We reproduce here the greetings sent by the CPGB-ML to the celebrations for Africa Liberation Day arranged by the AAPRP and Ajamu in London.
“Dear Cde Maxine, comrades of the AAPRP, AJAMU and participants in the celebration of Africa Liberation Day.
I’m sorry I cannot be with you in person today.
Allow me, none the less, to wish you success for the meeting and please pass on our warm fraternal greetings and firm proletarian solidarity from the communist party on this 65th anniversary of African Liberation Day.
Obama’s formation of an Africa Corps, and the renewed determination of the NATO imperialist powers to dominate the continent of Africa, remind us how important it is to mark this occasion, and renew our struggle to rid the world of the scourge of imperialism – the enemy of all working and oppressed people.
At this moment, African workers, like all the oppressed masses of humanity, struggle against aggressive imperialist plunder – whether against the policies of economic domination, IMF ‘restructuring’ and slow starvation, or against policies of political destabilisation and direct military intervention, where the path of independence has been boldly taken.
NATOs genocidal campaign against anti-imperialist Libya, and recent imperialist interventions in Cote D’Ivoire, Mali, and Sierra Leone, and ongoing intrigue and manipulation in other states – Uganda, Rwanda, Egypt, Tunisia, etc. remind us of the truth if these words.
As imperialism’s economic, diplomatic and military might falls on the brave and independent people of Syria, where in the media do we read of USA’s ongoing genocidal proxy war for the plunder of COLTAN (without which silicone valley, the computer and mobile phone industries would grind to a halt) from the long-suffering Congolese people?
These 5 million victims apparently warrant no moral outrage; they are the everyday sacrifice made on the high alter of capitalist profit and highlighting their plight does not serve the imperial strategic agenda.
Imperialism seeks domination, not democracy! Let us never forget it.
Lenin said that the struggle against imperialism would be a sham and a fraud unless inseparably bound up with the struggles for national liberation of the toiling millions of ‘colonial salves’.
In our allegedly post-colonial era, following the fall of the Soviet Union and the renewed aggression and arrogance of Anglo-American imperialism in particular, the pressure of imperialism on its former colonies is greater than ever.
Let us then remember the words of Amilcar Cabral, founder of the PAIGC:
“I should just like to make one last point about solidarity between the international working class movement and our national liberation struggle. There are two alternatives: either we admit that there really is a struggle against imperialism which interests everybody, or we deny it. If, as would seem from all the evidence, imperialism exists and is trying simultaneously to dominate the working class in all the advanced countries and smother the national liberation movements in all the underdeveloped countries, then there is only one enemy against whom we are fighting. If we are fighting together, then I think the main aspect of our solidarity is extremely simple: it is to fight.”
Let us resolve to build unity in our struggle against capitalist imperialism, against neocolonialism, and admit that if a better world is possible, it is OUR duty to forge the means for bringing it into being.
Workers of all countries unite – we have nothing to loose but our chains! We have a world to win!
Taken from the report on Russia TodayThe report also includes this video which carries an interesting report from inside Syria and some bizaare and increasingly senile comments from Tariq Ali.
Intense fighting is reported from the strategic Syrian town of Qusair, as rebels and government forces fight to control the area. Opposition activists say 30 members of Hezbollah were killed, while the government claims to have captured the area.
Earlier Monday, Syrian state news agency SANA reported that the army had “restored security and stability to most Qusair neighborhoods” and was “chasing the remnants of the terrorists in the northern district.” The agency quoted a military source as saying that army units dismantled a number of explosive devices, planted by terrorists in al-Souk area in the middle of the city.
The source added that army units are continuing hunting the remnants of terrorists in some hideouts in the northern and southern areas of the city.
“The Syrian army managed to make a full circle around the city, fighting the opposition fighters. The main achievement is to stop the line of supply chain between Lebanon and Syria,” a local journalist, who wished to remain anonymous, told RT.
