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.
Demonstrations have taken place across Britain this weekend in opposition to the hated “Bedroom Tax”.
Blaming the poor for poverty
When the Bedroom Tax comes into force on 1 April, 14 percent will be cut from housing benefit for households with one ‘spare’ bedroom and 25 percent from those with two or more.
An estimated 660,000 working-age social tenants across the country will be hit, losing an average of £14-16 per week, and facing the stark choice of moving home or being forced into even deeper poverty. Evictions and debt levels will skyrocket.
Bedroom Tax demo in Leeds
In order to justify this move, politicians and journalists have been spinning a fairy tale of housing ‘shortages’, but it is actually one- and two-bed flats that are in short supply, so where are people supposed to ‘downsize’ to?
If our rulers really want to do something about the affordable housing shortage, why not set rent controls in the private sector, build lots of new social homes and requisition all those empty ‘deluxe’ flats?
It’s a classic privatisation strategy – first reduce the amount and quality of a service, then blame the service users for the problem and use it to justify the next privatisation move! How many times have we been told that our NHS is under threat because poor people are suffering from diet- or smoking-related ailments, or that burdensome pensioners are ‘bed-blocking’?
The answer? Instead of creating new hospital wards and putting more nurses and doctors into them, more outsourcing to dodgy profiteers and more cuts in bed and frontline staff numbers to pay more PFI debts!
In reality, this tax has nothing to do with ‘freeing up social housing’; it is a callous scapegoating of Britain’s poorest people – after all, only those who are claiming benefits will have to pay, even though many of them are already impoverished to the point of malnutrition.
Disabled people, single parents who are not designated as the ‘main carer’ for their children, couples sleeping apart owing to medical conditions … all will be hit. Children of the same sex will be required to share a room until they reach 16, and of the opposite sex until the age of 10.
Demonstrations against the bedroom tax are on the rise
Labour party hypocrisy
Grassroots campaigns to oppose the tax have been launched by workers all over Britain. But a dangerous pattern is emerging as these campaigns take shape – their hijacking by Labour’s so-called ‘left’ wing and the exclusion and silencing of all non-Labour-affiliated organisations and individuals.
Many supposedly ‘non-aligned’ events have been seized and monopolised by a ‘committee’ that has censored anyone who tries to tell the truth about Labour’s support for and implementation of the capitalists’ cuts. Non-Labour people have been systematically blocked from Facebook event and campaign pages all over the country.
Demonstrators in Birmingham in April
The hypocrisy is staggering. Labour, far from building new homes, recently oversaw 13 years of sell-offs and privatisation that massively accelerated the ghettoisation of Britain’s remaining social tenants, while ‘Red Ed’ Miliband, in whom we are asked to put our hopes of a ‘worker-friendly’ capitalist government next time around, has actually endorsed the bedroom tax.
When it comes to cuts, privatisation, and all other attacks on working people’s living standards, the Tories, Labour and LibDems are all as bad as each other, because they all serve the same capitalist interests. The ‘debate’ that they distract us with is only about how soon or how fast to make the cuts that capitalists demand – or who to blame, and where to wield the knife first.
What they are all agreed on is that British imperialism must at all costs be saved from the current crisis, which is the deepest ever seen – even worse than the fabled Great Depression of the 1930s, which led to WW2 and the deaths of millions of poor people all over the world.
Let us recall that the $20bn cuts ‘required’ to be made to our health service were first announced by the Labour government – and that all the parties agreed with them. They also all agreed that £1bn on bombing Libya’s hard-won infrastructure – health, education, housing, industry, electricity and water – into the dust was money well spent.
Desperate to stop workers drawing the obvious conclusion that no capitalist party can serve their interests, Labour has been working hard to rebrand itself as the ‘anti-cuts’ opposition. Glossy leaflets and online campaigns abound, but the concerted effort to remove all other voices from the bedroom tax campaign is proof that the party is not interested in uniting the opposition and defeating the tax, but only in getting a bit of free advertising. Labour’s fake ‘opposition’ to cuts is just a cynical PR exercise.
If more proof is still needed of this, let us look at the case of Newcastle’s Michael McDonald. As an anti-cuts organiser, he must be a thorn in the side of the Labour-led council that is busy implementing drastic cuts in the city.
