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!
An understanding of society (theory) and a way of uniting to change it (organisation) are the two things that we need to make a socialist revolution. Ordinary people in Britain have everything to gain by getting involved in this process sooner rather than later. This world isn’t working for us and we deserve better!
Not only do we need to campaign against the bad conditions and lack of prospects for working-class people in Britain today, but we need to work for a completely different type of society – one where people’s needs decide everything.
So many problems face this world: environmental catastrophe, poverty, disease, racism and war. They’ll never be solved while capitalism remains, but they could all be sorted if society was set up for the benefit of the majority rather than the private gain of a few billionaires.
Our party is different because we consistently apply Marxist science to all areas of our work, and we’re not scared to tell it how it is. We refuse to be intimidated by the barrage of lying propaganda that fills Britain’s mainstream media. It is the capitalists’ job to try to stop us from building a socialist society; it is our job to do it anyway!
Challenge your ideas – challenge their propaganda – seek the truth – serve the people – change the world! Contact the CPGB-ML to find out more!
Django Unchained is a beguiling film. ‘Beguiling’ may seem an odd adjective for a Tarantino blood-fest, but despite that director’s well-known penchant for violence being well to the fore in this tale of the pre-civil-war southern states of America, the film does charm the viewer. This is chiefly because of the engaging story, which grips from the opening shots, the clever, witty and often laugh-out-loud funny script and, above all, the stand-out performance of the supporting lead, German actor Christoph Waltz.
Only lately come to US films and international stardom (and until now mainly playing villains), Waltz plays a German immigrant doctor travelling as an itinerant dentist (we are never sure of his true qualifications, if any) but in reality operating as a bounty hunter, duly authorised, we are given to understand, by the US courts to capture wanted criminals “dead or alive”.
This being a Tarantino film, the Doctor (thus we will call him, as he is called this by all in the film) never bothers even to try to catch them alive. A corpse, duly produced and identified, is sufficient to claim the bounty, and no doubt less bother to transport to show the authorities than a living prisoner, and each ‘capture’ provides an opportunity for a display of crack shooting.
The Doctor character is handsome and erudite; a funny, charming and convincing con-man (as all con-men have to be, or they would never succeed). He fools everyone until the moment after the killing, when he produces the wanted poster/warrant from his inside coat pocket.
Slavery is the backdrop against which the story of the film plays out. The film is hyped by some critics as a serious exposé of the brutal reality of the slave system in the USA, which existed, and was the basis for much of the wealth of that country, from the late 17th century until the second half of the 19th century. Is that assessment of the film justified? We would have to say that no, it is not.
The film starts with a pair of travelling slave merchants, who are moving Django and a half-dozen other slaves along a remote woodland track in rural Texas. The Doctor, in his character of itinerant dentist in a horse-drawn closed wagon complete with a large model of a molar bouncing on a spring on the wagon’s roof, hoves into view.
It appears he has been looking for these particular slavers with the object of buying Django from them. He parries the slavers’ curious enquiries and concludes the deal after he has questioned Django to confirm that he knows and could identify three brothers who were the overseers at the last plantation he worked on before being sold away by the owner.
Once the purchase is completed and verified by a signed bill of sale, at the Doctor’s insistence, an altercation arises which is resolved, Tarantino-style, by the Doctor shooting and wounding one slaver and killing the other, tossing the remaining slaves the keys to their shackles and a rifle and giving them the choice of taking the injured and helpless surviving slaver back to the nearest town (in the hope that they might get their freedom as a reward), or shooting him and escaping to “a more enlightened part of this country” where they might be free.
The opening scene sets the tone for the rest of the film: comedy, irony, wit, with the doctor usually getting the better of everyone he meets through his quicker wits and greater intelligence, but with every dispute being settled summarily with casual, lethal violence.
Django, played by Jamie Foxx, is needed by the Doctor because the three overseer brothers are wanted ‘dead or alive’ and are the objects of his latest bounty hunt; the Doctor does not know what they look like, but Django does. The pair find the overseer brothers working under different names at a new slave plantation.