“They started from the western side of the city, in the rural areas. They control this zone with some fighters from Lebanon. Some extremist groups were preparing to go into Syria to fight with the rebels, they were going to go make a bigger front in order to fight and expand the fighting line between the government and the opposition,” he said.
But opposition activists denied that Qusair had been captured, saying that they had pushed back most of the attacking forces to their original positions, destroying at least four Syrian army tanks and five light Hezbollah vehicles.
Troops backed by Hezbollah “made incursions into Qusair, but they are now basically back to where they started at the security compounds in east Qusair and at a…roadblock to the south,”local activist Tareq Murei told Reuters.
Murei said that six people were killed by Hezbollah’s multiple rocket launches on Monday.
The Free Syrian Army meanwhile said that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah should be held“personally responsible” for the situation because he was allegedly meeting with all the fighters heading to Qusair. “We are today calling Nasrallah a killer of the Syrian people,” FSA spokesperson Louay Almokdad told Al Arabiya English. “We are certain these are fighters of Hassan Nasrallah. They are no longer Hezbollah, they are fighters of Hassan Nasrallah and Ali Khamanei.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 48 rebels had been killed, as well as four civilians. The Observatory’s director, Rahim Abdurahman, put Hezbollah casualties at 23 dead and 70 wounded. Lebanese security sources said at least 12 Hezbollah fighters had been killed.
Qusair, which is about 18 miles (29km) southwest of Homs, is seen as a key city for both sides. It helps link the Syrian capital of Damascus with government strongholds on the Mediterranean coast and is a passageway for rebel supplies and fighters from Lebanon.
According to UN figures, more than 80,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Bashar Assad began in March 2011.
‘No options off the table’
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a Monday statement that “no options are off the table” if the Syrian government refuses to negotiate the country’s future at the upcoming Geneva conference.
The comment came just four days after he accused the Assad regime of being “determined to conceal the truth” about what was happening, due to its refusal to allow a UN team to investigate reports that chemical weapons had been used by the Syrian army.
But while Hague points the finger at the Assad government, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has urged the Syrian opposition to take part in the peace conference, without setting any preconditions. The conference is being organized by the US and Russia, as a way to seek a resolution to the conflict.
“Our colleagues, including Americans, together with who we put forward this initiative [to hold the conference], took the obligation to work closely with the opposition in order to make it change its approach to the immediate start of the negotiations and stop conditioning it with unrealistic things,” Lavrov said in a statement.
Lavrov also stressed that Iran must be among nations invited to the conference.
Istanbul and Madrid are expected to host meetings of various Syrian opposition groups this week, he said.
Come along and meet up with the various cpgb-ml / red youth contingents over the weekend at these events in London.
Save the NHS – London Demonstration
18 May 2013 (12noon)
Jubilee Gardens (near the London Eye), London SE1 Demonstration called by a wide variety of campaign groups opposing the cuts and planned closures of services across the captial.
Come and join the CPGB-ML contingent on the demonstration.
More info: http://www.savelondonnhs.org.uk/
Picket of the US Embassy
18 May 2013 (2.00pm – 4.00pm)
US Embassy, 24 Grosvenor Square, London W1A 2LQ Support the Syrian people, headed by President Assad! Oppose imperialist interference!
Stalin Society: Film showing – Chapaev
19 May 2013 (2.00 – 5.00pm)
Kings Cross Neighbourhood Centre, 51 Argyle Street , London WC1H 8EF The film is based on the book with the same title by Dmitri Furmanov, a Bolshevik commissar who fought together with Chapayev during the civil war in Turkestan. It is a striking example of how people were transformed in the Soviet Union. It details, with tenderness and humour, the life of Chapayev – from a bandit with an disorganised band of followers into a responsible leader within a disciplined Red Army force.
Made in 1934 this film became one of the most popular of Soviet films. In Russian with English subtitles.
ALL WELCOME
More info: http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk
Today – 9 May 2012 – marks the 67th Anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union over Nazi German Fascism; when the red flag was raised over the Reichstag by the victorious Red Army, while Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin.
