Pashtun minority regions in the west and north.



Many of the anti-Soviet jihadis and the formerly pro-Soviet militias who quickly capitulated to the U.S. claimed that these new invaders offered a ray of hope to save the country from the Pashtun-chauvinist Taleban. They continue to do so today. This factor played an important role in spreading capitulationism among the non-Pashtun nationalities. Over the years of occupation this "ray of hope" has lost much credibility, but the Taleban are still unable to exert much influence among the non-Pashtun nationalities. The Taleban themselves are aware of this limitation and that is why they do not make much effort to recruit from them.



The Pakistani Taleban have also emerged as an important force, able to carry out significant military operations over a wide area. But in Pakistan, too, they are a single-nationality movement, active only in Pashtun areas and mainly among the tribal areas. The Pakistani Taleban have played an important role in strengthening the Taleban movement as a whole and participated extensively in the war in Afghanistan. In some cases their actions have gotten more attention than their Afghan counterparts. For example, most of the suicide attacks attributed in Afghanistan are carried out by Pakistani Taleban. The Pakistani Taleban areas serve as a secure rear area for Afghan Taleban, where they can rest, train and satisfy logistical needs.



On other Islamist forces



Among other Islamist forces that fight the occupiers and the regime is the Hezb-e Islami, the Islamic Party of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (The prime minister of the Islamic regime established after the departure of the Soviet army, Hekmatyar's faction played a key role in reducing Kabul to rubble during the subsequent civil war among the former jihadis.) Like the Taleban, Hekmatyar's party is limited to the Pashtun heartland and Pashtun minority areas. The Islamic Party used to be multi-national, but after the occupation nearly all its non-Pashtun components joined the Karazi regime.



Where the Taleban are strong, the Islamic Party works through them. In fact, the Taleban do not allow anyone else to carry out independent activities. Where the party is stronger than the Taleban, they do mount their own military activities. For instance, it is widely believed that the Islamic Party and associated organisations are behind many of the operations in Ghazni (a province in east-central Afghanistan) .



Hekmatyar has some backing among fundamentalist circles in Pakistan and certain circles in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Militarily his forces today tend to follow the same model they employed during the war against the Soviet occupation – a war of attrition focused on planting mines, and rocket, artillery and sniper attacks from a distance. They do not carry out suicide operations.



A few words on Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan: despite the dramatic presence of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, it seems that the main Al-Qaeda bases are still in Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, this presence has diminished. In the last few years, due to the intense contradiction between the Parvez Musharraf regime and Al-Qaeda, heavy blows were inflicted on the Al-Qaeda organisation in Pakistan. Nearly a thousand of its leaders and cadres in Pakistan have been killed or arrested and handed over to U.S. officials.



In any case, while it is impossible to exactly determine the number of Al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, considering the number of their causalities and arrests over the last few years, it seems that they are much less numerous than the Taleban and do not dominate the fundamentalist opposition overall. However, their presence in Afghanistan is still relatively effective.



Revolutionary forces



As we can see, in general the Islamist forces monopolise the military resistance to the occupiers and the puppet regime. Both in the country and abroad, this military resistance is considered Islamist and basically Taleban. In other words, revolutionary military forces are not present on the battlefield. Experience shows that if this continues to be the case, the Islamic and Taleban colouring of the resistance will only get stronger. At a certain point, it is possible that the grounds for the presence of the revolutionary armed forces in the battlefield will disappear and the whole revolutionary movement and communist movement will be marginalized, unable to assert an effective influence on the country's political scene for years and years to come.



It is absolutely clear that there are certain objective and subjective factors that make it potentially possible for revolutionary military forces to enter the battlefield against the occupiers and the regime. However, these potentially favourable objective and subjective

elements will not flourish automatically. Emerging from the present unfavourable situation would require hard and tireless work by the whole party and advanced masses. We are well aware that without such a turn, we will not be able to play a significant positive role in changing the country's political situation. Only by launching and successfully advancing a revolutionary people's national resistance war against the occupiers and the puppet regime will we be able to wage an effective ideological and political struggle against the enemies of the revolution and position ourselves to provide the practical revolutionary leadership on the whole war of resistance and lead this war to the victorious path of new democratic revolution

Arundhati on Media-Police Collusion

Of late India is witnessing a lot of encounter killings. But are they all encounter killings...? In her latest interview with CNN-IBN noted writer Arundhati Roy expresses her doubts over these killings and media's role in making people believe them.