Django turns out to be a naturally accurate marksman with pistol and rifle. Having been given his freedom as his reward for his contribution to the success of the hunt, he agrees to the Doctor’s proposal that they work together as a team as bounty hunters in the mountains of the far West for the duration of the winter, with Django taking a third of the rewards earned. The Doctor trains him and Django practises until he is a perfect shot. They spend a ‘profitable’ winter together.
The story then changes gear and becomes almost a different film. Django has told the Doctor that he and his wife were sold separately (by express order of their owner) after they had tried to run away from the plantation together. He wants to find and free his wife so they can run away together again.
The Doctor has promised to help Django after the winter, although that means going back to Mississippi, where they were sold at slave auction, in order to discover his wife’s buyer and present whereabouts. This is a mission and a place that will be very dangerous for Django as an African American (‘Nigger’ in contemporary parlance), even one now a free man and with papers to prove his new status.
There is a stand-out performance by Leonardo di Caprio as the new owner of Django’s wife, ‘Monsieur’ Candie, owner of one of Mississippi’s largest plantations, ‘Candieland’, and scion of an old, rich slave-owning family. ‘Monsieur’ Candie (his title of preference) owns a string of slaves kept specifically to fight, bare-knuckled, to the death if required, the slaves of other plantation owners in a ‘sport’ called ‘Mandingo fighting’. It is through this pastime that our heroes make contact with him.
The Doctor is shown to view with distaste the violence of a bout he witnesses with ‘Monsieur’ Candie, and also the result of the latter’s subsequent command to an overseer that the dogs be let loose to kill a Mandingo fighter slave of his caught while running away in order to avoid having to fight further bouts. Django reminds the Doctor that months before he had told Django to shoot a wanted criminal “in cold blood in front of his own son” from a safe and hidden vantage point, afterwards giving the poster to Django as a keepsake (“You never forget your first bounty”).
The twists and turns of the plot thereafter we will not reveal. It is enough to say that there is an explosion of violence and killing before Django can ride off into the sunset together with his companion.
Why do we say that this film is not a serious exposé of slavery? Because essentially it just presents the same, dominant (if not sole) message of modern American cinema in another setting: which is that any wrong can be righted by individual, vigilante-type violence.
There is no reference, even in passing, to the economic basis of slavery as a system, or of the economic basis for its eventual abolition; it just seems to be the result of wicked, callous and ‘unenlightened’ men, with the way out therefore being through ‘enlightened’ men or individual gunfights.
The organised ‘Freedom Railroad’ is not mentioned even when the context invites it, as when the doctor suggests the slaves escape from Texas (an awful long way without help from the ‘more enlightened’ parts of the country he referred to as their possible destination), or when Django recounts the story of his and his wife’s failed attempt to run away.
Django refers to his lost love as his ‘wife’ throughout, though slaves in fact had no right to marry; they might be made or allowed to breed, or used (often) by their owners for sex, but if they formed relationships of their own choice these could be and often were broken at will by their owners, as the slaves were regarded as livestock, like cattle, not fully human.
Django and his wife are shown as rare exceptions to the rule of cowed and obedient slaves. He gives no clue to the feelings of his fellow slaves, even though the brutality of the system is shown.
The ‘solution’ to slavery is totally misrepresented in Django Unchained, and not by accident. The truth, however, is that slavery became uneconomic partly because of the development of technology (which meant brute strength was no longer the prime requirement for cultivation on the plantation), and partly because of the increasing cost and difficulty of controlling the slaves and putting down their repeated uprisings.
Slavery was (and still is) a class question – in its modern manifestations, it is a feature of imperialist exploitation, which was and will be defeated only by collective action by the oppressed people themselves, who in the current conditions of imperialism can only succeed if led by the revolutionary proletariat.