Following an anti-cuts demo in February, where Mr McDonald told council-leader Nick Forbes what he thought about these attacks on Newcastle’s poorest, this Labour scoundrel sent police to drag McDonald out of his bed and charge him with a ‘public order’ offence!
The Labour party’s true role as policeman of the workers’ movement could not have been more clearly illustrated!
To injure one is to injure us all
We need to understand that no representative of a capitalist party is on the side of the workers, however much (s)he may pretend to be. Nor is anyone who tries to incite us to blame each other for the poverty in which we find ourselves.
It is not immigrants, fat people, poor people, smokers, benefit claimers, council-house tenants, hoodies or pensioners who are ‘bleeding the country dry’ but the free-market-fundamentalist gangsters who rampage all over the globe in search of profit, profit and more profit.
Today, our forces are divided, not only by the racism and scapegoating that we are encouraged to indulge in, but by the pigeon-holing of struggles as ‘separate’ issues, each one of which is presented as being relevant only to a small minority of people.
We have lost sight of the fact that ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’, and so our forces are dispersed and our attention is diverted by every new media-created distraction.
If we unite, however, we can use our collective power to sabotage all attempts to make us pay for the capitalists’ crisis. A real tenants’ movement, instead of Almo-led eviction organisations, is needed to defend our homes.
If we join together we can refuse to be resettled or moved. We can patrol our estates and stop bailiffs from evicting our fellow tenants. We must defend ourselves – and our neighbours – from the thugs and hired servants of the rich.
And we must refuse to let our campaign groups be hijacked by Labour politicians who do nothing to defend the working class from the assaults of capitalist bloodsuckers. They are helping the state to rob the poor to pay the rich – kick them out of our communities!
Harpal Brar, chairman of the CPGB-ML, speaking at a meeting with the ambassador of the DPR Korea, on Sat 13 April, explains that the cause of the current tension on the Korean peninsula is not the North Korean people or government, but the provocative and aggressive stance of the USA, which has threatened the DPRK with nuclear attack since the 1950s, and has again stepped up its aggression in the vain hope of bullying the North Korean state to give up its newly acquired nuclear deterrent.
N Korean Ambassador’s speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3CLgEkAa-g
N Korean ambassador answers British workers’ questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq_kTrbtQpo
With reference to historical fact (rare among the assertions of bourgeois journalists and politicians) Harpal shows that the North Koreans’ stance is one of peace, and defense against the unbelievably aggressive stance of the USA. The latter, since murdering 4 million in the genocidal war it waged in Korea between 1950 – 53, has staged relentless military hostilities to subvert the sovereignty and security of the tiny North Korean nation, culminating in its current exercises involving more than 200,000 military personnel and simulated nuclear attack on major cities in the DPRK using B2 stealth and B52 nuclear bombers as well as F22 stealth fighters.
We must not submit to US nuclear blackmail, because it threatens not only North Korea, but each and every one of us. That is why peace-loving, progressive and anti-imperialist humanity must support the DPRK, and support its just stance of anti-imperialist resistance and self defense.
This meeting has since been reported by the Guardian newpaper (UK):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/15/north-korea-ambassador-rare-speech
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/apr/15/north-korean-ambassador-uk-speech-video
And has been widely syndicated:
http://www.londonthenews.com/news/UK/20130415/42740396/North-Korea-UK-ambassador-defends-Pyongyang.htm
More on the DPRK
Watch:
DPRK Embassy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZeAd5oFomM
Reality check!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCIoYNYNIj4
Kim Jong Il Memorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcCh-r9nG5Q
Jong Il: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b95smc6_aw
Juche: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOwgCPMZ3iI
Cuba and Korea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrY83sD1d9s
Join the struggle! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwgDekJTVvc
Read:
Statement – US Stoking flames of war in Korea
http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=statements&subName=display&statementId=52
Harpal Brar, chairman of the CPGB-ML, speaking at a meeting with the ambassador of the DPR Korea, on Sat 13 April, explains that the cause of the current tension on the Korean peninsula is not the North Korean people or government, but the provocative and aggressive stance of the USA, which has threatened the DPRK with nuclear attack since the 1950s, and has again stepped up its aggression in the vain hope of bullying the North Korean state to give up its newly acquired nuclear deterrent.
