A young person's reflections on a parent who works in the NHS

Posted on by Red Youth Red Youth

nhs save

Red Youth welcomes letters and comments from supporters and friends. Below is a heartfelt letter which we have received from a young comrade in the east midlands. We reproduce it below without change…

Having a family member work for the NHS rarely entitles you to any benefits. Working for the NHS in 2013 is synonymous with working unsocial hours trying to manage the work of a dozen on your own, all the while the sword of redundancy hangs precariously above your head. Having a mother who has worked for the NHS for nigh on two decades now, this is the sort of thing I’m used to hearing when she returns home. Nevertheless, despite all this, my mother has consistently come home with some of the most humorous and also some of the most saddening stories from a workplace that I’ve ever heard. Unfortunately, this story falls into the latter category.

Allow me to set the scene for the last tale she came home with. The hospital my mother works at currently, and has done for the best part of 10 years now, has been relatively ‘lucky’ when it comes to NHS cuts. The hospital (which I will not name to spare it the embarrassment) still stands relatively intact and has no major calamities to plague it. To the voyeur, this is one of Britain’s better public hospitals. If there was ever an apple with a rotten core however, then this would be it.

My mother works in the pathology department of the hospital. Or at least, sometimes she does. Her hospital has experienced such a shortage of staff (many of which due to walk outs due to poor treatment, but more on that later) that she and her co-workers often rotate between three and four different departments simply to cover the workload. Of course, this is masqueraded as a ‘varied experience’ for the staff, but in reality means they can’t afford to set on any more staff. 

This tale from my mother concerns one of the other employees at the hospital, a co-worker left to manage an entire department on her own during a particularly busy shift of organizing blood samples, which are obviously quite crucial to the maintenance of patients’ health. Aware of the high workload demanded of its staff, the management’s solution to this problem is to send any excess work on to a nearby (by which I mean around 75 miles) hospital to be completed there. So, worrying that that the workload would go uncompleted if she were to carry on by herself, she sends some of the samples on the 150 mile round trip to be completed elsewhere. All done according to the guidelines she was given. Job done, work sorted, everyone carry on.

This hospital has achieved something of a wonderful bureaucracy of late, where staff can be expected to answer to around half a dozen different ‘bosses’, who don’t really do a great deal of work nor management, and any work or managing they do often conflicts with the work or management of a rival boss. The entire hospital appears to consist of little more than bosses, not sure what to do or who to manage. When the employee was questioned about what was done with the excess samples by another ‘senior’ boss. When she replies, confirming that she did was was instructed, this senior boss’ reply is, ‘that costs too much, you should have done it yourself’. 

But what about the patients who needed these samples and who would go without if she was left to do them alone? The reply is, ‘stuff the bloody patients’.

So, what’s the point in this story? It might appear to be just another ‘boss from hell’ story, it certainly is, it’s much more than that. This is not just an isolated incident but a reflection of the way the entire hospital is run. The one thing that has plagued this hospital, and by extension the NHS, over the last few years is the complete disregard for human lives. Sure, these type of stories are your average ‘horrible boss’ story when it comes to any other place of work and I’m sure every person you talk to will have one. But when it come down to it, the ‘horrible bosses’ of the NHS are in charge of people’s lives as well as people’s wages. 

In one harsh sentence, this senior boss has reduced the lives of patients at this hospital to little more than a monetary exchange, where if the cost is too high then they are left to rot. But it is not just the patients who’ve been reduced, but also the staff. The management at this hospital have long had a reputation for treating both patients and staff as a little less than human, little more than machines. As is common in so many workplaces, the boss is the craftsmen and the workers his tools. Faceless objects of labour, built to work and little more. This senior is the face of capitalism corrupt, where money is deemed more valuable than human lives. 

Obviously, to attribute the failings of the NHS to the management based on a story from one hospital would be foolish indeed. But when the senior boss who was so keen to save money puts time aside in his schedule, which is quite frankly bare, to play golf every week with an even more senior management, then I find it hard not to judge the management for being completely detached and incompetent. The management at this hospital showed an attitude of such inconsideration which has no place in a modern society, let alone its health service.