Slavery in Tibet was only ended when the region was liberated following the success of the Chinese revolution and the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Bonded labour in India (slavery by another name) and outright slavery in a number of African countries have not been affected by the ‘independence’ of those countries from direct colonial rule, since their local leaders still govern on behalf of the imperialists.
So long as surplus value can be extracted from another’s labour, there will be every form of exploitation, including slavery, even in the heartlands of imperialism.
See and enjoy the film, but do not be beguiled into buying into its ‘solution’.
Unlike our political opponents the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist Leninist) and Red Youth do not sneak about behind the backs of other groups who profess to be communist but with whom we have differences; we do not seek to hide our differences (like the Communist Party of Britain) but rather we wish to have them out in the open so the points can be debated. Nor do we reduce our political differences with others into personal gossip and rumour mongering. So many on the so-called ‘left’ retreat to the safety of the chat room and online forums to spread gossip and rumour, unable to deal in an honest and upfront manner with political disagreements. Where differences of opinion exist, we aim to deal with the political aspect openly and forthrightly. It is in this spirit that the friendly journal Lalkar has written a critique of the RCG position on Syria which can be read below. We are sure that this open polemic with those who genuinely seek to chart an anti-imperialist path for the revolutionary forces in Britain will be welcomed by all sincere communists and anti-imperialists:
Revolutionary Communist Group: sitting on the Syrian fence
From the very start of the turmoil in Syria, Lalkar, and its sister publication, Proletarian, have been crystal clear in their exposition of the realities of the situation – namely that what the country was facing was not primarily the result of any internal contradictions within Syrian society, but rather an externally directed campaign of aggression and terrorism waged by imperialism, both directly and through its regional surrogates, Turkey, the reactionary Arab states and statelets and the zionist colonial settler state of Israel, against practically the last remaining independent, anti-imperialist state in the Arab region, which, moreover, adheres to a broadly socialist orientation.
Everything that has transpired over the last nearly two years has borne out the accuracy of our analysis all too clearly. As a result, whilst our line of calling for ‘Hands off Syria’ and ‘Victory to Assad’ has remained consistent, and consistently correct, our political opponents in the anti-war and working class movements have had to slither and slide hither and thither as the inexorable unfolding of events has inevitably served to expose and highlight their opportunism.
Thus, for example, the Trotskyites of Counterfire, the main, but not only, source of misleadership and demobilisation in the Stop the War Coalition, took more than a year (not to mention the additional time they had already spent cheering on counter-revolution in Libya) to get off the imperialist fence and concede that the anti-government violence in Syria is essentially reactionary.
Even now, they refuse to prioritise the Syrian crisis in their organised inactivity of pointless protest, rather claiming to focus on a possible future war against Iran, despite the fact that the actual war being waged by imperialism in Syria is not least directed at opening the road to Tehran and, needless to say, reserving their greatest venom for those who draw the logical and correct conclusion that if one is to call for the defeat of imperialist war, one must also call for the victory of those fighting against imperialism – and in Syria this must mean the government and armed forces led by President Assad.
Within the constellation of opportunist trends that refuse to take a clear cut anti-imperialist stand, a particularly crafty and disingenuous role is being played by the Revolutionary Communist group (RCG) and its newspaper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! (FRFI).
An article in the current (December 2012/January 2013) issue of FRFI contains some useful information on the dirty role of British imperialism in fomenting the war against Syria and correctly concludes: “For communists in Britain, it is essential to expose and oppose the role of British imperialism. We cannot let there be a repeat of 2011’s imperialist slaughter with no real domestic opposition.”