These are achievements of Socialism that we can and should all celebrate. Achievements that still show us that workers can vanquish the darkest armies of imperialism and build a bright socialist future based upon cooperation, and ending forever the exploitation of man by man and nation by nation.
Socialism has never been more relevant and urgently needed by the workers of all countries, as the recession plunges ever deeper into profound slump and economic crisis of overproduction, and engulfs ever more nations into war – the capitalists’ ‘final solution’ for their economic woes, unless workers can avert the crisis by overturning this bankrupt system once and for all.
Of one thing we can be assured, the financiers in the city of London and Wall Street will try once again to sacrifice tens and hundreds of millions of us at the high alter capitalist profit.
“At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”
This is what they have written on a roundabout in Stockwell, not far from where the SO19 armed police gunned down Jean Charles de Menezes in cold blood. Shot in the head in the “war on terror” – and Brazilian plumbers who we may or may not confuse with Pakistanis. What a farce, are our ‘freedoms’ in this UK police state.
But 100 million were sacrificed in the last century to the capitalists’ insatiable god of mammon. And which of our ‘elected representatives’ remembers and understands the nature of capitalism today, as we slide into the next great world conflagration. Afghanistan, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Yugoslavia, Libya… How similar to the Nazi quest for lebensraum; the preliminary acts leading to the world wars.
Joseph Stalin, who stood at the helm of the international struggle against imperialism and for socialism for three decades (and who, consequently, is the favourite prey of the paper tigers of bourgeois history), was a thousand times right when he said: “Either eke out a miserable existence and sink lower and lower, or adopt a new weapon. That is the choice imperialism puts before the working class. Imperialism brings the proletariat to revolution.”
Another world is possible! Fight imperialism! Build Socialism!
Join us to lay a wreath in honor of the 27 million Soviet citizens who laid down their lives to save the world from fascism at the Soviet war memorial in Kennington, south London this morning at 10.30 am. Location of the Soviet War Memorial:
Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park, on land donated by the London Borough of Southwark, adjacent to the
Imperial War Museum
Lambeth Road
London
SE1 6HZ
United Kingdom
Watch: a former Nazi soldier reflects on lessons of the war for workers of all countries and particularly in Britain and a America today:
Why did 100 million die in WW1 and WW2?
Significance of the Soviet Union to our generation:
Real History of WW2 – fascism and communism are opposites!
Hitler and Stalin – historical enemies representing the dark past (Hitler) and the bright future (Stalin), so why are we encouraged to treat them as if they were ‘the same’?
We reproduce below the following message from the Communist Youth in Poland who faced challenges this May 1st. We are sure that through ideological struggle, devotion to the principles of marxism leninism and with steely optimism the youth in Poland will be able to defend socialist history and march towards a brighter socialist future in their country. Red Salute to the defenders of truth!
This year’s 1st May march in Wroclaw was different. The Communist Party of Poland was invited by the organizers to take part in the event, however, unexpectedly during the beginning of the march, they were banned from unfolding their flag bearing the communist symbol of the sickle and the hammer. They were shown aggression and some people tried to damage their flags.
Some organizations (like the Union of Labour and the Committee for a Workers’ International) tried to defend our right to carry the symbols of communism, which, we point out, are totally legal in Poland and legally protected as the symbols of the Communist Party.
In spite of this, we were outnumbered by the anti communist aggressors (who like to call themselves the “radical left”). Especially intolerant organizations such as the Young Socialists, the Polish Socialist Party and the anarchists, shouted abuse at us, which we found somewhat strange as one of the anarchists abusing us has been for a long time in a close relationship with the Vice President of the Communist Party of Poland. They jeered and mocked that the Polish communists defend the many gains of Socialist Poland, the good name of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kim Jong Un and the truth about Hitler’s crime in Katyn.
The members of the Communist Party of Poland, as a sign of protest of such discrimination, marched silently, with their flags folded, through the city, then left the march. They were the only participants in the march that were not allowed to show the symbols of their party.
Along with the growing economical crisis there is growing capitalist (and their political representatives) aggression towards the communist party, the only organization that presents an alternative to the old order.