It is the inconsiderate management that is to blame for the catastrophe that is the NHS in 2013, both within and without the institution. Whilst the hospital management do an excellent job of treating patients and employees like dirt, the management of the country do an even better job of treating everyone like that. Needless to say, the NHS is one of the greatest things that Britain has installed, so why is it being left to disintegrate? The simple answer to that question is because of the inconsiderate, incompetent and detached management, that comes in the form of the government. I write this in the wake of austerity measures, and coincidentally on the 65th birthday of the NHS, so we are all fully aware of the extreme measures that cuts to public services are facing. Only a few days ago, we saw that funding to hospitals, schools and other services was being cut again but somehow our government could justify increasing military and intelligence spending. Rather than nurture its own country, our government has chosen war-making and spying on its own citizens instead of caring for and educating its ill and vulnerable.

There is no justification for this. No excuse can warrant the slashing of public services whilst intelligence and military funding increases. Where is the intelligence in that? Its this kind of behaviour that leads me to label the government as incompetent and detached, but there are no other words to describe them (none I wish to put into print, at least). As it has been for so long, the few in our management seek to benefit themselves whilst the majority lay unattended for. The golf trip is paid for, whilst the many struggle. But where are we, the many, to turn to in such times? There was a time when the Labour Party were the obvious candidates to represent the many, who needed the NHS and the many other public services Britain used to provide. If you weren’t turned away from Labour after the Oil Wars, then you were almost certainly turned away when Labour declared they would do nothing to reverse austerity. What’re we to do, when the devil in the red mask is the same as the one in the blue? The words of Karl Marx spring to mind; ‘The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.’

The only thing the many who depend on public services can do is to continue fighting for them. Regardless of how powerful the few thing they are, they are still nought when compared to the many. The people you elected to represent you and your needs, now only represent the needs of themselves and the few. So no, this story is not just an isolated case and is not just the failure of management when it comes to the needs of employees and patients, but also the failure of government and ultimately the failure of capitalists when it comes to the needs of the working class.

The many must manage themselves when the boss is absent, which is why we have to keep up the defence of public interests, not the interests of those who seek to abuse us. The power has always been with the people, which is why they try so hard to repress us and take away that which we need. That is why its so important to keep fighting for the interests of the many, of the working class, of those who tire of seeing their rewards be reaped by someone else. We must remain defiant in the face of capitalists, for true power is possessed only by the people and the more the few are made aware of this fact, then the sooner we might seek to gain our rightful place as people, not just as tools.

Save the NHS from capitalist Greed!

School is a tool

Posted on by Red Youth Red Youth

education?

The divide between capitalists and workers, both politically and economically, is continuing to expand rapidly as we sink further into economic crisis.

Adding to the relative and absolute impoverishment of the working class in the material sense is the impoverishment of our minds. The most glaring example of our lack of class consciousness or of a Marxist understanding amongst Britain’s workers is all too apparent when we compare the prevailing social peace in the face of massive cuts in Britain with the dramatic fight-back that has been unfolding in the streets of Greece, Turkey and Spain in recent weeks and months. It is clear that we are suffering from a total malnourishment in theory and understanding.

The education of workers regarding the alternative to capitalism is hardly touched upon by our labour movement, and within the state schooling system it is conducted in no meaningful way whatsoever.

The education system works in tandem with the ‘justice’, media and religious establishments (to name but a few) to acclimatise us all to monotonous subordination and despair. The idea that another world is possible is never on the horizon. All of these institutions, it should be noted, are currently being removed from state control and placed into the hands of private owners in the hope that our parasitic ruling class can wring a few more drops of profit out of public institutions that have been bled white.

The purpose of schooling under capitalism is to train us for disciplined labour in the imperialist workforce – to instil us with the stamina to run on the hamster wheel of pointless employment (if we’re fortunate!) until we drop dead, or until we make it to some ever-receding ‘retirement’ age (assuming there will even be such a thing as a state pension by the time we make it to the age of 70!)

The modern curriculum seems to be saturated with mathematical equations whose usefulness is never made clear to us, with religious instruction that is utterly inane, and with repetitious emphasis on how to speak and spell ‘properly’ … even while we are given instruction in the works of William Shakespeare, who was famous for being the originator of so much English slang! How contradictory!

Our schools, and the whole grading and assessing system they buy into, teach us that we are only as good as the grades we receive on results day and the marks we are adjudged to have earned from our teachers. They teach us that the girl across the hall from you is better than you because the A* that she has received is better than your dismal C!