Yet what is the RCG’s reason for opposing David Cameron’s plans to overtly arm the terrorists in Syria? With a sanctimonious air worthy of a country parson, the comrades inform us:
“Syria’s battlegrounds are already awash with foreign weapons: the Syrian army killing with Russian and Iranian products, and the rebels armed by more than three dozen countries including more than half of the membership of NATO.” (‘Syria: British imperialism takes the centre stage’)
Yet, for Marxists, it should be axiomatic that weapons, and even “killing”, per se, are not the issue. The issue is who is wielding the guns, who is killing and who is being killed and, to sum up it all up, which class interests are being served? As Lenin rightly put it:
“We would cease to be Marxists, we would cease to be socialists in general, if we confined ourselves to the Christian, so to speak, contemplation of the benignity of benign general phrases and refrained from exposing their real political significance.” (‘Bourgeois pacifism and socialist pacifism’, Collected Works, Vol. 23)
Such pious phrases as the above quoted one from the pages of FRFI would, frankly, generally pass almost without notice in the pages of mushy liberalism produced by the various Trotskyite and revisionist groups in Britain.
But the RCG made a name for itself by claiming to stand for the militant defence of national liberation movements and all those fighting imperialism – as the very name of its newspaper seeks to convey.
In particular, this organisation staked out its political territory by excoriating almost the entire British left for its shameful failure to wholeheartedly support the Irish people’s national liberation struggle. And it took solidarity with the Irish and South African struggles onto the streets in a generally militant and dynamic way. Today, it seeks to mark out similar terrain for itself with its campaigning in solidarity with socialist Cuba.
Why then does the RCG allow itself to slip into this sort of ‘plague on both your houses’ agnosticism, so characteristic of the petit bourgeoisie, in the case of Syria?
An article by the same author, Comrade Toby Harbertson, in the previous (October/November 2012) issue of FRFI sheds some more light on this.
Again, the article contains much that is correct and useful, both in terms of outlining facts concerning imperialist aggression against Syria, as well as in exposing the hopelessly reactionary position of the Trotskyite Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), the organisation from which the RCG originally emerged. Comrade Harbertson also correctly notes that:
“ When considering Syria, the bottom line for imperialism, given the increasing capitalist crisis, is that it will not allow a politically independent country, which has not fully opened its borders to imperialist capital, and retains a strong military, to remain at the heart of the Middle East .”
Pretty clear one might think. Alas, the analysis of imperialism, and its opponents, goes downhill from that starting point. Having exposed the SWP (largely out of its own mouth) for its reactionary positions down through the decades, from Hungary, through Czechoslovakia, to Poland, Afghanistan and Ireland, the RCG asks: “In the case of Syria, are the SWP supporting reactionary forces once again?”
Alas, the RCG’s answer is not the clear-cut one that one might reasonably expect. In the blink of an eye, this “politically independent country, which has not fully opened its borders to imperialist capital” is transformed into a “ repressive government”, as Comrade Halbertson declares:
“ Popular resistance to the Ba’athist state no doubt exists and it is clear that some Syrian people were, and are, demonstrating against the repressive government .”
Like numerous other opportunist currents, although not the incorrigibly reactionary SWP, which does not even bother, the RCG has to try to square the circle of how these supposed demonstrations against a repressive government have mysteriously mutated into an imperialist war of aggression. Shamefully, the RCG’s contortions on this point lead them to even give partial absolution to the terrorist Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is guilty of countless atrocities:
“ Any popular uprising has been hijacked. In Syria, this process has accelerated in the last few months as earlier attempts such as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) lacked structure and gave too much room for hostile and unreliable Salafist and Wahabist groups to challenge for influence .”
The article also asserts that: “The repressive government of Assad and the Ba’athists was complicit with the suffering of the Palestinian people, [and] supported the imperialist invasion of Iraq.” (‘Syria: covert intervention and the failure of the British left’)
In raising such issues, the RCG is revisiting the events of decades ago (which arose from the deep splits among anti-imperialist forces in the Middle East as well as the bourgeois national limitations of the Ba’ath Party) and, in a quite dishonest manner, is presenting them as though they happened only yesterday. Even if they had, what purpose would be served by dwelling on them now, when the country is in a life-and-death fight for its very existence? But in referring to the cases of Palestine and Iraq, the RCG refers to events respectively in the mid to late 1970s and at the beginning of the 1990s, events which our comrades rightly criticised at the time – a time, incidentally, long before the present President Assad came to power.