Here’s a few pics from May Day celebrations in Manchester and Leeds which were held on Saturday 4 May,
Red Youth and the party on Manchester May DayManchester May DayComrades marching towards Friends Meeting House for the Manchester RallyComrade Ranjeet delivers a talk at Friends Meeting House, Manchester post May Day Rally on the topic of the DPR Korea and Proletarian internationalism
As we go into the weekend, CPGB-ML comrades will be at May Day events in Birmingham, Newcastle, Chesterfield, Leeds, Manchester and Bristol – so if you want to meet up and find out what we’re really like, rather than relying on the gossip that passes for politics on sad sack geek chat rooms, come along and take part! We’ll try and post a few more pics as they come in, but here’s a few from Wednesday in London to keep you going…
As the London May Day demonstrators assembled outside Marx House, Clerkenwell Green, for the march to Trafalgar Square, the colourful proliferation of banners representing a wide range of organisations, together with the much higher trade union turn-out than in recent years, meant that one began to see what a great day of celebration this important day in the socialist calendar could be.
On this day, millions across the world have taken to the streets ever since 1889, when the first congress of the Second International declared 1 May as International Workers’ Day. This day was initially chosen to honour the American workers’ triumphant strike for the eight-hour day on 1 May 1886 and as a homage to those gunned down by the Chicago police as well as their leaders – Albert Parsons, August Spiers, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden and Louis Lingg – who were condemned to death for their leadership of the strike and declared “guilty of murder” (policemen also died when they attacked the assembled protesters in Haymarket Square). One hundred and twenty years later, the echo of Spiers’ words from the gallows must continue to remind us of our strength: “There will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”
The strength and power of the working-class movement has been demonstrated all over the globe ever since. May Day has become an occasion when we celebrate our achievements, express international solidarity and reaffirm that socialism is the way forward for humanity. With the establishment of socialism in the USSR and its historic victory over Nazi fascism, millions of toiling people have been inspired to fight for a better life.
From the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917 to the victorious end of the anti-fascist war, when the red flag was raised on the Reichstag in Berlin in 1945, the flying of the red flag with its hammer and sickle has been indelibly linked to the achievements of our movement and is a symbol of progressive humanity. Whereas internationally, from east to west, from Asia to South America, red flags have dominated May Day, in the imperialist heartlands, far fewer are seen, as our historic day has been hijacked as a ‘spring holiday’ and drained of all revolutionary fervour by the dominance of the social-democratic leadership. It is time that socialists in Britain reclaimed the day, increased our symbolic use of the hammer and sickle, proudly declared our communist ideals and explained that communism is still the only way forward for humanity.
The Soviet Union, under the leadership of comrade Stalin and the Communist Party, fought the Nazi imperialists almost single-handedly, with 90 percent of the Hitler army marauding on its soil for four years. It played by far the greatest role in the Nazis’ defeat, which was a tribute to its socialist economy – its programme of industrialisation and collectivisation – that provided it with the wherewithal to defeat the Nazi war machine against which the heavily armed bourgeoisies of various western European countries, such as France and Holland, were unable to hold out for longer than a few weeks – if that. Since its socialist economy was built in a period of a mere 10 years, transforming the Soviet Union from a backwater into a superpower in that short time, the Soviet Union’s defeat of such an industrially advanced country as Germany is proof that socialism, in unleashing to the full the productive powers of the masses of working people, sets free a truly extraordinary and mighty indefeasible force. We can infer that after capitalism’s final defeat, the energy of the liberated masses, devoting itself 100 percent to the exponential improvement of their wellbeing, will unimaginably transform social existence – banishing forever poverty, ignorance and war.
The Soviet Union was a bastion of peace and justice, and the world has been suffering in an unprecedented manner from the unbridled aggression of western imperialism ever since she collapsed.