This is a system that inevitably benefits the bourgeoisie, and it is no coincidence that it does so. To earn your A* you must learn to be an excellent parrot – no individuality or criticism is permitted. Regurgitate your textbook onto your exam paper in order to demonstrate how Stalin killed all and sundry before brunch on an icy Russian winter’s morning. A* and place at university assured … along with access to a higher-paying job and a nicer level of life than might be open to some of your less fortunate friends.

But is the great Albert Einstein not proof that the current existing methods of assessment are incorrect, idealist and unfair? Poor old Albert was considered to be an ‘underachiever’ in school too!

Schools are not there to not teach us how to think critically, to pose alternative theories or to explore beyond the curriculum. Everyone has their own ways of thinking, their preferred learning strategies and their unique mix of abilities, yet we are taught, assessed and ranked through the same means.

The present exam system is a hegemonic ideological state apparatus enforced by the bourgeoisie. The whole purpose of exams is not to maintain standards but to ‘reward’ those with the right class background along with the most pliable working-class students with access to university places and jobs. It sets a pattern that is preparing us for our roles in society, all the while covertly teaching us to look down on people who earn less than we do because they must surely be ‘less intelligent’ or ‘less deserving’.

It’s important for us to realise that most people don’t get the grades they worked for so much as the grades their parents paid for. The entire public-school system is set up to make sure that A grades and access to Oxbridge are achieved as standard by anyone with a modicum of intelligence and pliability. Small class sizes, extra coaching, extra-curricular activities, internships, business and academic contacts and exam technique are all part of the package that ensure that the richest parents can expect their children to ‘achieve’ as expected.

To get the same grades as a state comp student requires far more discipline and motivation, especially if you come from a poor family where books and knowledge are not on tap at home and in which such attainment is not expected or planned for, either by your family or by your teachers. Yet still, to win this coveted prize requires students from all backgrounds to crush their critical faculties and teach themselves to become mouthpieces for the prevailing system – something that is far harder to do if your life experience is constantly teaching you that the system is not the ‘fair’, ‘democratic’ ‘meritocracy’ it pretends to be!

If schools endorsed the theories of Karl Marx, if they educated students on his revolutionary literature and explained the materialist conception of history, how quickly do we think the ‘great minds’ at the Department of Education would cry aloud that dictatorship and all the rest of it have long been done away with?

It is not that Marx’s theories are not relevant today or, as the bourgeoisie would have us believe, that ‘Marxism is dead’. Quite the opposite. The bourgeoisie are fully aware that his teachings are correct and that Marxism will never die while class society continues to exist. Indeed, they themselves desire to understand Marx’s ideas, the better to debunk them. Not a great house or public school in the country would be without complete without the works of Marx and Lenin on its shelves – but try finding them nowadays in your local library!

Unfortunately, all that working-class youth are likely to find on comprehensive or academy school shelves is Animal Farm, the objective of which is to hammer home that nonsensical view that ‘communism doesn’t work because everyone is naturally greedy and people won’t work together’. This ‘truth’ is handed down to us just 20 minutes before the next teacher tells us what a wonderful ‘Big Society’ we have in Britain, and how we all worked in common to bring understanding to the natives during the colonial era. What happy times.

Working-class youth needs to educate itself; to set its own programme and curriculum – one which reflects our life, our struggle and our conditions. Young people should educate themselves in the most advanced theory, Marxism Leninism. The CPGB-ML urges the youth of this nation to read the revolutionary and emancipating works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin so that they can prepare themselves to break out of the poverty and ignorance that has been assigned to them.

The youth of today is the wealth of tomorrow. Don’t let our school and our warped and class-ridden assessment system determine what you do with your life. Join the CPGB-ML, join Red Youth and be the change you want to see in the world. As Chairman Mao put it: “Dare to struggle; dare to win!” Or as Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto 165 years ago: “Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

29th June, Armed forces day

Posted on by Red Youth Red Youth
British "freedom Fighters" in Malaysia
British “freedom Fighters” in Malaysia

