After three excellent talks in Bristol, Birmingham and Leeds, comrade Kadalie will speak in London this Saturday on his life struggle in the anti-apartheid struggle, his hopes and vision for Africa in the 21st century.
:: About Comrade Khwezi ::
Khwezi Kadalie was a fighter in the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa and is a lifelong communist and marxist-leninist revolutionary.
His grandfather organised the first all-black trade union in South Africa (the Commercial and Industrial Workers Union of Africa). A qualified typesetter and printer, Khwesi was arrested by the Apartheid secret police shortly after the 1976 Soweto uprising. He was tortured for four months.
After prison, Khwezi worked for the ANC in the diplomatic service and the information department in Germany and Britain. After the unbanning of the ANC and other organisations he served the movement in different capacities and between 2000 and 2005 he worked in the Department of Trade and Industry in a senior position.
Since 2006, together with other comrades, he has built the Marxist Workers School in South Africa. Today he works as a journalist for communist and working-class newspapers and magazines around the world.
Khwezi’s talk will touch on the important lessons he draws from his time in the movement and his feelings about the present fight against the recolonisation of Africa.
Imperialism steps up its moves to recolonise Africa (Proletarian, December 2011)
US and European interference in African affairs assuredly did not begin with the assassination of Libya, but that crime marks the onset of a renewed and most desperate effort to turn the clock back to the days of the most brazen colonialist meddling. http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=773
Communists and the struggle against imperialism (Proletarian, December 2011)
With imperialism convulsed with crisis and hurtling towards new and ever more dangerous wars of aggression, the work of reuniting and reinvigorating the entire international communist movement on a principled and revolutionary basis is one which will brook no further delay. http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=778
Ivory Coast: No recolonisation of Africa! (Lalkar, May 2011)
The violent overthrow of Ivory Coast’s government by French imperialism, in cahoots with northern rebel militia and with the hypocritical blessing of the UN, signals not the end but the beginning of yet another round of cruel civil strife inflicted on the Ivorian people by imperialism. http://lalkar.org/issues/contents/may2011/ivorycoast.html
South Africa: the fight for equality continues (Lalkar, May 2010)
The struggle against Apartheid was an important step along the road to emancipation for South Africa’s poor majority, but this does not mean that all those who fought against Apartheid want to carry on to a socialist revolution. Black skin does not, any more than white skin, come with a guarantee of common sense, social conscience or saintliness attached. http://lalkar.org/issues/contents/may2010/southafrica.html
Ethinic cleansing in Nato’s ‘new’ Libya (Proletarian, December 2011)
More than 100 militia brigades from Misrata have been operating outside of any official military and civilian command since Tripoli fell in August. Members of these militias have engaged in torture, pursued suspected enemies far and wide, detained them and shot them in detention. They have stated that the entire displaced population of one town, Tawergha, who are largely descendants of African slaves, cannot return home. http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=774
Africans need true independence not imperialist ‘charity’ (Proletarian, August 2005)
The US and European monopoly capitalists are shedding crocodile tears over the havoc they have wrought in their latest scramble for Africa, but the African people will find that charity is no substitute for revolutionary struggle to attain true independence and freedom. http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=118
After the xenophobic violence South Africa will never be the same again (Lalkar, July 2008)
The 11th of March 2008 will go down in the history of our country as the day of national shame. It is the day a pogrom against foreign workers started in Alexandra and then spread from township to township, squatter camp to squatter camp, and from one town to the next. http://lalkar.org/issues/contents/jul2008/safrica.php
Chimurenga! The liberation struggle in Zimbabwe (Proletarian, August 2005)
“The struggle in Zimbabwe and indeed in southern Africa as a whole has never been against the white man per se. It is not a struggle for exclusive African rights. On the contrary, our struggle is against an unjust system — a system of exploitation, oppression and racial discrimination. It is a struggle for human equality and dignity. The struggle, as we see it, is fundamentally between the exploiting class and the exploited class.” — Robert Mugabe http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=111
:: WATCH VIDEOS ABOUT AFRICA AND IMPERIALISM ::
Flowers and famine in Ethiopia
Comrade Mohammad Hassan of the PTB (Belgian Workers’ Party) delivers a powerful speech condemning the puppet regime of Ethiopia for selling his country to imperialism, and engineering a famine with its pro-imperialist policy and at the behest of US/British imperialism. http://youtu.be/0TJZP0p5NcM
Famine in the midst of plenty: the truth about the world food crisis
Comrade Ella Rule explains that although enough food is produced globally to make every person on the planet FAT, the inequality of distribution built into capitalism means that vast amounts are wasted, millions are overfed and obese in the West, while hundreds of millions starve in the rest of the world. These problems can be fixed, but not by capitalism.
China’s meaning to African freedom fighters
Comrade Kojo Gotfreid, former Ghanian liberation fighter and ambassador to China, recounts meeting Mao and the inspiration drawn by African anti-colonial liberation fighters from China’s successful liberation struggle and building of a bright new socialist future. http://youtu.be/RJhlWzFGcS8
Guinea Bissau revolutionary comrade on Libya’s role in Africa
Comrade Teodora Ignacia Gomez of the PAIGC, the party that liberated Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, outlines the supportive relationship that Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya had fostered both with her country and other African nations. Libya had tried to bring about sustainable infrastructural and agricultural development in Guinea Bissau, she tells us, both through the African Bank and through independently granted aid. http://youtu.be/xcBTxFy0ql8
Gaddafi tribute in London
In the 42 years of his leadership, the Libyan people rose from being literally the poorest on earth, to the wealthiest and most egalitarian in Africa. Contrary to the vile assertions of the western media, Colonel Gaddafi faced his executioners, vile mercenaries and unthinking tools of Nato imperialism, as the proud defender of independent and free Libya. He died a hero’s death in battle, facing his enemies with steely resolve, and refusing to desert his post, his country or his people at their hour of greatest need. http://youtu.be/t8AhEiTQTJs
Zimbabwe speaks
Anastancia Ndhlovu, Zimbabwe’s youngest MP, speaks to a British correspondent about Zimbabwe at the 17th World Festival of Youth and Students in Pretoria, South Africa. She addresses many issues including Robert Mugabe’s ongoing leadership, the MDC’s role in coalition government, British and US sanctions and Chinese economic involvement in the country.