With reference to historical fact (rare among the assertions of bourgeois journalists and politicians) Harpal shows that the North Koreans’ stance is one of peace, and defense against the unbelievably aggressive stance of the USA. The latter, since murdering 4 million in the genocidal war it waged in Korea between 1950 – 53, has staged relentless military hostilities to subvert the sovereignty and security of the tiny North Korean nation, culminating in its current exercises involving more than 200,000 military personnel and simulated nuclear attack on major cities in the DPRK using B2 stealth and B52 nuclear bombers as well as F22 stealth fighters.
We must not submit to US nuclear blackmail, because it threatens not only North Korea, but each and every one of us. That is why peace-loving, progressive and anti-imperialist humanity must support the DPRK, and support its just stance of anti-imperialist resistance and self defense.
N Korean Ambassador’s speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3CLgEkAa-g
N Korean ambassador answers British workers’ questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq_kTrbtQpo
This meeting has since been reported by the Guardian newpaper (UK):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/15/north-korea-ambassador-rare-speech
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/apr/15/north-korean-ambassador-uk-speech-video
And has been widely syndicated:
http://www.londonthenews.com/news/UK/20130415/42740396/North-Korea-UK-ambassador-defends-Pyongyang.htm
More on the DPRK
Watch:
DPRK Embassy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZeAd5oFomM
Reality check!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCIoYNYNIj4
Kim Jong Il Memorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcCh-r9nG5Q
Jong Il: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b95smc6_aw
Juche: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOwgCPMZ3iI
Cuba and Korea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrY83sD1d9s
Join the struggle! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwgDekJTVvc
Read:
Statement – US Stoking flames of war in Korea
http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=statements&subName=display&statementId=52
EVIL STALINIST STATE IN “ACTUALLY QUITE TOLERANT” SHOCKER
As we in the West are accustomed to hear from our beloved free media about how lucky we are to live in a wonderful liberal democracy such as ours, it might actually come as something as a surprise to consider the fact that, while being caught in possession of cannabis – even for personal use – in the United Kingdom can land you with a five-year prison sentence and an unlimited fine, cannabis in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is, er, completely and utterly legal:
In this short video, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korean Ambassador and extraordinary plenipotentiary to the UK, Hyon Hak Bong, thanks British workers for their solidarity and support during this time of heightened tension on the Korean peninsula.
The cause of the tension, he explains, is not the North Korean people or government, but the provocative and aggressive stance of the USA, which has threatened the DPRK with nuclear attack since the 1950s, and has again stepped up its aggression in the vain hope of bullying the North Korean state to give up its newly acquired nuclear deterrent.
Ambassador Bong explains that his country’s stance is one of peace, and defense against the unbelievably aggressive stance of the USA, that since murdering 4 million Koreans in the genocidal war it waged between 1950 – 53, has staged relentless military hostilities to subvert the sovereignty and security of the tiny North Korean nation, culminating in its current exercises involving more than 200,000 military personnel and simulated nuclear attack on major cities in the DPRK using B2 stealth and B52 nuclear bombers as well as F22 stealth fighters.
The DPRK is unbowed and will never submit to this outrageous and provocative action of US imperialists and its puppets, the right wing south korean regime. It has the support of the peace loving peoples of the world, who understand that the only language the US understand is the logic of force.
Hands off Korea!
No to US Nuclear warmongering!
Korea is one!
This interview with comrade Teodora Gomes, member of the PAIGC, and comrade in arms of legendary liberation fighter Amilcar Cabral gives an insight into a little known chapter of the anti-colonial struggle in the former Portuguese held territories in Africa.
There are real lessons for sincere progressives, anti-racists, anti-imperialists and anti-capitalists that are of great relevance today.
Red Youth sheds no tears at the death of Margaret Thatcher today. Thatcher caused immense harm to British youth throughout the 1980’s, enacting a number of reactionary Employment Acts which helped destroy job security for young people and laid the basis for the reactionary policies pursued by John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in subsequent years. In 2013 the number of young people out of work, with no opportunity to study or build a future is a direct result of the anti-working class agenda she forced upon the British people with the aid of a servile trade union movement which was firmly tied to social democracy and which betrayed the working class by its refusal to stand with Arthur Scargill and the National Union of Mineworkers during their heroic stand 1984/5. The job today, as it was then, is to break the link between social democracy and the workers movement, to forge a strong and disciplined Communist Party capable of leading the working class out of the abyss and towards a bright socialist future. We publish below one of the finest and most dignified statements made today, that of comrade Gerry Adams:
“Margaret Thatcher did great hurt to the Irish and British people during her time as British Prime Minister. Working class communities were devastated in Britain because of her policies.