A day when people come together to celebrate British imperialism

This year it was like any other, events up and down the country filled with flag waving members of the working class, and in Manchester a delusional youth cadet force who believe that they are fighting for “our freedom”. CPGB-ML north west regional members arrived in Manchester to leaflet on topics like the NHS and the Bedroom tax; comrades always do this at the public area of Piccadilly gardens. When we went into Piccadilly gardens comrades hadn’t even given out a leaflet when members were harassed by private security. One very brave private security guard of 30 squared up to one of our 16 year old youth members and pushed him back out of Piccadilly gardens without even asking them to leave. We oppose all thuggish behaviour by these corporate ‘police’.  To make things worse some women then came to our comrades shouting abuse at them, comrades tried to explain that they were campaigning on the NHS but the women were adamant they were there “disrespecting the soldiers”! When comrades asked how they were “disrespecting the soldiers” no reply was given and they just walked off looking upset that there were no ‘lefties’ to bash, insult or scream at. A man who claimed he was an ex-soldier then squared up to our younger comrades and made threats, with the public passers-by watching, the comrade refused to leave the public space which only made this man even more angry! Once more our members patiently explained they were giving out NHS leaflets which were even handed to him! He either had difficulty reading or he had no time for reasoned argument and seemed not to care a jot! Our comrades were pushed, and one young member had his glasses broken!

We would like to take this moment to say thanks to the elderly women and other members of the public who stepped in and confronted this mad man and these thugs. The behaviour of the cadets was as shocking as it was pitiful as they stood laughing at the man being confrontational, with one member of the public even turning to the cadets and saying “Shame on you”.

When the situation died down we spoke to the cadets who claimed they support freedom and that soldiers fight for freedom! Despite their love of freedom they insisted they had a right to have us thrown out of a public space! The hypocrisy from these brave defenders of freedom is plain for all to see!

We say this quite clear

Shame on you British Army

And shame on you British Cadets

The working class shall defend our freedoms!

 

Image

NHS commissioning groups a cruel 1 April ‘joke’

 

DPR Korea Ambassador – US threatening North Korea with Nuclear War!

Posted on by Red Youth Red Youth

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!

Photos from the event:

DPRK Ambassador

cpgb-ml speaker

Communists demonstrate in Turkey against Syrian intervention

Posted on by Red Youth Red Youth

As thousands demonstrate regularly across Turkey, follow the stories on the youtube site of the TKP and the daily newspaper Sol.

Scene from the port of Iskenderun where patriot missiles are being brought into the country
Scene from the port of Iskenderun where patriot missiles are being brought into the country

The TKP (Communist Party of Turkey) has organised a series of militant demonstrations opposing the arrival of patriot missiles and the escalation of Turkey’s aggressive stance towards Syria these last few weeks. The photograph above shows workers at the port of Iskenderun where patriot missiles were arriving over the weekend. The first video which we post below is from one of the first major demonstrations which was reported by Iran’s PressTv and the subsequent video’s are of TKP activists rallying in Istanbul and other places.

After Syria comes Iran

In 2007, retired US general Wesley Clarke revealed details of a secret Pentagon ‘Redirection strategy’ document, which proposed using 9/11 to justify launching unprovoked wars (the highest international crime) on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Iran and Lebanon – all countries seen as obstacles to US world domination and obstacles to the raking in of maximum profits by British and US corporations.

It is clear that if the Syrian government is toppled, the attacks against Iran will be escalated into a full war – and the inevitable endgame if the juggernaut is not stopped will be a catastrophic conflagration against Russia and China. Meanwhile, those who tell us to support the Syrian ‘opposition’ are blocking our ability to effectively mobilise and sabotage the war effort, which means objectively (whether or not they mean to) they are weakening not only Syria’s chances of survival but also Iran’s.

For imperialism, Syria is a stepping stone, a gateway to Iran. And so the best defence for Iran will naturally be a victory for the Syrian government. Which means the most urgent question for the British anti-war movement today is the defence of Syria.

Iran’s envoy, Saeed Jalili, says that Iran and Syria are part of an unbreakable “axis of resistance”. We workers in Britain need to join this ‘axis of resistance’ by refusing to cooperate with the criminal war against Syria. We must refuse to fight; refuse to make or transport arms and supplies; refuse to create or broadcast war propaganda that demonises Syria’s leaders and justifies the war. And we must give full support to the Syrian and Iranian governments in defending their people against imperialism.

Read the Pyongyang Times online at redyouth.org

Posted on by Red Youth Red Youth

Pyongyang Times

Red Youth enjoys excellent relations with our comrades organised in the Kim il Sung Socialist Youth League, in the same way that the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) enjoys warm relations with the Korean Workers Party. As part of our ongoing solidarity work, we’ll keep trying to publish The Pyongyang Times and Korean Today, here online at redyouth.org.

Download the latest edition of the Pyongyang Times here 02 PT.