However, it is one-sided, to say the least, to focus on these (unexplained in the article) events of long ago, without any reference to more recent and more relevant facts concerning Syria’s stance and actions with regard to both Palestine and Iraq.
At least until the last few months, Syria has been home to 11 Palestinian resistance movements. Unlike any of the other Arab countries bordering Palestine, Syria is the one country where the Palestinian population has enjoyed full economic and social rights, including to live where they choose, to build their own homes, to freely choose their occupation or profession, and to enjoy free education and medical care. Syria has been, and remains, an honourable member of the ‘axis of resistance’, providing vital aid to the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, which inflicted the greatest military defeat on the Israeli aggressors.
With regard to the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, not only was this firmly opposed by Syria – Damascus opened its borders both to Iraqi refugees and to resistance fighters entering Iraq to fight the occupation.
As all of this is doubtless well known to the writers and editors of FRFI, and to the leaders of the RCG, their above quoted formulation is both reactionary and dishonest.
We make these points not because the RCG enjoys any great influence in the movement, but rather because its stubborn refusal to fully settle accounts with its Trotskyite origins leads it again and again to smuggle reactionary ideas into its ostensibly militant and anti-imperialist propaganda and practice, thereby promoting the very opportunism that it so vociferously claims to decry. Such a stance can only serve to misguide honest people and hinder the building of a genuine, strong and united anti-imperialist and communist movement. The good comrades in and around the RCG, and the whole working class movement, deserve better.
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.
Protests have been held across the UK in support of Gaza and the Palestinian victims of Zionist butchery. We’ll post some of the images here:
Cardiff
Birmingham
Pigs line up in Birmingham ready to police a demo of Palestinian human rights activistsBirmingham calls for an end to Zionist slaughter in PalestineBirmingham protest 16 November 2012state intimidation anyone?
A Jew that fought the Nazis tells it like it is! Listen to Jack Shapiro, anti-Zionist, anti-Nazi, communist hero tells the truth about the Gaza massacre in 2009:
The Anglo-American imperialists are attacking Syria, as they attack all independent and progressive nations in the Middle East and the wider world, precisely to shore up their failing system of world domination.
The crisis of overproduction being experienced by monopoly capitalism is more profound that it has ever known. US and their ‘allied’ NATO capitalist economic power is slumping, and their answer is a policy of ever-increasing diplomatic, financial and military stranglehold on the the nations and peoples of the world. This attempt to maintain their faltering monopoly on the worlds productive wealth, although ultimately futile, is of the greatest danger to humanity, and is really driving the entire world into a conflagration of horrific proportions. Truly the imperialists are our implacable enemies – if we don’t finish them first, they threaten to destroy human civilisation itself!
US rapper Immortal Technique is on a tour of the UK having been to Brixton and Birmingham already. Red Youth and cpgb-ml comrades have attended the gigs and distributed hundreds of copies of We Want Freedom to revolutionary minded youth.
We oppose the colonisation and degradation of youth culture
Owing to the inability of capitalism to provide a culture that truly represents our experience and aspirations, the working classes have over the years developed their own cultural forms to represent them (key examples being hip hop, reggae, jazz, jungle, graffiti and northern soul). However, corporations see these cultural forms as a potential source of profit, and the state sees the possibility of using them to promote reactionary propaganda, so that progressive voices tend to become sidelined and overwhelmed, unable to compete with the massive marketing machines surrounding those who are prepared to peddle a reactionary message. Recognising that the internet creates tremendous possibilities to spread our music and art, we call on young musicians and artists to stay independent and to retain creative control over their output. We must not hand our generation’s voice over to corporate control.
The following essay was written as a school homework assignment by a member of Red Youth and was published as the editorial to issue 50 of the magazine Proletarian.
This summer, we witnessed the spectacular event of the Olympic Games in our very own capital city. However, at the same time last year, London and Britain were shocked by the London riots, when the youth in poverty-stricken areas expressed their anger towards the state.