Her role in international affairs was equally belligerent whether in support of the Chilean dictator Pinochet, her opposition to sanctions against apartheid South Africa; and her support for the Khmer Rouge. Here in Ireland her espousal of old draconian militaristic policies prolonged the war and caused great suffering. She embraced censorship, collusion and the killing of citizens by covert operations, including the targeting of solicitors like Pat Finucane, alongside more open military operations and refused to recognise the rights of citizens to vote for parties of their choice.
Her failed efforts to criminalise the republican struggle and the political prisoners is part of her legacy. It should be noted that in complete contradiction of her public posturing, she authorised a back channel of communications with the Sinn Féin leadership but failed to act on the logic of this.
Unfortunately she was faced with weak Irish governments who failed to oppose her securocrat agenda or to enlist international support in defence of citizens in the north.
Margaret Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and ’81.
We publish here the “Special Statement of the Government, Political Parties and Organizations of the DPRK”.
“The moves of the U.S. imperialists to violate the sovereignty of the DPRK and encroach upon its supreme interests have entered an extremely grave phase. Under this situation, the dear respected Marshal Kim Jong Un, brilliant commander of Mt. Paektu, convened an urgent operation meeting on the performance of duty of the Strategic Rocket Force of the Korean People’s Army for firepower strike and finally examined and ratified a plan for firepower strike.
The important decision made by him is the declaration of a do-or-die battle to provide an epochal occasion for putting an end to the history of the long-standing showdown with the U.S. and opening a new era. It is also a last warning of justice served to the U.S., south Korean puppet group and other anti-reunification hostile forces. The decision reflects the strong will of the army and people of the DPRK to annihilate the enemies.
Now the heroic service personnel and all other people of the DPRK are full of surging anger at the U.S. imperialists’ reckless war provocation moves, and the strong will to turn out as one in the death-defying battle with the enemies and achieve a final victory of the great war for national reunification, true to the important decision made by Kim Jong Un.
The Supreme Command of the KPA in its recent statement solemnly declared at home and abroad the will of the army and people of the DPRK to take decisive military counteraction to defend the sovereignty of the country and the dignity of its supreme leadership, as regards the war moves of the U.S. and south Korean puppets that have reached the most extreme phase.
Not content with letting B-52 make sorties into the sky over south Korea in succession despite the repeated warnings of the DPRK, the U.S. made B-2A stealth strategic bomber and other ultra-modern strategic strike means fly from the U.S. mainland to south Korea to stage a bombing drill targeting the DPRK. This is an unpardonable and heinous provocation and an open challenge.
By taking advantage of the U.S. reckless campaign for a nuclear war against the DPRK, the south Korean puppets vociferated about “preemptive attack”and “strong counteraction”and even “strike at the commanding forces”, openly revealing the attempt to destroy monuments symbolic of the dignity of the DPRK’s supreme leadership.
This clearly shows that the U.S. brigandish ambition for aggression and the puppets’ attempt to invade the DPRK have gone beyond the limit and their threats have entered the reckless phase of an actual war from the phase of threat and blackmail.
The prevailing grim situation more clearly proves that the Supreme Command of the KPA was just when it made the judgment and decision to decisively settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists and south Korean puppets by dint of the arms of Songun, because time when words could work has passed.
Now they are openly claiming that the B-2A stealth strategic bombers’ drill of dropping nuclear bombs was “not to irritate the north”but for “defense”. The U.S. also says the drill is “to defend the interests of its ally”. However, it is nothing but a lame pretext to cover up its aggressive nature, evade the denunciation at home and abroad and escape from the DPRK’s retaliatory blows.
The era when the U.S. resorted to the policy of strength by brandishing nuclear weapons has gone.
It is the resolute answer of the DPRK and its steadfast stand to counter the nuclear blackmail of the U.S. imperialists with merciless nuclear attack and their war of aggression with just all-out war.
They should clearly know that in the era of Marshal Kim Jong Un, the greatest-ever commander, all things are different from what they used to be in the past.
The hostile forces will clearly realize the iron will, matchless grit and extraordinary
mettle of the brilliant commander of Mt. Paektu to the effect that the earth cannot exist without Songun Korea.