Statement of the Syrian Communist Youth Union

Posted on by Red Youth Red Youth

Red Youth, standing shoulder to shoulder with our comrades in the Syrian Communist Youth Union reproduce the statement of the revolutionary Syrian youth who stand with the legitimate government of the Syrian people and the President Bashar al-Assad against the imperialist-backed forces of reaction and obscurantism.Syrian Revolutionary

Dear comrades and friends:

Nowadays, Syria is facing one of the most serious position in its modern history, when the world imperialist attack is increased using most reactionary forces with full support and funding of the Arab reactionary regimes who they are Imperialist agents.

Today the Syrian people and youth are facing the terrorist operations, massacres and incitement on the various components of the Syrian people, where the terrorist operations targeting civilians, soldiers, academics and active youth. These operations are carried out by terrorist groups and extremist reactionary forces especially its obscurantist Muslim Brotherhood organization with direct support by weapons and through media campaigns which are led, funded and fabricated by treason and reactionary Arab regimes especially oil Arab Gulf countries in addition to NATO interference in the region by Turkey. The treason forces who are called themselves ″The Syrian opposition″ are asking for external intervention on Syria by NATO, which means to invade our country depending upon the criminal imperialist model that we witnessed in Libya and Iraq, which means to allow NATO to invade and occupy Syria, this what the Syrian people and youth are against it and will fight it by all means and forms. In this occasion, the Syrian Communist Party and Syrian Communist Youth Union – Khaled Bagdash Youth have organized many demonstrations and sit-ins in various parts of Syria rejecting the imperialist interventions in the country affairs and supporting the Syrian national steadfastness, and our comrades is working in many region to relief and help the refugees.

Despite everything that is happening, the Syrian national steadfastness continues to face the Zionist and imperialist pressures and blackmails and still insists to restore the occupied Syrian Golan and rejecting imperialist domination plans such as the imperialist plan that so called “the new greater middle east”. This national steadfastness is the cornerstone in the victories which achieved by the national resistance in the East Mediterranean region. Syria is the stronghold facing the imperialist plans and projects in the region, and it is the main supporter to national resistance in the region, this caused it to won the hostility of imperialists, Zionists, reactionaries and their traitors.

But the neoliberal economic policies that have been applied in recent years led to impoverish the masses of people and led to increasing the unemployment status among young people and gave a strong blow to the national production, which create a breeding ground for the work and activities of reactionary forces, and established for the unfortunate events that taking place in the country. This is what Syrian communists have warned and struggled against everywhere and with various shapes.
Syrian Communist Youth Union – Khaled Bagdash Youth confirms the full commitment with the policy of Syrian Communist Party, which was adopted in his 11th Congress, and the essential orientations of the struggle of the Party in the current stage which was adopted in the last meeting of the Central Committee of the Party. As following:

1. Defending for the national independence and sovereignty, keeping back the imperialist plots and the attempts of Arab and local reactionary forces , and mobilizing the people mass under the great national slogan: “Syria will not Kneel down! “.
2. Struggling against the neo-liberal economic policies, with all its shapes and characters, defending for the national production and interests of producers, and proposing the tangible alternatives with confirming the general orientation, that adopted by th 11th congress of SCP about reinforcing the public sector and the interfering role of the state in the frame of national state capitalism that has a social character and tasks.
3. Defending firmly for the toiling popular mass and escalation the class struggle.

Dear comrades and friends:

The Syrian communist youth union – Khaled Bagdash youth struggles through the direct mass activity, demand petitions, trade unions, students union and through all fields of work and study to maintain the Syrian national steadfastness against the plans and conspiracies of imperialism, Zionism and reactionary Forces. And also against the neoliberal economic policies, to support the national production and to maintain the social rights of Syrian people and youth especially free education, free health care, and to find work opportunities, adequate housing of youth, to widen the democratic freedoms, and to achieve the students and workers youth demands.

Dear comrades:

Nowadays, when we are confronting the terrorist groups, massacres and sabotage actions that are organized by the mercenaries and supported by imperialism, we confirm our firm position:

No revolution with world imperialism. No revolution with NATO. No revolution with the reactionary regimes of mercenary and national treachery of rulers of gulf who steal the wealth of the people of Arab peninsula. No revolution with reactionary and treachery forces. Because a revolution that its first slogan is not the liberation of the land and face the imperialism and Zionism is not a revolution. A revolution who does not raise the banner of national independence and prevent external intervention is not a revolution.

We shall struggle against the terrorist groups and imperialist death machines, for independence and sovereignty, for the freedom of homeland and good life of people.