Africa: black nationalism, capitalism or socialism?
Comrade Ajamu of the A-APRP talks about his ideological development from black nationalism to socialism, and discusses, in particular, the experience of the African national liberation struggles. With reference to the experiences of Ghana, Nkhrumah, Sekou Toure, and others, he underlines the lesson that capitalism has failed Africa.
Harpal Brar delivers a 45-minute presentation on the theory and practice of Trotsky and ‘Trotskyites’, followed by Q&A at the CPGB-ML’s Party Study School, November 2011.
One of the myths perpetrated by the Trotskyites, with not inconsiderable help from the imperialist bourgeoisie, is that Leninism and Trotskyism are synonymous, that Trotsky was, after Lenin, the most brilliant and greatest Bolshevik (some even implying that Lenin was a great Trotskyist); that Trotsky was the true inheritor of Leninism and a worthy successor to Lenin, but was, alas, deprived of his rightful place by the cunning manoeuvres of a third-class mediocrity and oriental despot to boot, ie, Joseph Stalin.
This anti-communist myth, repeated ad nauseam decade after decade in truly Goebbelsian fashion, has acquired the force of a public prejudice. Anyone with the least knowledge of the subject cannot but be aware of the total falsity of this myth.
It is the aim of this video presentation, (like the book – see link below) to expose this myth and lay bare the truly reactionary, counter-revolutionary, essence of the petty-bourgeois ideology of Trotskyism, which is as irreconcilably hostile to Marxism Leninism as is the bourgeoisie to the proletariat – notwithstanding its pseudo-Marxist, ultra-‘left’ and ultra-‘revolutionary’ terminology.
Trotskyism met with dismal failure both during Lenin’s time and after his death, and it failed “because”, to use Stalin’s words, “the leading group of the opposition proved to be a group of petty-bourgeois intellectuals divorced from life, divorced from the revolution, divorced from the party, from the working class”.
This, and not any personal factor, explains the total rout of the Trotskyite opposition by the Bolshevik Party.
__________________________________________
A CPGB-ML Party School production
________________________
Maddened by its own crisis, imperialism is being driven ever deeper into war. The targets currently singled out for aggression, in particular by Washington, London and Tel Aviv, are the independent and anti-imperialist nations of Syria and Iran.
SYRIA
From “peaceful protesters” to “freedom fighters”
Ever since Syria’s first stirrings of unrest began in the spring, the imperialist media bust a gut trying to convince us all that what was at issue was a spontaneous popular democratic revolt on Cairo lines, pitting unarmed peaceful protestors against a homicidal response from the state’s armed forces. All the information to the contrary that leaked in round the edge via PressTV, Russia Today and elsewhere was studiously ignored. No matter what such sources revealed about the smuggling of weapons into rebel hands, the manipulation of protest marches by armed fundamentalist gangs or the sighting of terrorist snipers on the rooftops, none of this sufficed to shake the media hounds from their dogged allegiance to the imperialist mantra: the opposition was peaceful, the government alone employed force.
However, when in October the US and Europe tried to push through a UN Security Council resolution of the type so recently employed as a pretext for massacring Libya, China and Russia vetoed the proposal. Thus deprived of a diplomatic pretext for direct intervention, and with the fiction about universal peaceful protest versus armed tyranny wearing ever thinner, the propaganda line abruptly changed gear. Instead of persisting with denials about the violent character of the “democratic opposition”, a new spate of attacks on the security forces was now admitted, celebrated and given out as supposed evidence of imminent mass defections from the army.
So it was that we came to be told that on 16 November the Air Force Intelligence HQ in a suburb of Damascus had been bombed. The self-styled “Syrian National Council” (SNC), from its haven in Turkey, claimed this terror attack on behalf of the “Free Syrian Army” (FSA). Then on 20 November the same terrorists were “credited” with having launched an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) attack on the Ba’ath Socialist Party’s offices in the centre of Damascus.
The day after this act of terror, the British Foreign Secretary William Hague met opposition leaders in London and declared that regime change would be “the best thing for the future of Syria”. Meanwhile the economic blackmail went up another notch, as on 27 November the reactionaries controlling the Arab League imposed a new swathe of sanctions intended to starve Syria of trade and investment and a few days later Turkey froze (i.e. stole) the financial assets held by the Damascus government and blocked all transactions with the country’s central bank.
On 2 December terrorist gangs attacked a military intelligence base in Idlib, in the north west of the country, reportedly slaughtering at least eight soldiers. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also claimed and that thirteen people had suffered injuries in the course of an attack on an air force intelligence centre in the port city of Latakia. Then, suitably geed up by talks between the opposition and Hillary Clinton in Geneva on 6 December, two days later armed gangs blew up a pipeline bearing oil from the east of the country to a Homs refinery in the west.