Arundhati on media-police collusion


Karan Thapar: Hello and welcome to Devil’s Advocate. Why is Arundhati Roy angry with the police and upset with the press? That’s the key issue I shall explore today. Arundhati Roy, let’s start with the recent encounter in Jamia Nagar in New Delhi. You’ve called for an independent judicial enquiry headed by a Supreme Court judge. Why do you involve yourself into this work? What’s your locus standi?


Arundhati Roy: Well, I am just one of those thousands of people who are asking some very serious questions of the police. The trouble is that you know, even if you wanted to believe this police version, you don’t know which police version to believe. Does one believe the Bombay police, the UP police, the Gujarat police or the Delhi police? All of them have different versions. There’s a blizzard of masterminds. The Additional Commissioner of Mumbai police, Rakesh Maria recently said that Tauqeer, who is the Delhi police’s mastermind of Indian Mujahideen, is a media creation. The point is who creates the media creations? Is it the media or the police or do they work together?


Karan Thapar: So, you are motivated by these contradictions. Is that the sole reason you need a judicial enquiry headed by a Supreme Court judge?


Arundhati Roy: Again, it is not just me. It was thousands of people who are saying one thing, you know. When the police have killed people, it ceases to be a neutral party. It cannot have an impartial investigation in its own actions. And there are so many serious questions about what happened at Batla House.


Karan Thapar: But before we come to those questions, let me point out what many people will be thinking at this moment. They are going to ask why do you think will an encounter, when a senior police officer like MC Sharma is killed and another injured would be fake. The police would not endanger themselves in a fake and fraudulent incident.


Arundhati Roy: Well, historically the police and security agencies the world over have done things like that. I am not saying it is fake. I am saying lets have an enquiry because this matter of MC Sharma, for instance would be cleared up if they would only produce the post-mortem report. Instead the post-mortem report is leaked in various ways and Mail Today says that he was shot from behind. Praveen Swami (of the daily The Hindu) says he was shot from two sides. The residents say that the police arrived and that there were drills and that they are making holes in the flat now. Why cannot all this be cleared up? If they would just produce the reports, which even the Magistrate asked for, and has put out a warrant for investigating officer and they still haven’t produced it.


Karan Thapar: As you speak, I get the impression that your whole premise is that you don’t trust the police. Millions of Indians do. Is it fitting and fair that you should question their veracity in this way when you know that it would not just demoralise them but it would seriously undermine their struggle to contain terror?


Arundhati Roy: Well. Millions of Indians do not trust the police. Is our choice not to question them because here we are talking about the communal profiling of a hundred and fifty million people, demoralising them, radicalising a whole generation and asking serious questions of a story that is told to us that is full of holes? Especially because such a senior police officer died in the incident, why should we not clear it up for the sake of police itself?


Karan Thapar: Let me for a moment play Devil’s Advocate and point out to you evidence that you are deliberately ignoring. AK-47s were found in Batla House, so were two pistols. Policemen were shot at, policemen were killed. Atif’s name appears in the Ahmedabad, Mumbai and UP police findings. Now, most recently, it transpires that Atif’s degree from Allahabad is a fake. Why aren’t you giving the police, as anyone else will, the benefit of the doubt? The evidence suggests that there is something suspicious, that there is a case. Why do you doubt it?


Arundhati Roy: Let enquiry clear it up. Even in the case of these recoveries, you know, there is a serious procedural lapse. When the police make recoveries at the scene of the crime, they should have independent witnesses corroborating it. They didn’t, like in the case of the Parliament attack.


Karan Thapar: Isn’t it possible that people are scared to come forth?