Our battle is long and hard, but we progress in the path of honorable struggle and we’ll win..
Homeland or Death!

Syrian Communist Youth Union
– Khaled Bagdash Youth-

A Christmas letter to Amnesty International

Posted on by Red Youth Red Youth

Amnesty International

A 14 year old cadre of Red Youth has written and posted the following letter to his school who have instituted an Amnesty International club for the students. Our comrade, in a short and precise letter exposes the sheer hypocrisy of AI and delivers a challenge to his school, peers and the local AI Club to justify their peddling of imperialist propaganda. The letter is reproduced exactly as it was composed save the name of the school and comrade:

“Dear TGS Amnesty International Club,

I am writing this letter in sheer disgust at the ignorance of xxxx Schools Amnesty International club portrays. Presentations were carried out throughout the school promoting the club and issuing out awareness material to other students. Students were intimidated into signing cards and letters expressing their support for the supposed ‘political prisoners’ locked up in certain nations across the world. The information given to the students about the prisoners was extremely limited and bias. However, my argument is for the millions of oppressed people across the world suffering at the behest of the rich and powerful nations on whose behalf A. I. operates and from where it is based. Why focus on a few individuals and then ignore all the crimes committed by these powerful states? I will be expressing points which will hopefully be answered by the group.

I have no doubt that Amnesty International contains a great number of well-meaning supporters, people with genuine compassion. It is from this standpoint that I express my outrage at the continual stream of lies, hypocrisy and war propaganda that emanates from publications and spokespersons of Amnesty International, hood-winking its members, volunteers and the general public alike into supporting acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing and regime change throughout the world.

We all remember the horrendous war on Libya which resulted in thousands of innocent civilians being killed, beautiful infrastructure being smashed (including the Sahara Aquifers) and blown up and a secular and progressive regime being expunged. And let’s not forget how we all witnessed the rape and lynching by mercenaries and foreign terrorists of the much loved Leader of that country, Colonel Gaddafi, on our computers, mobiles and television screens like some kind of sadistic game that would be familiar to see on horror films like Saw and Hostel. And which ‘Human Rights’ organization really pushed for regime change in that country? Of course, Amnesty International.

Now, several months on, cases are emerging of Libyan cities and towns such as Tawergha, Bani Waled and Sirte being persecuted and violently terrorised due to the fact that the majority of people living there were black. In one town, Tawergha, some 40,000 plus black people were force to flee in one day as they were butchered and terrorised by the rebel militias and gangs provided with NATO air cover. On the 25th February this year, a man was reported on the BBC news saying:

“We had 70-80 people from Chad working for our company. They were cut dead with pruning shears and axes, attackers saying: ‘You are providing troops for Gaddafi.’ The Sudanese were also massacred. We saw it for ourselves.”

This is just one of the hundreds of cases being released clearly showing, with great and detailed evidence, that the rebels, supported by Amnesty International, NATO, etc, were human rights abusers on a massive scale. Surely that can’t be right? A Human Rights defender siding with NATO, a Military Alliance which has killed, massacred and terrorised millions in its time, to help bring about regime change for a handful of racist thugs. So exposed was the stance of Amnesty on the Libyan massacre that its spokesperson retracted her earlier statements about Gadaffi using foreign mercenaries to fight for him. However this confession of course was never broadcasted by the mass media which is in the service of this same NATO war machine. But the lies spouted at the time about the Libyan army were enough to provide the cover and false legitimacy for the NATO saturation bombing which brought the war lords and racist terrorist gangs to power and massacred thousands of Libyan troops and civilians. You might argue that this is just one lonely example which can’t prove anything but try telling millions of Libyans that. Moving on.

Now, the organisation has moved onto Syria, another target of the West. What a coincidence. Amnesty International is constantly promoting the rebels there (which have very close links to Al-Qaida and other Islamic extremist groups) to topple another progressive, developing and secular state. Their excuse, very much like the excuse they used in Libya, is that the President, Basher Al Assad, is a ‘dictator murdering his own people’. Is Assad just meant to let a group of local and foreign terrorists, funded and armed by real dictators in the region, namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, to come and attack his people? And if Assad was such an evil tyrant with no desire but wealth and exploitation of his people, why would over 15 million Syrians, over 90% of the electorate, vote for his new reform plans earlier this year? The Bathe party in Syria heads a broad coalition of all the very many ethnic groups and confessions of the nation, defending them all against an array of extremist Sunni terrorist gangs seeking succour from rich and powerful foreign nations.