Let us resolve to build a working-class movement that will make May Day celebrations take up the challenge that Lenin put to Russian workers in 1896: “It is high time for us … to break the chains with which the capitalists and the government have bound us in order to keep us in subjection… [and] … to join the struggle of our brothers, the workers in other lands, to stand with them under a common flag upon which is inscribed: Workers of the World, Unite!” (Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, 19 April 1896)
Long live the Great October Socialist Revolution!
Long live May Day!
Workers of the world, unite!
Since Nato invaded Afghanistan in 2001, unmanned drones have gone from being an untried technology to a primary means of warfare.
The US now operates 7,500 drones, and 40 other countries are buying or developing similar vehicles.
British pilots have operated thousands of missions over Afghanistan and Libya from US bases, and now Britain’s first homegrown drone base has become operational, with pilots at RAF Waddington in Lincoln flying armed Reaper drone missions over Afghanistan.
As a mass hunger strike by inmates brings Guantánamo back into the media spotlight once again, it is instructive to note that the imperialists’ chosen method of terror and intimidation has shifted since the advent of Obama and Cameron from seizing and locking up men of military age to murdering them (and often their families, too) instead.
A new kind of terrorism
Imperialist politicians claim that drone strikes can ‘surgically remove’ ‘high-value’ ‘al-Qaeda operatives’ from the ‘field of battle’.
In reality, while resistance fighters may sometimes be hit, anyone seems to be considered ‘fair game’ by the joystick-wielding mercenaries who operate the guns from the safety of their suburban bases.
These terrorist attacks kill at least 10 civilians for every resistance fighter. Just 1.5 percent of known Pakistani drone victims have been identified as ‘high-profile’ targets by the US. So much for ‘precision warfare’.
Although establishment critics are said to be upset at losing opportunities to ‘interrogate’ victims, Obama has clearly learned one lesson from his predecessor: the longer you keep innocent men locked up, the more likely it is that your lies about them being ‘dangerous terrorists’ will be exposed.
It is so much easier for the imperialists to order a kill, then slander their victims and move on. Particularly when they know that western journalists are trained to regurgitate their press releases as proven fact.
So who will listen to the protestations of a poor Pakistani, Afghan or Yemeni community that the latest ‘targeted killing’ of ‘militants’ has in fact massacred farmers, village elders, school children or wedding guests?
Far from being a ‘humane’ alternative to ground troops, remote-control operation simply allows imperialist soldiers to kill with total impunity – without having to take the risk of being hit back.
Meanwhile, the people who live under the shadow of these weapons are subject to daily terror, never knowing when a Reaper or Predator drone will stop overhead or where it will fire next.
Joystick wars
Preparation for this kind of warfare starts with the pornographically violent computer games and Hollywood blockbusters that glorify war, dehumanise imperialism’s ‘enemies’ and prepare our young people to slaughter without mercy.
This was perfectly illustrated by Prince Harry’s revealing admission that he saw killing Afghans from his helicopter as being similar to playing video games. Indeed, the prince even went so far as to call it “a joy” to have his finger on the trigger, since he was “one of those people that loves playing PlayStation … with my thumbs, I like to think that I’m quite useful”.
Full marks for honesty, if not for tact and diplomacy. But while it may be in the interest of Harry and his parasitic family to inflict collective punishment on peoples who are resisting imperialist aggression, it is not in the interest of most British workers, who have been sold a pack of lies about the ‘dangers’ that our Afghan (or Pakistani, Iraqi, Libyan, etc) brothers and sisters pose to ‘us’.
Using drones against our own
The consequences of this new warfare are far-reaching indeed. As the imperialists continue to use drones to target anyone who they see as a threat, they are turning our whole world into a battlefield where nothing and no-one is off-limits.
Indeed, imperialist governments have already started using armed drones to wipe out their own citizens without recourse to any judicial processes.
The US has butchered at least three of its citizens in Yemen, and has not ruled out the possibility of a military drone strike against a US citizen on American soil.
Meanwhile, the ConDems have ramped up a secret programme, initiated by Labour, under which British ‘terror suspects’ are being quietly stripped of their citizenship before they are captured or assassinated abroad. At least two British men are known to have been murdered by US drones in this way.