Arundhati Roy: No, but they have to get the seizure memo signed, right? And even the magistrate is asking for all these documents, for the FIR, the post mortem report, for the case diary not being produced. Now, let me ask some questions about Atif. The reports in the media given out by the police say that they have had him under surveillance since July 17. If so, then how was he allowed to plant these bombs in September? And even when they say that they had him under surveillance, they say that his number was called by a number, which was called by another number. I mean, c’mon, that’s a lead, not proof that someone is a terrorist.


Karan Thapar: Maybe the surveillance wasn’t effective. Maybe the police are exaggerating that they had him under surveillance. What about the other evidence that the police have brought into the public domain? It transpires that clips of the car that was used in the Ahmedabad bombings were found inside Atif’s mobile, it transpires that literature of al-Qaeda was found at Batla House. It seems that even Saif has been using an assumed name. He has been travelling under a false identity calling himself Rohan Sharma. He even had that gentleman’s voter identity card with him. None of these is suggestive or corroborated but you are dismissing it as otherwise.


Arundhati Roy: I am not dismissing it. If there is an enquiry, all this will also be a part of it. I am not dismissing they may be real terrorists. There are real terrorists, who are they? Are these boys the real ones? While the police are giving us evidence, there are also strange stories floating around. The police have been using the media to put out stories. All this is very disturbing and all this could be cleared out.


Karan Thapar: See, if I understand you correctly, there are two things you want clarified. One is that you want the questions and the inconsistencies in the police stories clarified because they suggest that the police hadn’t got a clear cut case. And the second thing is that you want to try and get at the proof that establishes that the police had good reason to suspicious of the people.


Arundhati Roy: Exactly! Even their own versions are contradicting each other. On the one hand they say that you know, we did not know that they were terrorists and that is why we went in, in this casual manner. But the minute something came up they come out and say that these were the masterminds. There are so many things, you know. They say that people were killed in the crossfire but the proof is that these two men were killed while they were kneeling with shots in their head.


Karan Thapar: That’s an assumption, I must point out!


Arundhati Roy: No, there are pictures.


Karan Thapar: Suggested. But we do not have the corroboration from the police.


Arundhati Roy: The police should show the post mortem report but we see it from the photographs.


Karan Thapar: You know what? Listening to you, people will say, and I am repeating what I have said to you earlier! They will say that her problem arises from the fact that she does not trust the police. Is it right that you should have such serious doubts about them?


Arundhati Roy: Not just rights, I think its our duty to have serious doubts and especially today, when we are sliding quickly into fascism and terrorism. It’s our business as members of civil society to ask hard questions.


Karan Thapar: In which case, what are you suspecting the police…or let me put me more strongly and bluntly. What are you accusing the police of, on this issue?


Arundhati Roy: Well, primarily of giving us a story that doesn’t hold together and insults our intelligence.


Karan Thapar: Why would they do this?


Arundhati Roy: I don’t know. That’s what we would like to know.


Karan Thapar: Is it not possible that they have got it right and you have doubts about them?


Arundhati Roy: Maybe! But an enquiry would show that, wouldn’t it? The more they block it, refuse to produce the post mortem. The more they subterfuge and obfuscate their way through this, the more people will get suspicious of them.


Karan Thapar: An enquiry at the end of the day, would be in their benefit as well! Is that what you are arguing?


Arundhati Roy: Absolutely!


Karan Thapar: What then do you say of people who argue that this is typical Arundhati Roy. She’s been against dams and developments; she’s in favour of secession of Kashmir. She’s attacked nuclear weapons and is now she is defending terrorists?


Arundhati Roy: Well, to being accused of being typically oneself is not an accusation. But if you are accusing me of having a world view that I do not believe in…I mean I do not believe in neo colonial military occupation, I don’t believe in nuclear weapons and I don’t believe in ecological destruction; then I am guilty as accused. Raising questions does not amount to supporting terrorism. I raised questions on the Parliament attack along with the people; we want to know who the terrorists are. We don’t know. Now, of the people we defended, two of the four ‘masterminds’ of the case were released. Afzal has been convicted by the Supreme Court which says that says that we have no evidence to prove that he is attached to any terrorist groups but in order to satisfy the collective conscience of society, he is being sentenced to death. Excuse me Karan, its my case that the collective conscience of society is also a part of media construct and a part of the judicial imagination constructed by these stories that being put out.