As this article is written, the rebels continue to feed the media with new tales of murderous derring-do, here gloating over the claimed slaughter of at least eight soldiers in the ambush of an army convoy on the outskirts of Hama, there exulting over another 7 soldiers slain by so-called “defectors”. Whatever the truth of these bloodcurdling assertions, it is true indeed that over 2,000 members of the security forces have already sacrificed their lives for the cause of Syria’s unity and independence. 13 December alone saw another 17 military funerals, and doubtless there will be more such victims of western backed terror by the time this goes to press.
Lacking support in Syria, the rebellion is weak and divided
However, the problem for the SNC quislings-in-waiting and their snipers and bombers in the supposed “Free Syria Army” is that, when they step out of the shadows, they cut a less than convincing figure. They clamour for the UN to impose a “no fly zone”, conspire with France and Turkey to establish “buffer zones” and “humanitarian corridors”, all transparently aimed at securing the kind of “humanitarian intervention” which resulted in Libya getting bombed for eight months and seeing her people delivered into the hands of western-backed lynch mobs and terror gangs. But the harder they clamour for assistance from the West (and from reactionaries in the Arab League, Turkey and Israel), the clearer it becomes just how minimal is the support which these RPG-toting “democrats” actually enjoy in the country to which they lay claim.
Contrary to the media pretence that the root of the troubles is sectarian antagonism between a minority Shi’ite Alawite government and a majority Sunni population, the Ba’athist-led National Progressive Front coalition governs the country on a secular basis. It is precisely this secular policy which broadens Assad’s appeal across confessional boundaries, in a country which includes Sunni, Alawite, Christian and Druze citizens. It is a telling feature of Syria’s progressive character that the majority of her people identify themselves first of all as Syrians, and only secondarily by considerations of religious background. Conversely, it is those who seek to undermine Syria’s anti-imperialist tradition, promoting the most obscurantist and reactionary religious forms as a cloak for imperialist meddling, who seek to undermine national unity and stir up sectarianism – just as in Iraq and Libya.
Happily, the rebels themselves, just like the Libyan rebels before them, are disunited to a degree which severely embarrasses their benefactors in the West. Foreign Secretary Hague, meeting with SNC contras in November, begged his protégés to botch together at least an appearance of unity, piously intoning that, “At an extreme moment in their nation’s history, it is important for opposition groups to be able to put aside their own differences and come to a united view of the way forward.” To assist in this exercise in stitching together damp blotting paper, Hague has reportedly appointed an “ambassador-designate” to lead liaison efforts.
Claims that the FSA are composed primarily of Syrian army defectors (as opposed to mercenaries released by the US from jails in Iraq and armed by the West) seem dubious, even judging from some capitalist press reports. In a story published on the Guardian website on 11 December (‘Inside Syria: the rebel calls for arms and ammunition’), Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports on his encounters with rebel fighters in the mountainous north of the country. What they have to tell him is revealing. The people outside Syria (i.e. the Turkish-based SNC) “have no weight on the ground”, whilst those fighting inside Syria “don’t have a Benghazi” (i.e. a solid base of support for counterrevolution). The fighter gestures to his fellows, telling the journalist, “Look at all these men in this room. I didn’t know any of them before March and they didn’t know me. I don’t trust them and they don’t trust me.” As for defections, he tells Abdul-Ahad, “I don’t count on major defections in the army” – the only way you’d get that, he says, would be to have a no fly zone where people could hide from the security forces. Another fighter tells him that “There is no such thing as a Free Syria Army. It’s a joke. The real revolutionaries are here in Syria in the mountains.” However this “real revolutionary” confesses that his own morale is below zero, claiming “people are getting killed – yet still there are no defections in the army”. Interestingly, he ascribes this state of affairs to the “ideological” cohesion of the army, controlled by the political officers of the Ba’ath. He concludes despairingly that “Even if a general did defect, he wouldn’t defect with his tanks and soldiers, he would defect on his own.” The message is clear: these “patriots” would sell their country to the West in exchange for assistance in overthrowing Assad. Without such assistance, they would stand as little a chance of success as their toy soldier counterparts in Libya had stood – before NATO was transformed into their own private Luftwaffe.
Assad stands firm
Meanwhile, beyond all the media ballyhoo about the rebels, ordinary Syrians have been getting on with business as usual. The four-yearly local government elections kicked off in mid-December, with 42,000 candidates standing for 17,000 seats. The successful candidates will be responsible for implementing the reforms which the government has announced over recent months in response to legitimate public criticism. Just how little the West-backed opposition really cares about such reforms, other than as an arbitrary pretext for undermining the stability of the anti-imperialist state, is shown by the fact that they have chosen to boycott these elections. Damascus has long since committed to these reforms, and from the outset has welcomed even the Arab League proposal to send observers into Syria – so long as this is not accompanied by the enforcement of sanctions against the Syrian people. The League’s stubborn refusal to take yes for an answer shows how dishonestly intended was the original proposal.