Where the US nazis lead, their British counterparts are not shy to follow. In the States, use of both surveillance and armed drones by police and other agencies is set to rise exponentially as the technology becomes cheaper and more reliable.
Here at home, having tested out their use during the Olympic games, it is not difficult to believe that police might soon be using armed drones to control demonstrators or strikers, while the cheapness of surveillance drones is bound to make them ubiquitous among police, secret services, and all the ‘security’ contractors who do our rulers’ dirty work.
No cooperation
It is clear that we need to free ourselves from the disabling influence of the capitalists’ propaganda and realise where our real interests lie. The billionaires who order these incessant wars to be launched are not doing so to protect us, but to protect their profits.
They are the same billionaires who are dismantling education and health services here in Britain and kicking us out of our homes. They want to save their rotten system by making us pay for the capitalist crisis – and they want to trick us into blaming each other for the problems their beloved capitalist system creates.
But if we continue to accept the assassination of those deemed to be ‘enemies’ abroad, how long will it be before British leaders are asked to accept drone strikes against working-class leaders at home as being necessary for our ‘security’?
Instead of falling for the capitalists’ lies, we need to unite with all those who are standing up against British imperialism in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and elsewhere. We need to launch a mass campaign of non-cooperation with British imperialism’s war crimes. Together, we have the power to ground the drones and stop imperialism’s dirty wars, for it is workers who ultimately have to carry out these anti-worker actions.
If we refuse to fight in imperialist wars for profit or help with their logistics; if we refuse to broadcast imperialist propaganda in support of such wars; if we refuse to make or transport munitions or supplies, then the British war effort will collapse.
Moreover, taking such action would give workers a much-needed morale boost in the fight against capitalism here at home, helping us to see in practice that we really are on the same side as those fighting abroad, and that together we can defeat the bloodsuckers and build a new society!
The US turns a blind eye to human rights issues, seriously threatening the lives of its citizens, a Chinese report claims. The damning analysis of US human rights abuses is Beijing’s retaliation to a Washington report decrying the Chinese government.
The report’s release on Chinese state outlet Xinhua accused Washington of “double standards” and turning a “blind eye to its woeful record of human rights.”
The lengthy document rounds on the US government for its failure to protect its citizens and its disregard for their safety.
“The lives and personal security of the United States citizens, who were haunted by serious violent crimes, were not duly protected,” the report said. It emphasized that women’s rights in particular were being degraded, citing rising levels of domestic violence reported in 2012.
“Religious discrimination is also rapidly on the rise, with an increase in insults and attacks against Muslims,” it added.
In addition, gun crime was centered on in the report as one of the key failings of the Obama Administration who have still not introduced any concrete measures to mitigate violence after two high-profile attacks.
The report also contained an attack on the US political system, targeting the influence of political donations in shaping policies which it claimed amounted to a degradation of democracy.
“In the US, elections could not fully embody the real will of its citizens. Political contributions had, to a great extent, influenced the electoral procedures and policy direction. During the 2012 presidential election, the voter turnout was only 57.5 per cent.”
Those in glass houses…
Referencing US foreign policy, the report criticized Washington for styling itself as a “world judge” and encroaching of human rights abroad.
“The US seriously infringed upon human rights of other nations. In 2012, US military operations in Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan caused massive civilian casualties,” wrote the report. It cited reports of US soldiers burning copies of the Koran in Afghanistan last year which it condemned as “serious blasphemy.”
Guantanamo prison, “where the US has illegally imprisoned foreigners,” was targeted in the report as a gray area in the US’ attitude to human rights.
The report came in response Washington’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012, in which it denounced China for the repression and coercion of advocates of human rights. Beijing dismissed the report as flawed as it was based on unconfirmed media reports and speculation.
Beijing and Washington have consistently traded blows over the years over each other’s human rights records. The US put sanctions in place on China in 1989 following a deadly crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Washington’s human rights report is now in its 36th year and has repeatedly flagged China for its dubious rights record.