Karan Thapar: So, you are saying to me that as a citizen, as a conscientious democrat, it is your duty to question. And if the questions are awkward and unsettling, so be it and that they must be answered, none the less?


Arundhati Roy: Yes, absolutely!


Karan Thapar: Arundhati Roy, lets come to the wider issue about how the police treats the people it has arrested and it is holding in detention. You are extremely upset by the fact that India Today journalists were given an access to the young men arrested at Batla House so that interviews could be done. Why do you call this a terrible thing?


Arundhati Roy: Well, look this phenomenon of media confessions is becoming a standard operating procedure with the Special cell and the Delhi police. The point is that neither the courts nor any kind of international law allows you to say that people who are being held in police custody under torture.


Karan Thapar: How do you know that they are being held under torture?


Arundhati Roy: Well, the possibility of torture…maybe that day, they were not tortured. It was the first day.


Karan Thapar: You are saying that Human Rights laws and values do not permit people under detention to be interviewed when they are not willing to be interviewed?


Arundhati Roy: Yes! And even the courts do not accept these as confessions or evidence. But the reason these are done is because they have a propaganda value.




Karan Thapar: The assumption when you say that such incidences have propaganda value is that these are forced confessions…that the young men interviewed did not give the answers they did, willingly and voluntarily. How can you conclude that that’s the case?


Arundhati Roy: In this case it is very easy to be sure. Those young men, before they were caught, Zeeshan went to Headlines Today, Saquib went to Mail Today…both these (media units) are owned by the India Today, as you know. They were all people who came out in support of Atif and Saquib and said, look we know this guy. We know who he is.


Karan Thapar: Then how come you are calling those so called confessions when they are incriminating themselves and that when they went willingly to Mail Today or India Today, there are inconsistencies.


Arundhati Roy: Yes, so which version are we supposed to believe? The custodial one or the non-custodial one?


Karan Thapar: All the three men named by India Today and I will name them, Zia-ur-rehman, Saquib Insaar and Shakil admitted to planting bombs. You are denying or doubting the veracity of the so called confessions.


Arundhati Roy: Obviously! Its absurd not to, because they are in police custody. The same guys, Saquib went to Mail Today saying that I have known Atif for years. I got him this house. I mean it’s hardly the behaviour of terrorists.


Karan Thapar: I assume that the point you are making is that any interview that is granted in police custody is not a willing and voluntary one and therefore any confession made in that interview is a forced confession and not acceptable?


Arundhati Roy: Well, it is not admitted. Even in the Parliament case, the courts admonished the police for parading these people before the media and giving these media confessions. They didn’t do anything to the police which is why the same police; in fact Mohan Chand Sharma was a part of that cell, that same cell did it to theses people and it served the purpose. The propaganda value has been achieved.


Karan Thapar: You are saying that the Courts had admonished the police at the time the Parliament attack had happened for arranging such alleged false confessions and the police disregarded that admonishing and did the same thing again.


Arundhati Roy: That’s right.


Karan Thapar: In your eyes, is the police guilty of violating fundamental human rights by arranging what you call false confessions to be made in forced interviews? Is this a violation of basic human rights?


Arundhati Roy: It is a violation of all kinds of rights. I say it again, that in this atmosphere of communal profiling, this kind of propaganda is essential for them. It is the keystone to this whole enterprise. They have achieved what they set out to, regardless of what the court says.




Karan Thapar: The police have made a habit of this. It happened under circumstances, in the Arushi murder case, practically everyday. They hold press briefings, where half baked theories or at least unconfirmed details they are repeated and revealed to the press. The press then prints them as facts. The readers and the viewers of television then accept it as the truth. Are you disconcerted by this?


Arundhati Roy: I am utterly disconcerted by this because now it is the combination of the media and the police…you do not know which ends where and which begins where. In a situation where these encounter specialists are going out and summarily executing thirty people, calling them terrorists…No one asks questions once they are dead. We just accept it.


Karan Thapar: Just a moment ago, you spoke about the collusion between the media and the police. Are you saying that the press is itself in error when it accepts what is given by the police and publishes it without verifying or double checking it?