No less an authority than the Jewish Chronicle gives a flavour of just how dismal would be the prospects of the much-vaunted rebellion were it obliged to rely upon support from the broad masses of Syrian society, rather than hiding behind the skirts of imperialist backers. In an article penned by John R. Bradley (‘Syrian revolt faces secular opposition’, 1 December 2011), the author notes that “when it comes to the Assad regime, greatly exaggerated reports of its imminent demise have been a steady staple of the Western media for nine months and counting”, whereas the “truth is that, in and of themselves, economic sanctions by the Arab League will make no difference to Assad’s chances of survival in the medium term, which are far higher than most Western commentators believe…”
Bradley continues, “If a popular uprising against Assad had ever been on the cards, it would have already happened. In fact, all the evidence suggests that he still enjoys massive support among the mostly secular Syrian population, who rightly fear that the only alternative to their long-faced president is an extraordinarily vicious and prolonged civil war… the West and its regional allies Saudi Arabia and Turkey appear determined to orchestrate an armed revolutionary uprising, with the Arab League sanctions aimed at deepening the divide between Assad and his people. If that comes to pass, Assad and his military backers will fight to the death, and the resulting civil war in religiously and ethnically complex Syria would make the Libyan revolution look like a high-school prom. But with the same eventual outcome: the triumph of Wahhabi-funded and controlled Islamist militias.”
UPDATE: 30 December:
When the Arab League finally sent its monitors, those who had clamoured hardest for the observer mission to be sent then promptly began to rubbish the mission’s findings – because the monitors took one look at Homs and reported that, contrary to the horror stories retailed by anonymous “activists”, the overall situation was “reassuring”, with a few armoured cars on the street but none of the myriad tanks alleged by the rebels! This was not at all what the rebels and their puppet-masters had expected. In an attempt at damage-limitation they claimed that (a) all the tanks must have been cunningly withdrawn, and that in any case (b) the leader of the mission was connected with the Sudanese government so was bound to be lying. As we go to press, the rebels are doing their best to turn the mission’s visits back into the pro-Western propaganda opportunity that was intended. It will take an awful lot of manufactured photo opportunities to undo the damage, however.
Meanwhile the same toxic mix of black propaganda, diplomatic arm-twisting, economic blackmail, covert war and threat of direct attack being brought to bear upon Syria is likewise being endured by Iran. A fresh round in the diplomatic harassment of Iran was signalled by the publication on 8 November of a new report from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), the UN body responsible for ensuring that countries signed up to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) comply with treaty requirements. Iran is a willing signatory; Israel has consistently refused to sign. Yet the Zionists have “proliferated” without let or hindrance from the “international community”, and have long since been in possession of the nuclear bomb – an estimated 200 fully operational bombs to be precise. When one of its own scientists, Mordecai Vanunu, had the courage to blow the whistle on Israel’s WMD, he was kidnapped abroad and slammed into solitary for years whilst that same “international community” sat on its hands. By contrast Iran, a willing signatory to the NPT, has been hounded for years by imperialist powers hell-bent on abusing the IAEA’s compliance procedures as a means of violating Iran’s sovereignty and impeding her work in the fields of nuclear energy and medical science.
For years, attempts to force the IAEA to lend its authority to Washington’s unproven allegations about Tehran’s supposed pursuit of a Persian nuclear bomb were frustrated by an IAEA which was not disposed to be so entirely under the US thumb as the White House desired. Whilst IAEA investigations on Iranian soil were no less intrusive than those to which Iraq was subjected in the farcical quest for non-existent WMD, that body’s former chief, Mohammed ElBaradei, steadfastly drew the line at lending credence to Washington’s baseless claims against Iran.
Over a lengthy period, Washington left no stone unturned in its single-minded quest for non-existent evidence. Veteran journalist Seymour Hersh details this frantic search in Democracy Now! “Cheney kept on having the Joint Special Operations Force Command, JSOC — they would send teams inside Iran. They would work with various dissident groups – the Azeris, the Kurds, even Jundallah, which is a very fanatic Sunni opposition group – and they would do everything they could to try and find evidence of an undeclared underground facility. We monitored everything. We have incredible surveillance. In those days, what we did then, we can even do better now. And some of the stuff is very technical, very classified, but I can tell you, there’s not much you can do in Iran right now without us finding out something about it. They found nothing. Nothing. No evidence of any weaponization. In other words, no evidence of a facility to build the bomb. They have facilities to enrich, but not separate facilities for building a bomb. This is simply a fact. We haven’t found it, if it does exist. It’s still a fantasy.” (cited by Media Lens, 24 November)
In the absence of evidence, Washington desperately needed the second-best outcome: a lying testimonial from the IAEA carrying the cachet of UN legitimacy. When ElBaradei ended his stint at the IAEA in 2009, Washington saw its chance. The US went into overdrive to get somebody more pliable into place, lobbying frantically to shoehorn a rank outsider, Yukiya Amano, into the top post. Amano’s chief qualification for the job is simple to spot: an overweening eagerness to please his masters in Washington. A secret cable from the US Embassy in Vienna, released by WikiLeaks, gloated that Amano accounted himself “solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.” Another US cable speaks of a revealing encounter with the new boy. “This meeting, Amano’s first bilateral review since his election, illustrates the very high degree of convergence between his priorities and our own agenda at the IAEA. The coming transition period provides a further window for us to shape Amano’s thinking before his agenda collides with the IAEA Secretariat bureaucracy.” (For “bureaucracy”, read, anyone at IAEA still possessed of a shred of integrity.)
Hersh cites the views of Robert Kelley, a retired IAEA director, on the supposed “credible” evidence referenced in the 8 November report. Kelley “noted that hundreds of pages of material appear to come from a single source: a laptop computer, allegedly supplied to the IAEA by a Western intelligence agency, whose provenance could not be established. Those materials, and others, ‘were old news,’ Kelley said, and known to many journalists. ‘I wonder why this same stuff is now considered ‘new information’ by the same reporters.’” No such obvious questions troubled the authors of the IAEA report, who claimed that it now had “credible” evidence that “indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.”