Many human rights abuses are being carried out slyly right here under our noses in Britain and other Western ‘democratic’ countries.
Many Muslim immigrants and asylum seekers, escaping from the very war zones created by western military interventions, are inhumanely harassed and molested as soon as they pass through the border crossings, on spurious claims of suspicion of terrorism or other crimes even though most are women and young children. They are made to live in very harsh conditions, including internment camps, insufficient for raising a family. They are given ill-paid jobs which require long hours of work for a minimum wage. They often resort to crime to survive, which lands them in jail.

Can it be just that 50% of the USA’s prison population is black, and that Native Americans have never been compensated for the massive genocide perpetrated against them? Can it be just that the US, the richest nation in the World, has a bigger prison population than any other country, both proportionately and absolutely? The American penal system incarcerated over 5 million of its citizens during the 1930’s and over 2.5 million today. Why were there no cards for these victims? Why were there no cards for today’s tens of millions of the descendents of tens of millions of African slaves who form the vast majority of the impoverished in the USA and to this day have no rights to medicare and many of whom end up languishing in the Jails of the USA?

Police brutality and oppression is a regular experience for black people in the US, as well as national minorities throughout Europe. Earlier last week, on December 13th, Chicago police killed 38 year old Phillip Coleman, who was, according to family members and neighbours, having a nervous breakdown and behaving erratically. Police subdued him with a taser when he was arrested and again after he arrived at Roseland Hospital. He died later on that day in Roseland. Phillip Coleman’s sister, Jacqueline, told the Sun-Times,

“Phillip was not treated justly, he was treated like an insect!”

This is just one example of the cruel acts the American state perpetrates on its own citizens, whilst claiming to be a father figure of democracy and freedom.

I recall that one of the cards which was given to us to sign, was for a prisoner in China called Chen Guangcheng, who was locked up for being too ‘outspoken’ in his beliefs. It is now reported that he has fled to the USA with his family. Say no more. However, my point is that even after all the evidence lying on the table, proving how the West, namely the USA and its puppets or lap dogs including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, etc commit the most atrocious crimes against humanity and act like ‘police of the world’, Amnesty International still points its longest finger at the People’s Republic of China for being an abuser of human rights. But as I already explained, it is the USA that has the largest prison population in the world, both absolutely and as a percentage of its population. Where’s the card for Bradley Manning? Wheres the card for Mumia Abu Jamal? Where’s the card for Julian Assange? Where are all the cards for the inmates of Guantanamo Bay? Where all the cards for the thousands of black people being imprisoned in America and being lynched in Libya as we speak by these supposed ‘Freedom Fighters’?

China is one of the two nations to veto a war on Syria at the UN Security council. It can see how regime change there will lead to a catastrophe even greater than the one in Libya. And for this reason and others it is attacked extensively by the West, using any means necessary, including Human Rights organisations like Amnesty International to pick out mole hills there and to make them into mountains.

At the Nuremburg Trials after World War 2, it was made very clear that the highest crime of all was an unprovoked war waged by one country against another. For good reason you might say. There can be no greater denial of human rights than War itself: millions are terrorised, displaced, killed violently or by secondary causes, wrongfully imprisoned, denied the means of sustenance and any security. Yet it is Western countries that have been the main instigators and protagonists of these wars yet all the claimed justifications for them from holding WMD’s to humanitarian intervention, stopping massacres, fighting terrorism, supporting democracy, removing dictators, protecting women, fighting drugs etc etc etc etc have all been exposed to progressive humanity as massive lies: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, Libya, Syria, the Congo are the most well known and deadly. Where are the cards for the millions of the victims of these wars, the millions who have been denied the most basic human rights of all? To Life? To Peace? To Security? To a Home? To Food? To the very basic needs for sustaining life? Surely, if Amnesty International was a real fighter for human rights these matters would be at the top of the agenda and determine the cards we would be signing? Instead, so as to prepare the unsuspecting public for the next criminal war, it selectively chooses only the countries to be targeted, demonising their systems so that the public at worse will turn their heads the other way after the start of the military aggression. It is no surprise therefore that the “human rights” victims highlighted by A. I. are those working under the auspices of Western powers, selling out their countries’ independence to them. However, in the West we have no qualms about locking up and throwing away the key in those cases of betrayal to foreign countries.