Arundhati Roy: It is not just an error. It is outrageous to do something like this.


Karan Thapar: So the press’ behaviour is outrageous?


Arundhati Roy: It is outrageous. There are statements like…and this man looked at me and he looked like a human bomb…I mean what kind of journalism is that?


Karan Thapar: So when as a result, like many people have said, this collusion between the police and the press leads to Jamia Nagar or to Azamgarh being thought as terrorist hubs or breeding grounds for terrorism, how unfortunate is that?


Arundhati Roy: It is not just unfortunate, its very dangerous. We now have a situation where a hundred and fifty Muslims and an equal number of Dalits and Adivasis in a different set of circumstances are being targeted in this way. Even if half a per cent of them decide to stop putting their heads down and decide to hit back, life as we knew it is over. A whole generation is radicalised and India becomes a threat to not just itself, but to the whole world.


Karan Thapar: This is something very important that you are saying. You mean that this behaviour of the police and the uncritical reporting by the press is going to end up in alienation and breeding the terrorism that we think we are controlling.


Arundhati Roy: Yes, that and also that this is a recipe for sliding into fascism. And we are bang in the middle of it now and this is how it works.


Karan Thapar: Why does the Indian middle class society that is so proud of calling itself a liberal democracy, accept this?


Arundhati Roy: Well, I don’t think we are anymore proud of this. We have increasingly accepted that we are a police state and there is a sort of sliding of the democracy into majority into fascism that is a real danger now.


Karan Thapar: So you are saying that the middle class no more stands up for the liberal values it believes in. It is actually in a sense accepting the horrible shortcuts and therefore colluding. It’s a very strong criticism, do you really mean it?


Arundhati Roy: I do. In fact, I feel that some day like the Nazis in Germany, we will be called upon to answer for what we have done and why we kept quiet while this was happening.


Karan Thapar: I get the feel that you are deeply disillusioned with the Indian middle classes.


Arundhati Roy: It is not just the middle classes, you know. It is the framework that we are putting into action these days. I have spent ten years writing about it. We are in a very serious situation. If we are to right it, all of us should ask ourselves very serious questions about when we chose to speak up and when we chose to stay quiet.


Karan Thapar: But in keeping quiet, as you say suggesting, Indians today are prepared to do, they are not just betraying essential values that they claim they believe in, they are actually betraying themselves and letting down their country. That’s the case you are making.


Arundhati Roy: I am making that case and I am saying that with these policies that we are persuing, today every ordinary Indian’s life is going to be at risk and we will pay very heavily for the consequences of what is going on now.


Karan Thapar: So it is virtually the last moment to stand up and be identified with the values that we claim to believe in otherwise those values are gone and with that our lives are gone.


Arundhati Roy: Absolutely!


Karan Thapar: And that’s not an exaggeration?


Arundhati Roy: Nope! Absolutely not!


Karan Thapar: Arundhati Roy, a pleasure talking to you on Devil’s Advocate

The Promise of Change...and the Change We Need

This article appeared on the website of Revolutionary Communist Party, USA the day after elections resutls were out. Is Obama's victory going to change the US policies...? Read on the article for answer...

The Morning After the Election:

The Promise of Change…and the Change We Need
You couldn’t miss it on Election Night. People actually pouring into the streets to celebrate the election of a president. Emotions ran high, and tears flowed.

And in the days after: people talking to friends and strangers alike of hope. Hope for a coming era of change from the horrors of the Bush years. Hope for overcoming racism. Hope for a new era of service to the common good.

Hope—hope that is founded on the real possibilities for fundamental change in this world—is indeed precious. Dedicating your life to something higher than the ethic of “I-want-mine” is so vital that the future of humanity actually depends on it. And overcoming—truly overcoming—the divisions of society based on inequality and oppression must be at the heart of any real movement for social change.

But now, in the dawn of the morning after, one must ask and honestly grapple with some basic and very serious questions.

Hope for what?
Service to what?
Unity around what goals and what values?
And victory for whom?