With the 8 November IAEA report, Washington won at best a Pyrrhic victory, having effectively destroyed the credibility of the very body whose endorsement it so relied upon. Pocketing the IAEA report, on 18 November Washington managed to steam-roller through the IAEA’s Board of Governors a resolution expressing “deep and increasing concern about the unresolved issues regarding the Iranian nuclear program, including those which need to be clarified to exclude the existence of possible military dimensions.”
However, Washington had failed to get Iran reported to the Security Council or to impose a deadline for Tehran to comply with the latest hectoring demands. Clearly the need was felt to ratchet up the campaign of intimidation another notch. To this end, on 21 November, the US, Britain and Canada announced unilateral sanctions against Iran’s banking and energy sectors. France put in a sly kick too, urging world powers to boycott Iranian oil and freeze (i.e. steal) her financial assets. China and Russia have joined Iran in denouncing these new sanctions.
The Dirty War
Meanwhile, behind all this fabrication of evidence and diplomatic bullying, imperialism has long been engaging in a brutal campaign of espionage, terrorism, assassination and sabotage against Iran, culminating most recently in mysterious explosions at a key defence installation and a uranium reprocessing facility.
Leading Iranian scientists have long been targeted for assassination. Recent examples include the car bombs that claimed the lives of two university professors, Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi, and the booby-trapped motorcycle that slew another professor, Masoud Ali-Mohammadi. Now, with rival Republican contenders for the US presidency striving to outdo each other in fascist zeal, the “secret” war against Iran is the best advertised in history. According to AFP (8 December 2011), Newt Gingrich “proposed at a November 12 debate that Washington kill Iranian scientists and disrupt Tehran’s suspect nuclear program – ‘all of it covertly, all of it deniable’. In that same forum, Santorum said the United States must do ‘whatever it takes to make sure’ Iran does not develop a nuclear program — then wondered whether Washington may already be heavily involved in doing just that. ‘There have been scientists turning up dead in Russia and in Iran. There have been computer viruses. There have been problems at their facility. I hope that the United States has been involved with that,’ he said. ‘I hope that we have been doing everything we can, covertly, to make sure that that program doesn’t proceed.’”
There can be no doubt that Washington, London and Tel Aviv are already up to the neck in dirty tricks without the need for further prompting from the Tea Baggers. The “computer viruses” to which Santorum referred clearly has in mind the Stuxnet cyber assault on Iran’s nuclear programme launched last year. Nor are the attacks confined to cyberspace. In mid November a missile testing base near Tehran suffered a blast which reportedly killed over 30 members of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, including a leader of Iran’s missile programme, Major General Hassan Moqqadam. Time Magazine, on 13 November 2011, said this was the work of Mossad. Then at the end of November there was a further blast, this time at a uranium processing plant in Isfahan. Israel’s former director of national security, Major-General Giora Eiland, bragged that the explosion was no accident, adding that “There aren’t many coincidences, and when there are so many events there is probably some sort of guiding hand, though perhaps it’s the hand of God.” (cited in ‘Shadow War Heating Up. War with Iran: A Provocation Away?’ by Tom Burghardt, 7 December: www. projectworldawareness.com) Curiously, none of the dirty tricks practiced by Washington and Tel Aviv excites anything like the manufactured outrage which greeted the B-movie fiction spun around a non-existent Iranian government plot to bump off the Saudi ambassador to the US.
29 November demonstration against British Embassy
The self-appointed guardians of democratic western values send saboteurs and death squads into other people’s countries at will, safe in the knowledge that the “international community” will not raise a finger to stop them. But just let some enraged Iranian students lob a few bricks at the British Embassy and pitch a portrait of the Queen out of the window and the UN Security Council cannot restrain its righteous indignation, condemning the demo “in the strongest terms”. William Hague whinged that Iran had “committed a grave breach” of the Vienna convention.
Obama declared himself “deeply disturbed” by what had happened, the German foreign minister fulminated against this “violation of international law”, whilst his French counterpart agreed that “the Iranian regime has shown what little consideration it has for international law”.
When we consider the continuous and flagrant breaches of international law being committed by imperialism in relation to Iran, with or without the cloak of UN “legitimacy”, it is not hard to comprehend the rage which this arouses in the patriotic youth. So far from acting as the simple agents of the government, as the western media pretend, the demonstrators in the end could only be restrained by the government’s own security forces using teargas to clear the embassy compound, such is the depth of popular revulsion at what is being attempted against the country’s sovereignty. (Need we add that, had the demonstrators instead got themselves tear-gassed protesting against Ahmadi-Nejad, they would at once have been hailed by the bourgeois media as peaceful democrats cruelly repressed by a tyrannical regime.)
Iran stands firm
Imperialist aggression against both Syria and Iran is driven not only by the desire to humble an anti-imperialist force and strengthen and extend the stranglehold on resources and markets in the middle east, but also by the strategic goal of containing Russia and China. China in particular, whose socialist foundations have permitted a rapid return to steady growth after an initial blip occasioned by a degree of exposure to the crisis-ridden world market, is well placed to engage in mutually beneficial trade relations with third world countries anxious to escape domination by crisis-stricken imperialism. China champions Iran’s right to develop its civil nuclear industry, and neither China nor Russia has any interest in collaborating with the West’s sanctions campaign. These realities constitute an unwelcome stumbling block for the warmongers.