Exciting, wonderful, immense – all these words could describe the London Olympics. But we could also call them corrupt and hypocritical. Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis were all over the front pages of all the newspapers posing proudly with their gold medals. There was no outcry about one of the world’s largest monopoly corporations, which has contributed greatly to the western world’s obesity pandemic, being a major sponsor of the games.
And what about ATOS, a company which has stripped thousands of people of their needed benefits and humiliated many more in their benefit-stripping tribunals? Whilst many of us were watching the mainstream media promoting the Olympic Games enthusiastically, the needy people of Britain were fighting to keep their benefits from being cut back owing to a financial crisis they have not contributed to. You might think the Olympic Games were amazing and have left a fantastic legacy, thanks to the fanatic promotion job done by the media, yet, behind the scenes, a major struggle between the working class and the ruling class of Britain was going on!
In the 2011 London riots, you might have been thinking how disgracefully these lunatic rioters were behaving – stealing bottles of water and breaking shop windows down – but you were probably just regurgitating what the media were saying. Remember, media corporations such as the BBC and the Murdoch press have all been directed into stating what the ruling class wants them to say.
This was proved by the Leveson inquiry, which showed how the politicians and the mainstream media work hand in hand to mislead the public and to promote monstrosities around the world such as war. During the London riots, there was also a riot going on in Libya. But the differences were that the rioters in Libya were armed and supported from the start by the West, ie, by the USA, France and Britain. Some even called it a ‘revolution’!
But when it comes closer to home, Britain will do anything to stop the riots. They were even considering using rubber bullets. When it doesn’t suit their interests, they will do anything to stop it! People were told that all the looting would affect the economy, but it was nothing compared to all the looting done by the ruling class, which has left the country in a state of emergency and crisis.
The real trouble is caused by the oppressors, and you can’t compare their violence with that of the oppressed. For centuries, the British ruling class has perpetrated disgraceful crimes against humanity, such as the slave trade, and it still seeks to dominate today. But when, for a few days, the British working class expresses its deepest anger by rioting and looting, it is treated like a mass murderer.
You might have been thinking that this article is turning truth on its head, but all it’s really doing is contradicting the media’s propaganda, which has been used to disparage the rioters and to promote the Olympic Games. We should always look at both sides of a situation before we make up our minds about it.
It’s now six months since our beloved friend and comrade Godfrey Andries Cremer died, on 26 March 2012. This tribute, paid to him by his life-long friend, his brother, and comrade, Harpal Brar, is the first of several moving and politically insightful contributions we intend to broadcast, made by his comrades and family.
This and the other contributions were made at his memorial meeting held in April this year, attended by well over 120 of his friends, family and comrades, who packed into Saklatvala Hall to share our sorrow at Godfrey’s passing and our joy that he has enriched our lives.
Despite our sadness, it was an inspiring and uplifting celebration of the 50 selfless and meaningful years Godfrey devoted to the finest cause in all the world – the fight for the liberation of mankind.
As we move forward and build our movement, it has been hard to accept that Godfrey is gone. We share this footage with you now as it is a valuable chance to reflect upon the past half-century of British working class and anti-imperialist history; to evaluate the struggles we have fought, and put the tasks facing us in historical perspective.
It is, consequently, an uplifting celebration of a beautiful life. Godfrey’s deep love for humanity, his profound marxist understanding, and his determination to use all his talent to serve the working class by building a truly revolutionary movement dedicated to their emancipation from wage slavery, and a communist party capable of directing that struggle, were his consistent motivating forces.
It was this higher cause and meaning that enabled him to harness his creative powers and live an outstanding and exemplary life; a life full of passion and joy, free of black despair and wasted, petty and meaningless years.
Godfrey faced his final moments with the same optimism and fortitude that characterized his life. His abiding certainty was that his life’s work was a great gift to humanity – and we salute him for it.