The Change He Has Promised
“I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” —Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope

Most of those who celebrated in the streets oppose the string of wars that Bush has launched and the threats of more war. Yet Obama through his campaign promised to send more troops to Afghanistan. He floated the idea of attacks on Pakistan, threatened Iran, and pledged to back Israel—which to this day continues to torment the people of Palestine—to the hilt. He established his reputation by opposing the launching of the war on Iraq—but has already backtracked on this during his campaign, with talk of “listening to the generals” and determining when Iraq was “stable” and its troops “sufficiently trained.”

Most of those celebrating in the streets hate the fascism of the Bush years: the spying, the evisceration of fundamental legal rights, and the torture. Yet as a senator, Obama voted for the renewal of the Patriot Act (which abolished or seriously cut key legal rights), and for immunity for telecommunications companies which illegally spied on people at White House behest.

Most of those celebrating in the streets yearn to see an end to racism, and to the oppression of Black people and other oppressed nationalities. Yet Obama did not speak in his campaign of ending the discrimination and oppression that continues in a Black unemployment rate that is more than double that of whites, discrimination in housing and health care and the legal system, and an incarceration rate of Black and other minority people that is the scandal of the world. No, instead he spoke against his former minister, Jeremiah Wright, because Wright had “a view that sees white racism as endemic.” Obama in that speech went on to say that such thinking is “divisive” and draws people away from the problems of “two wars, a terrorist threat, a failing economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change”—thereby, in a phrase, covering over how systematic discrimination is embedded in every problem in America and negating both the bitter ongoing oppression of Black people as a people and the deep structural problems in American society that sustain this.

Many of those in the streets also see Obama as sharing their values on ending the oppression of women and of gay people. Have they noted that Obama routinely characterizes abortion itself as a bad thing, even if he does not oppose the right to abortion, or how rarely he even mentioned defending this right? Or how Obama, at a time when the right of gay people to marry was being attacked in electoral referendums, said that while he did not support that referendum, he at the same time opposed gay marriage itself—on the basis of his own religious beliefs?

Obama has said he is bringing change. He has called on you—most recently in his victory speech on election night—to both put your efforts behind him and to be patient with his administration. The question is this: judging from Obama’s actual statements and not from what you think he must believe deep down, is the change that he is promising and trying to enlist you in the change we need?

Or are you being enlisted in something that will end up actually opposed to your best aspirations and a morality based on the common good of humanity?

Redeeming the Dream?
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.” —Barack Obama, in his victory speech

Well, many things certainly are possible in America. It is possible in America for European settlers to commit genocide against the Native American Indians who lived here and to then declare themselves to be builders of a “shining city on a hill” and “the last best hope of mankind.” It is possible in America to kidnap over ten million Africans and hold them and their descendants in slavery for 250 years, exploiting them as the foundation of the great wealth of this country, and then maintaining their descendants in new forms of oppression and super-exploitation, and to simultaneously brag that “the dream of our founders” is based on the principle that “all men are created equal.” It is possible in America to wage and sponsor wars and military coups over the past 150 years that have taken a toll on humanity unmatched by any of the fabled monstrous empires of the past, and to then routinely declare, as Barack Obama did in his speech, that this same country is the world’s great guarantor of “peace and security”—even as he preceded that by assuring anybody who opposed what he called the “new dawn of American leadership” that “we will defeat you.” It is possible in America to subordinate the economies of entire nations to the demands and dictates of U.S. capital; and it is possible to then both super-exploit impoverished people from those countries who then desperately seek work in the U.S. and at the same time to demonize them and scapegoat them as the cause of everyone else’s hard times. It is possible to torture in the name of “safety,” even as you assure the world you don’t.

But apparently, other things are NOT so possible in America. It has NOT been possible in America to actually do away with the structures of white supremacy and the oppression of entire peoples. It has NOT been possible in America to desist from sending troops, CIA spies, and commandos all over the world—nor has it been possible to avoid things like killing 40 civilians at a wedding party in Afghanistan on the day before the election which installed a man who has promised to send more troops to invade that tortured, beleaguered country. It has NOT been possible in America to actually overcome the subjugation of women in every sphere of life, or to end the demonization and systematic discrimination against gay people. It has NOT been possible for America to refrain from the heedless plunder and spoliation of the very planet on which we live. It has NOT been possible in America to overcome the deadening alienation of everyday life for most people, or the despair of seeing your best efforts come to naught for many of those who want to dedicate themselves to making things better.