Such considerations, taken together with the courageous anti-colonial resistance being mounted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Somalia, all add to the perils awaiting the warmongers should they persist. Nor would it be wise for imperialism to dismiss lightly Iran’s own ability to defend herself, even without the bomb she is accused of coveting. The recent successful downing of an advanced US RQ-170 drone over the eastern part of the country, one of many drones in routine violation of Iranian airspace, not only exposes US covert operations and demonstrates Tehran’s vigilance but also delivers sensitive military intelligence into anti-imperialist hands. Already back in the summer the Iranians not only showed visiting Russian experts a number of other drones which had previously been shot down, but also displayed some model drones which they had contrived to design through reverse engineering! Obama’s risible plea for the return of his spy plane deserves, and has been accorded, nothing but contempt.
SOLIDARITY
The struggle of the Syrian and the Iranian people to defend themselves, by contrast, deserves the warmest support from all those in the anti-imperialist movement, not least those resisting imperialism within the belly of the beast itself. After all, who better upholds the anti-capitalist aims of the Occupy Movement than those brave students who dared to occupy the British Embassy in Tehran? Their own letter to the press, relayed by the Fars news agency, makes the case admirably.
“‘We have occupied the British embassy to voice support for the 99 percenters of the world and in opposition to the policies of the world arrogance,’ the letter said on Saturday. ‘We as the students who have occupied the British embassy in Tehran announce explicitly that we are standing for our historical decision and will humiliate Britain and make it regret,’ it added. The Iranian students called on … people across the world to attack the interests of Britain in their region and stop London from looting their countries and nations any further.” (Fars, 3 December, ‘British Embassy Occupation Meant to Voice Support for World 99 Percenters’)
By giving active solidarity to those who stand in defence of Iran, Syria and other anti-imperialist countries under attack, we will strengthen our hand against the same imperialist enemy which is currently demolishing welfare, looting jobs and driving us into poverty and war. The national democratic struggle against imperialist oppression that is being waged by these nations enormously strengthens the world struggle for proletarian revolution.
Victory to anti-imperialist Syria!
Victory to anti-imperialist Iran!
Death to imperialism!
You get more anti-imperialist analysis with cpgb-ml and red youth!
Cde Harpal Brar, Chairman of the CPGB-ML delivered this keynote speech at the party’s recent celebration of the Great Socialist October Revolution of 1917.
He explains the historical significance of the October Revolution, the achievements of Soviet Socialism, and its ongoing relevance to workers in Britain.
He gives a detailed explanation of modern imperialism, its wars and its global capitalist economic overproduction crisis. The analysis given by Marx and Lenin not only explains these, the major problems that humanity – and in particular the working and toiling masses – are facing, but shows us the way forward to their solution. Capitalism cannot be reformed, regulated, moderated or otherwise made to serve the interests of working people. It must be overthrown!
We must discard all those parties who pretend otherwise, particularly the social democratic Labour Party, and its revisionist and trotskite hangers-on who act as agents of imperialism (misguided or malicious) in the working class movement. In this as in so many regards, October shows us the way!
Our job, Harpal emphasizes, is to make this Marxist-Leninist analysis truly popular, well known and understood, and to inject the spontaneous protest and resistance movements with clear scientific analysis that can sustain them and help them to direct their blows.
The October revolution has shown that working people, when united and organized around a correct understanding and a disciplined party, guided by such an analysis, are really able to achieve unity of action, to become an army of millions and tens of millions, which no capitalist power can resist.
Red Youth and CPGB-ML member Jamie speaks at a meeting to celebrate the 94th anniversary of the Great Socialist October Revolution, at Sak Hall in west London.
He outlines the relevance of the October Revolution to working class youth in Britain today, and its key lessons.
Chiefly, he points out the necessity of forming an organization and studying our exploitative society and the alternatives, in order to make our struggle effective; of confronting and opposing the mis-leadership of the social democratic ‘Labour’ Party, the enemy within the working-class movement; and the importance of imparting the spontaneous resistance that is rising around us (Student EMA and university fees protestors, Occupy Wall St and the LSX, union strikes, and the ‘London Riots’…) with class-conscious and revolutionary perspective.
These are the lessons we all must learn if we are to building effective resistance to the attacks of a political and economic order that is in its most profound crisis, and ultimately overthrow the British, American, EU and NATO criminally corrupt, venal and genocidal ruling monopoly capitalist class gangsters.
It will be a political and cultural highlight of the year. Speeches, song, live music, food and drink. Free entry. Collection based solely upon your political good will. Come and discuss any issue with us. Join us – Join the Struggle!
A taster: Harpal Brar on the signifigance of October:
Harpal Brar gives an interview on Libya and the wider interests and motivations of capitalist imperialism. He also touches upon the themes of the USSR and Stalin, as well as NATOs global strategy. Enjoy.
Legendary Marxist-Leninist Liberation fighter, pan-Africanist and anti-imperialist Amilcar Cabral had the following to say on the nature of our fight against imperialism:
“I should just like to make one last point about solidarity between the international working class movement and our national liberation struggle. There are two alternatives: either we admit that there really is a struggle against imperialism which interests everybody, or we deny it. If, as would seem from all the evidence, imperialism exists and is trying simultaneously to dominate the working class in all the advanced countries and smother the national liberation movements in all the underdeveloped countries, then there is only one enemy against whom we are fighting. If we are fighting together, then I think the main aspect of our solidarity is extremely simple: it is to fight.”
Cabral died just 9 months before the party he founded – the PAIGC – liberated his homeland, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, from 500 years of Portugese Colonialism, bringing the downfall of the Potugese fascist junta in its wake.
He and his comrades from the PAIGC also played a vital part in the liberation of other (Particularly, but not exclusively, Portugese speaking) African nations. He was a founding member of MPLA (Angola) and the Portugese Communist Party, inter alia.
Comrade Teodora Ignacia Gomez, Womens’ activist, liberation fighter and comrade in arms of Cabral, features in this video interview, which is an exert from a longer interview she granted to comrades of the CPGB-ML on her recent visit to London.
She outlines the supportive relationship that Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya had fostered with Guinea Bissau, as so many other African Nations. Libya had tried to bring about sustainable infrastructural and agricultural development in Guinea Bissau, she tells us, both through the African Bank and independently granted aid.
As a result of NATOs genocidal war on Libya, and the illegal ousting of her legitimate government – and now Gaddafi’s cowardly and brutal assassination, which foul deed took place 24 hrs after this interview – the people of Guinea Bissau and all Africa will suffer, she says.
Footage from Harpal at mass meeting in Tripoli (June), pledging to do our utmost to support the just anti-imperialist resistance and legitimate government of the Libyan people against NATO’s colonial war is cut with RT footage of CPGB-ML with green and party flags in London’s anti-war demonstration yesterday.
Stop the War’s leadership, meanwhile, continues to turn a blind eye to NATO’s imperialist war and perversely chimes in with the criminal propaganda of justifying regime change in Libya. They have taken the ‘bold’ step, not of attacking NATO, but of attacking members of the coalition – in particular the CPGB-ML – who support the Libyan government and it’s heroic resistance!
1: StW Leadership’s principle of ‘unity’ – extends to all opportunists and scoundrels, but not constant anti-imperialists:
http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=statements&subName=display&statementId=45
2: StW leadership’s criminal position on Libyan conflict: http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=statements&subName=display&statementId=44
StW on Libya: http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=statements&subName=display&statementId=44
The riots that broke out in Tottenham, north London, on the night of Saturday 6 August, and again over subsequent nights, spreading first to communities across London, and then to cities around the country, represent the spontaneous anger of broad sections of working people, particularly the poorest and most oppressed, at police violence, racism and the increasingly intolerable burden of the capitalist crisis that they are being forced to carry, not only through cuts but also through high unemployment and dead-end jobs.
Until now the British working class had been relatively quiescent in the face of increasing police repression and worsening living conditions and social provision, but the events of the past few days have changed all that and shown once more the fighting spirit of the British proletariat. Young working-class people in particular have shown that they are not prepared to lie down indefinitely while they are kicked like a dog by the lickspittles of the British ruling class.
The immediate catalyst for the riots was the police shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of three, who was killed by police in the early evening of Thursday 4 August in the Tottenham Hale area as he was on his way home to the nearby Broadwater Farm estate by minicab.
Mark’s killing was reportedly part of a planned police operation, forming part of Operation Trident, which is supposedly directed at ‘gun crime’ in the African Caribbean community, and was carried out by CO19, a specialist firearms unit.
As is generally the case in instances where a member of the public is killed by the police, initial reports emanating from the police are contradictory and untrustworthy. The police will naturally seek to cover their tracks and, in best mafia style, cover for one another. The bourgeois press can also be expected to play its part. The ongoing News International scandal has shone a light on the corrupt relationship between the police and the media, who are both, at the end of the day, servants of the same billionaire masters.
We have seen such police lies and cover-ups again and again, from Blair Peach through to more recent cases, such as those of Jean Charles de Menezes, Ian Tomlinson, Kingsley Burrel and Smiley Culture. As a result, families of the bereaved in particular, and working-class communities in general, know that they cannot rely on the police for truth or for justice. They are learning that they need to organise and fight back.
In the case of Mark Duggan, the police initially claimed that one of their officers only escaped serious injury because his radio got in the way of a bullet. However, on 8 August, the Guardian reported that initial ballistics tests have shown that this bullet was police issue. Far from there having been an exchange of fire, latest reports suggest that the only non-police issue firearm found anywhere near the scene was concealed in a sock and therefore not in any way ready for use.
Equally importantly, no non-police issue firearm has as yet actually been produced at all. Independent eyewitness accounts refer to Mark being pulled from his cab by police, held down and shot in the face more than once at point-blank range with a Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun.
In response, Mark’s family and friends called a peaceful vigil outside the local police station on Saturday 6 August. Whole families and young children joined the protest, with homemade placards, shouting, “No justice, no peace.”
Frustration mounted as police continued to refuse any dialogue with protestors or to provide Mark’s family with any explanation as to how he came to be killed. Stafford Scott, a long-time community organiser in the area, commented:
“If a senior police officer had come to speak to us, we would have left. We arrived at 5pm; we had planned a one-hour silent protest. We were there until 9pm. Police were absolutely culpable. Had they been more responsive when we arrived at the police station, asking for a senior officer to talk with the family, we would have left the vicinity before the unrest started. It is unforgivable [that] police refused dialogue.”
It further appears that the first night of rioting was sparked by the brutal police beating, with shields and batons, of a 16-year-old girl taking part in the protest. The Guardian reported:
“‘They beat her with a baton, and then the crowd started shouting ‘run, run’, and there was a hail of missiles,’ said Anthony Johnson, 39. ‘She had been saying: ‘We want answers, come and speak to us.’
“Laurence Bailey, who was in a nearby church, described see-ing the girl throw a leaflet and what may have been a stone at police.
“Bailey said the girl was then ‘pounded by 15 riot shields’. ‘She went down on the floor but once she managed to get up she was hit again before being half-dragged away by her friend,’ he said.”
It was following this vicious assault on a teenage girl that groups of young men reportedly started to attack police cars.
The Guardian described the composition of the rioters on the first night in Tottenham as follows:
“The make-up of the rioters was racially mixed. Most were men or boys, some apparently as young as 10.
“But families and other local residents, including some from Tottenham’s hasidic jewish community, also gathered to watch and jeer at police.”
A teenage woman who had been a friend of Mark Duggan’s told a reporter from Socialist Worker:
“When I saw jewish people out tonight too I was happy. I thought, ‘It’s not just us’. They gave bread out to us. It isn’t just kids out tonight. It’s everyone.”
Whilst the shooting of Mark Duggan provoked the initial protests in Tottenham, the subsequent riots reflect the hatred felt towards the police in black, working-class and poor communities throughout London and up and down the country, as well as the anger and despair engendered by grinding poverty.
They are a spontaneous protest against deaths at the hands of the police, stop and search, which is running at record levels, poor educational and health provision, poor and overcrowded housing, lack of amenities (in the borough of Haringey where Tottenham is located, eight out of a total of 13 youth clubs were closed just last week) and unemployment (Haringey has one vacancy for every 54 jobseekers).
Predictably, much is made of the acts of looting that are an inevitable feature of such spontaneous outbursts. However, they should not be allowed to detract from the main character of the events, namely a justified revolt against police killings and repression, racism and poverty.
Moreover, it is capitalist society itself that flaunts its luxury goods at the poor, sending out a message that you are scarcely human if you don’t possess a flatscreen plasma TV and the latest designer labels, while at the same time depriving masses of people of jobs, or paying wages too miserly to enable these goods to be bought.
Meanwhile, some ‘looters’ have been reported as making off with such essentials as toilet rolls and disposable nappies. Others have kept their focus clearly on symbols of state repression. The Guardianreported:
“A group of young men emerged from Haringey and Enfield magistrates court wielding hammers.
“They had shunned the temptation of the looted stores to break seven windows in the courthouse. It is a place some rioters presumably visited in the past; others are likely to be summoned in the near future.”
Of course, politicians from all the bourgeois parties have rushed to condemn the protestors as criminals and have promised nothing but increased and more brutal repression. Hundreds have already been arrested. Yet it is the worthies of the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour parties who, in the service of the British capitalist class, are the real criminals, presiding over class war at home and imperialist war abroad.
It is important to note that the black Labour MPs have been no less vociferous than any others in branding their constituents as criminals and calling for increased police repression, including not only Tottenham MP David Lammy but also Hackney’s Diane Abbott, darling of much of the ‘left’ and erstwhile heroine of the opportunist ‘Black Section’ movement in the Labour party.
These parasitic scoundrels owe their petty positions and place precisely to the earlier struggles of the black communities they now openly despise. This is a salient reminder that what is at issue is not a race-based struggle that can in the end only benefit a thin layer of opportunists who seek to jump aboard the bandwagon, but a struggle against racism and capitalism in which all working people, whatever their skin colour, have a stake and should play their part.
Another darling of the left, Ken Livingstone, has made much of his own record of increasing police numbers while he was in office as Mayor of London, and has no doubt endeared himself greatly to senior Met officers by using the unrest in London as an excuse to demand that the government ditch its planned cuts to the police force.
Events of recent days have shown once again that poor working-class communities know fully well that the police are not a neutral or benign body dedicated to serving the community and helping old ladies across the street, but a ruthless gang of thugs dedicated to violently upholding the rule of the rich. To put it in Marxist terms, they are a special body of (increasingly) armed men, whose job is to enforce the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The young people on the streets are also learning a lesson that the capitalist class would very much rather they quickly forget. Namely, that if enough people rise up simultaneously and in enough places, there is not much the ruling class can do to stop them, since the police and others who make up the forces of the state are actually very few in numbers compared to the masses of the working class.
The crucial lesson that the working class urgently needs to learn is that the real source of their misery and frustration is the capitalist system of production. This system is kept in place by the hirelings of a handful of billionaires, who grow richer by the hour while pressing down hard on those who work to create those riches. As economic crisis threatens the billionaires’ profits, they are pressing even harder, reducing to a minimum and below not only workers’ wages, but also the social benefits they need, while being quite unable to provide work for millions more people who need a decent job.
Communists support and defend the oppressed when they rise up, but we have seen massive uprisings before, generally in the same communities as current events, for example in 1981 and 1985. But so long as capitalism remains in place, it continues inexorably to impoverish the working class; and overthrowing capitalism is impossible without conscious organisation for that purpose, for which trustworthy proletarian leadership is required. So long as capitalism remains in place, the real gains of workers’ struggles, however magnificent, are transient and reversible – precisely why the events of previous years are being repeated today.
Communities certainly need to form themselves into self-defensive bodies to resist the police and other agents of bour-geois repression. But above all the working class needs its own general staff, which can lead not only in defensive struggles but also in the struggle to overthrow the increasingly criminal rule of the bourgeois class of heartless billionaires whose system treats the millions of working-class people as vermin.
This general staff can only be a communist party, guided by the science of Marxism Leninism: the accumulated wisdom of more than a century and a half of struggle by the working people of the whole world. The CPGB-ML is fighting to build such a party and welcomes class-conscious people to join its ranks. With your help, we can organise to enable the working class to seize power and build a new society where it is the interests of working-class people that will determine what we build and how we live, rather than the requirements of the rich to make profits.