As a student who researches extensively on world events trying to see society’s big picture, I cannot help but be infuriated at how openly supporters of Amnesty International operate within the school community, spreading bias propaganda and promoting ill-minded teachings, without being adequately challenged. They ignore the fact that A.I. promotes a cruel system, providing it with the legitimacy required for its criminal wars, global economic inequality and for the exploitation of 99% of world’s people. Surely the largest denial of human rights is that over 2 billion people (1/3 of the world’s population) have to survive on less than $2 a day? As a consequence the World health Organisation has stated that over 5 million children below the age of 5 die every year from malnutrition alone. Where are the cards for these lost souls?

I really do hope you can come back on the points I have raised.

Yours Sincerely,

AC (Year 9)”

School essay – a youths appraisal of Marxism in the 21st century

Posted on by Red Youth Red Youth

A Red Youth and cpgb-ml candidate from Stafford gave his teacher a shock with this appraisal of Marxism which the class was asked to complete as an assignment!

red youth
Defending communism and the question of communism in the 21st Century

It is a popular trend amongst British society to slander and regurgitate various statements and “arguments” against Communism and its history. Undoubtedly, one of the most popular arguments that is regurgitate by the people, from the bourgeois press, is the argument: “Communism is outdated”. Little do they know, this is completely wrong and you can see it for yourself with just a little bit of Marxist-Leninist analysis.

The fundamental of Marxism-Leninism is class struggle. Class struggle is more than a belief though; it is a direct result of Capitalism and the massive inequality it breeds in every corner. The concept of class struggle is still totally relevant to 21st Century Britain. There is still workers and bosses, rich and poor, exploiters and exploited. The working classes and the upper classes still fight one another for their specific interests, although it may seem less physical right now, it is still represented through various political and social struggles on an almost monthly basis. Since all this is happening, the concept of Class struggle is still relevant to 21st Century Britain.

We have witnessed constant examples of class struggle throughout our lives living in the 21st Century. We have witnessed the public spending cuts, leaving thousands, if not millions of working class people unemployed and left on the brink of poverty. We have witnessed their struggle to protect what little wealth they own. While this was and still is happening, the capitalists were sitting in their luxury houses, with their firm control over 90% of Britain’s wealth, earned through the blood of imperialism and the exploitation of the working classes of Britain.

People will also argue that Marxism-Leninism has lost it’s relevance because of the improvement of living standards in the past 100 years. They say because public services such as education have been made free, opportunity of success has risen and now anyone can go from “rags to riches”. But this simply isn’t true. Statistics have shown that only 4% of Britain’s upper classes have gone from “rags to riches”. Meaning the other 96% of the upper class have basically had some form of help in order to attain their wealthy status. Meaning the poor working classes have little chance of ever becoming wealthy millionaires. Not to mention that further education still requires us to pay ludicrous amounts of money just to gain a qualification. So services like education technically are still not fully provided for. Meaning Marxism-Leninism is still needed to provide our working classes with much needed opportunity.

Another fundamental teaching of Marxism-Leninism concerns imperialism. Imperialism is just as relevant now as it was 100 years ago. We see the constant effects of NATO backed invasions, specifically in the middle-east, in which nations are invaded and plundered by the multi-national capitalist monopolies. Iraq and Afghanistan have both fell victims of imperialism. Invaded and then plundered by various monopolies, expanding their empire of capital even further. Imperialism for profit, at the expense of potentially millions of innocent lives.

We have also witnessed many examples of imperialism across the globe and the destruction and suffering it creates. We have seen the invasion of Iraq, supposedly in the name of “freedom” and finding “weapons of mass-destruction”. The invasion has brought nothing to the Iraqi people but suffering, extreme poverty, violence and death. Thousands of Iraqis have died and millions of Iraqis lives have been destroyed, all because of the NATO invasion. While this has happened, conveniently, many monopolies have shown up not long after in Iraq. Companies like KBR, making $8 billion from both oil and private security. Or Dyncorp, making $50 million from providing “law enforcement” for the Iraqi people.

It’s time for the people of Britain to face the truth, Capitalism must go! It has exploited and caused enough pain, suffering, war and death! We must not fall for the bourgeoisie’s lies, instead we must develop class consciousness once more! We must use Marxism-Leninism, still as relevant as 100 years ago, as our weapon for liberation!

JOIN THE REVOLUTION! JOIN THE CPGB-ML!