What has been proven to be possible—and what has proven to be NOT possible—has nothing to do with “human nature” and everything to do with the system that was put in place to ensure the “dreams of our founders.” The name of that system is imperialism—a stage of capitalism in which the majority of humanity are consigned to short, bitter lives of almost indescribable exploitation, humiliation and degradation. . . in which entire nations are subjugated to deepen and extend that exploitation. . . and in which the entire world is divided up amongst a handful of big imperialist powers (with the U.S. currently at the head of that).

That is the system which actually determines what is, and what is not, possible. That is the system Barack Obama is now stepping in to head. That is the system to whose service he now summons you.

Stop Thinking Like Americans! Start Thinking About Humanity!
Imperialism has an ideology—a systematic way, even if unacknowledged, in which people are trained to view every event in the world. When Barack Obama sings songs of praise in his victory speech to the greatness of America—he is training us in a way of understanding the world. When he goes so far as to not just send best wishes to his opponent, but to gushingly praise this unrepentant war criminal who dropped bombs on civilians over and over again in Vietnam as a “brave and selfless leader”—he is doing that training in a particularly nauseating, and frankly horrific, way. When Barack Obama tells us to “summon a new spirit of patriotism” and overcome divisions—same thing.

This has to be called out for what it is: American chauvinism. This accepts as a given the existence of imperialism. Many of those who celebrated on election night are in effect hoping that Obama will lead to a "better" imperialism. But there is no such thing– there is no "better" imperialist USA, no "good" imperialism of any kind. What we need is to sweep away imperialism, and all relations of oppression and exploitation.

Stop chanting USA, USA—and start thinking about what is really facing humanity and what must urgently be done. Stop waving those flags, and start resisting the crimes of that system, including the very real crimes of the Bush regime that Obama not only is not going to prosecute but, yes, is determined, in large part, to continue. STOP THINKING LIKE AMERICANS—and start thinking about, and trying to proceed from, what humanity needs.

A Better Way
Does this mean, then, that there is no hope? That there is, in fact, nothing one can do? Are we counseling cynicism or despair?

Far from it. In place of false hope, we offer hope based on a real foundation. We offer hope based on the vision of a different society that draws on the fact that humanity could today accomplish great things—starting with the elimination of hunger and disease and homelessness—but is only held back by the economic relations of exploitation in which it is fettered, and the machinery of oppression that backs up those relations. We offer, in short, the hope of revolution.

We offer hope evidenced in the accomplishments of the Russian and Chinese revolutions—before those revolutions were reversed. Those revolutions made leaps in the very things that are NOT possible in this system: the elimination of exploitation and a rupture with the imperialist relations that strangle the world; the uprooting of the subjugation of women, and of oppressed nations and nationalities; the opening up to the oppressed of the spheres of running society and working with ideas—spheres which they are today kept out of by both the normal workings, and conscious policies, of capitalism; and the provision of health care, education and many other basic needs to all of society, in ways that narrowed and did not widen inequality.

We offer hope founded on the scientific work of Bob Avakian, the leader of our Party, who has both upheld the achievements and fundamental lessons of these revolutions, while criticizing and rupturing with significant errors and shortcomings of that first wave of revolution. On that basis, he has revived the REAL dream of emancipating all of humanity from exploitation and oppression, and shown the way forward to do that.

In place of a “service” which can only end up reinforcing the very things you oppose, we offer something which corresponds to your highest aspirations: making revolution.

For there IS work to do—work that urgently cries out to be done. There is the work of fighting for your best ideals and hopes for change. There is the work of actually digging into how the world really works, into America’s real place and role in that world, and into what revolution is all about and how it might be possible. There is the work of fighting the power, and transforming the people, for revolution.

Let us break, finally, with deadly illusions and let us set about that work—the ending of imperialism, and of all relations of exploitation and oppression, and NOT their reinforcement, in a different package. Let us truly bring about a new day.

Revolutionary Communist Party, USA