Time has come to stage a do-or-die final battle.
The government, political parties and organizations of the DPRK solemnly declare as follows reflecting the final decision made by Kim Jong Un at the operation meeting of the KPA Supreme Command and the unanimous will of all service personnel and people of the DPRK who are waiting for a final order from him.
1.From this moment, the north-south relations will be put at the state of war and all the issues arousing between the north and the south will be dealt with according to the wartime regulations.The state of neither peace nor war has ended on the Korean Peninsula.Now that the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK have entered into an actual military action, the inter-Korean relations have naturally entered the state of war. Accordingly, the DPRK will immediately punish any slightest provocation hurting its dignity and sovereignty with resolute and merciless physical actions without any prior notice.
2.If the U.S. and the south Korean puppet group perpetrate a military provocation for igniting a war against the DPRK in any area including the five islands in the West Sea of Korea or in the area along the Military Demarcation Line, it will not be limited to a local war, but develop into an all-out war, a nuclear war.
It is evident that any military conflict on the Korean Peninsula is bound to lead to an all-out war, a nuclear war now that even U.S. nuclear strategic bombers in its military bases in the Pacific including Hawaii and Guam and in its mainland are flying into the sky above south Korea to participate in the madcap DPRK-targeted nuclear war moves.
The first strike of the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK will blow up the U.S. mainland and its bases for aggression in the Pacific operational theaters including Hawaii and Guam and reduce not only its military bases in south Korea but the puppets’ ruling institutions including Chongwadae and military bases to ashes at once, to say nothing of the aggressors and the provokers.
3.The DPRK will never miss the golden chance to win a final victory in a great war for national reunification. This war will not be a three-day-war but it will be a blitz war through which the KPA will occupy all areas of south Korea including Jeju Island at one strike, not giving the U.S. and the south Korean warmongers time to come to their senses, and a three-dimensional war to be fought in the air, land and seas and on the front line and in the rear. This sacred war of justice will be a nation-wide, all-people resistance involving all Koreans in the north and the south and overseas in which the traitors to the nation including heinous confrontation maniacs, warmongers and human scum will be mercilessly swept away. No force on earth can break the will of the service personnel and people of the DPRK all out in the just great war for national reunification and of all other Koreans and overpower their might. Holding in high esteem the peerlessly great men of Mt. Paektu, the Korean people will give vent to the pent-up grudge and realize their cherished desire and thus bring a bright day of national reunification and build the best power on this land without fail.”
Red Youth expresses full solidarity to Celtic FC supporters who continue to organise against draconian laws, police harassment and the shameful complicity of their club in repressing football fans.
Fans Against Criminalisation (FAC), an independent association comprising of the Green Brigade and several other supporters’ groups, have arranged a rally on George Square, Glasgow, 6 April at 12pm.
Whilst FAC was originally formed in 2011 to protest the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communciations Act, and continue to mobilise fans and wider society against this preposterous, repressive and unworkable bill, tensions have reignited after a number of people were recently banned from Celtic Park without cause or explanation. It has since transpired that Celtic FC have been colluding with Strathclyde Police to target certain individuals and groups.
On 16 March, fans responded by organising a corteo to the football stadium to highlight the ongoing harassment and arbitrary bans that supporters face. They were met with heavy-handed policing that resorted to kettling, provocation and the inevitable arrests of supporters, including many under the age of 18. There have been subsequent reports and picture evidence that shows Strathclyde Police intimidating and brutalising fans.
Yet, the supporters have refused to be intimidated and have arranged this further demonstration, which we encourage all football fans and progressive groups to support. The Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Act is aimed primarily at the Irish community in Scotland as it seeks to criminalise the support of Irish republicanism and conflate it with the bigotry and sectarianism of unionism.
The fans who have been targeted by Celtic FC and Strathclyde Police are largely members of the Green Brigade: a collection of Irish republican, socialist and anti-fascist supporters that have organised to bring atmosphere and passion back to Celtic Park. The Green Brigade’s numbers are relatively small but – by having an overwhelmingly working class membership and an ability to connect football, youth culture and political consciousness – they have been able to influence thousands of young people in the West of Scotland and beyond. The ‘left’ in Britain could learn a great deal. It will not be the mainstream political groups that defend the working class but the independent mobilisation of our ranks.
Red Youth stands in solidarity with these supporters:
