Help us circulate this essay widely. Please post it on websites and email it. Print it up using our pdf version. (Greetings to the many people who have started taking up this important work.)
Eyes on the Maobadi: 4 Reasons Nepal’s Revolution Matters
By Mike Ely
Something remarkable is happening. A whole generation of people has never seen a radical, secular, revolutionary movement rise with popular support. And yet here it is – in Nepal today.
This movement has overthrown Nepal’s hated King Gyanendra and abolished the medieval monarchy. It has created a revolutionary army that now squares off with the old King’s army. It has built parallel political power in remote rural areas over a decade of guerrilla war – undermining feudal traditions like the caste system. It has gathered broad popular support and emerged as the leading force of an unprecedented Constituent Assembly (CA). And it has done all this under the radical banner of Maoist communism — advocating a fresh attempt at socialism and a classless society around the world.
People in Nepal call these revolutionaries the Maobadi.
Another remarkable thing is the silence surrounding all this. There has been very little reporting about the intense moments now unfolding in Nepal, or about the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) that stand at their center. Meanwhile, the nearby Tibetan uprisings against abuses by China’s government got non-stop coverage.
In addition to approving an ad from Focus on Family that promotes an evangelical, right-wing, anti-choice politics, CBS rejected an ad from a gay dating website ManCrunch because it was “not within the Network’s Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday.”
In the past, CBS has also rejected ads from PETA, moveon.org and one from the United Church of Christ which suggested churches should be places free from discrimination based on age, gender, race, and sexual orientation.
While it’s easy to see how this spot breaks new and unwelcome ground for the big game, the (more troubling) fact is that in many ways, the Tebow/Focus on the Family ad is just a new expression of a longstanding Super Bowl tradition in which women are valued only in direct relation to their usefulness to male athletes and fans…
In light of new research revealing that about a third of women who report partner violence also report that their partners try to pressure them into pregnancy and motherhood (as do 15 percent of women who had never reported relationship violence), this male-targeted argument is particularly chilling.
The Nation: The Super Bowl Woman’s Same Old Story
by Jaclyn Friedman
On Sunday, as nearly 100 million Americans gather to watch the New Orleans Saints take on the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV, they’ll be treated to something they’re probably not expecting: an ad speaking out against abortion. The spot, produced by the extreme right-wingers at Focus on the Family, features Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother, who claims she was advised by doctors to abort fetal Tim but “chose life” instead. Their message? You should, too.
The “hard-hitting COIN [counter-insurgency] force,” while shying away from battles with tough FMLN guerrillas, kidnapped and “disappeared” peasants, labor organizers, students, Catholic priests and nuns, or just plain folks caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, often subjecting them to hideous torture before lining the roads with their brutalized corpses.
Today, Pentagon planners and their cheerleaders in the corporate media are touting these tactics as a “fresh approach” to beat back the Taliban. In Afghanistan and Pakistan today, to ensure that effective measures of “populace and resource control” (PRC) are brought to bear to stem the insurgent tide, FID theorists recommend widespread political repression and panoptic methods of surveilling the “target” population.
Pakistan’s government could now face further anti-American feeling as the deaths disclosed the extent of the unpopular US military involvement. Tensions over American Predator drone missile strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants on Pakistani soil have already led to widespread anti-American protests.
America’s Silent War In Pakistan Unmasked
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Three US Marines were killed and another two injured in a suicide attack in Dir, northern Pakistan on Wednesday. The Americans, disguised in traditional Pakistani dress, were traveling with Pakistani military officers in a five-car convoy to attend the inauguration of a girl school, which had been renovated with the U.S. humanitarian assistance. Four schoolgirls and a paramilitary soldier were also killed in the attack while more than 120 school girls were injured.
To many Pakistanis the most shocking aspect of the latest Taliban suicide bombing the question was: What was a team of American soldiers doing in a volatile corner of North West Frontier province?
A revolutionary army was created and hardened in Nepal, through ten years of revolutionary guerrilla warfare. In a major political maneuver, the Maoists entered into a “peace process” three years ago — that toppled the monarchy, opened up the urban areas to their political work, gave them legitimacy as the people’s most popular party, and initiated political struggle over the nature of New Nepal. They were accused of giving up their army, of abandoning armed struggle, and more. But three years later, it remains clear that the Maoists’ Peoples Liberation Army has used the last three years (in “cantonment” base camps) to train their ranks much more deeply in revolutionary politics and military science.
The following is a major article devoted to this in the New York Times — where (if you read between the lines) you can see that the existence of this revolutionary armed force is a major factor in the whole political situation and future of Nepal.
This article also points to the ominous development that the reactionary National Army has grown tremendously over these last three years too — being prepared to finally defeat the revolutionary forces and enforce existing class society in Nepal.
* * * * * * *
February 4, 2010
Nepal Waits as 2 Armies, Former Foes, Become One
By JIM YARDLEY
JHYALTUNGDANDA, Nepal — Up in the foothills of the Himalayas, the soldiers of Nepal’s onetime rebel army have spent more than three years in camps monitored by the United Nations. Mornings begin with exercise, breakfast and drilling. Afternoons often mean political education sessions on their Maoist agenda for restructuring Nepal’s government.
“It has come to the attention of the principals of the (All-American Basketball Alliance) that [W]hite basketball players are essentially ’shut out’ of conventional professional basketball due to the proliferation of non-organized play on the court,” said promoter Don “Moose” Lewis in a news release, ironically, issued on Martin Luther King Day. “With players on other professional teams carrying guns, attacking fans in the stands, and going through the motions of playing the game, fundamentally sound [W]hite players are a vanishing species.” – AABA founder Don “Moose” Lewis from bet.com.
Perhaps what’s just as outrageous as the proposed formation of a blatantly racist sports league is the audacity of its founder in denying any racist intent. What does it signify about “post-racial” America that this can happen during the reign of an African-American President? Coming in the wake of teabagger rage, is this a further sign of white supremacist momentum towards establishing a foothold in mainstream culture?
This article below originally appeared in thenation.com.
All-White Basketball League: Bringing Segregation Back
Southpaw
By Dave Zirin & David J. Leonard
February 2, 2010
Many in the media are already apoplectic about the infamous launch of the All-American Basketball Alliance (AABA). For those untainted by the news, the AABA would be a league exclusively for native-born whites. According to its press release, “only players that are natural-born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league.” Citing the predominance of “street ball” within players of color, their lack of fundamentals and the overall incivility of the NBA, Don “Moose” Lewis, the commissioner of the AABA, denied that the motivation of the league had anything to do with race or racism. “There’s nothing hatred about what we’re doing. I don’t hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now. Here’s a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like,” he argued. “Would you want to go to the game and worry about a player flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch? That’s the culture today, and in a free country we should have the right to move ourselves in a better direction.”
Thanks to Adrienne for suggesting this from Washington Post.
No sanctions for Bush lawyers who approved waterboarding, report will say
By Carrie Johnson
January 31, 2010
Bush administration lawyers who paved the way for sleep deprivation and waterboarding of terrorism suspects exercised poor judgment but will not be referred to authorities for possible sanctions, according to a forthcoming ethics report, a legal source confirmed.
The work of John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, officials in the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, provided the basis for controversial interrogation strategies that critics likened to torture in the years after al-Qaeda’s 2001 terrorist strikes on American soil. The men and their OLC colleague, Steven G. Bradbury, became focal points of anger from Senate Democrats and civil liberties groups because their memos essentially insulated CIA interrogators and contractors from legal consequences for their roles in harsh questioning.
The reasoning, set out in a series of secret memos only months after Sept. 11, 2001, prompted a multi-year investigation by the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which reviews the ethics of Justice lawyers. The legal source was not authorized to discuss the report’s conclusions and described them on the condition of anonymity.
Understanding the history of the new communist movement (emerging from the 1960s) is an important part of preparing a new revolutionary effort. Tens of thousands of revolutionaries moved in the direction of communism and working class communities — and they formed a number of communist organizations, including several national attempts at building a new revolutionary party of communists.
In this two-part series, Steve Hamilton writes his summation of the Revolutionary Union, one of the major Maoist pre-party formations. Steve was one of the founders of the RU and (together with Bob Avakian) moved to Richmond in the Bay Area, to make important early attempts of communist work in working class communities.
Understanding the history of the new communist movement (emerging from the 1960s) is an important part of preparing a new revolutionary effort. Tens of thousands of revolutionaries moved in the direction of communism and working class communities — and they formed a number of communist organizations, including several national attempts at building a new revolutionary party of communists.
In the following two-part series, Steve Hamilton writes his summation of the Revolutionary Union, one of the major Maoist pre-party formations. Steve was one of the founders of the RU and (together with Bob Avakian) moved to Richmond in the Bay Area, to make important early attempts of communist work in working class communities.
This essay is part of the new and important Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism Online being built on the Internet Marxist Archives. Thanks to the EROL for project.
WASHINGTON—The Pentagon is assigning more special forces personnel to Yemen as part of a broad push to speed the training of the country’s counterterror forces in the wake of the failed Christmas Day attack on a crowded U.S. airliner.
Military officials familiar with the matter said the U.S. will begin rotating the same groups of special forces personnel through Yemen and keeping some of the elite troops there for longer tours, changes designed to help the American trainers develop closer relationships with their Yemeni counterparts.
The officials declined to specify how many new troops will be arriving in Yemen, but said it would be a significant increase above the roughly 200 special forces personnel who are currently in Yemen at any one time.
“The numbers are definitely going to grow,” said one military official familiar with the emerging plan, which is expected to be formally approved within weeks. “This will be a much more robust effort pretty much across the board.”
There has been a great deal of justified praise and memorializing as Howard Zinn passed. It is valuable to also seriously examine his politics and approach to history. In a previous post we explored Michael Kazin’s criticism of Zinn’s approach to history. Here is Zinn’s own discussion of his view of communism and Marxism. (thanks to Radical Eyes for suggesting this, and the blog Inverest Street Ingrate for making it available from The Zinn Reader (1997, Seven Stories Press).
* * * * * *
For a long time I thought that there were important and useful ideas in Marxist philosophy and political economy that should be protected from the self-righteous cries on the right that “Marxism is dead,” as well as from the arrogant assumptions of the commissars of various dictatorships that their monstrous regimes represented “Marxism.”
This piece was written for Z Magazine, and reprinted in my book Failure To Quit (Common Courage Press, 1993).
Not long ago, someone referred to me publicly as a “Marxist professor.” In fact, two people did. One was a spokesman for “Accuracy in Academia,” worried that there were “five thousand Marxist faculty members” in the United States (which diminished my importance, but also my loneliness). The other was a former student I encountered on a shuttle to New York, a fellow traveller. I felt a bit honoured. A “Marxist” means a tough guy (making up for the pillowy connotation of the “professor”), a person of formidable politics, someone not to be trifled with, someone who knows the difference between absolute and relative surplus value, and what is commodity fetishism, and refuses to buy it.
I was also a bit taken aback (a position which yoga practitioners understand well, and which is good for you about once a day). Did “Marxist” suggest that I kept a tiny stature of Lenin in my drawer and rubbed his head to discover what policy to follow to intensify the contradictions o the imperialist camp, or what songs to sing if we were sent away to such a camp?
(Kasama Press currently uses Lulu for our book publishing and Mag Cloud for our pamphlets — all can be ordered, preprinted, relatively cheaply and delivered to you by mail.)
The following article originally appeared on Kali Akuno’s blog Navigating the Storm. For study, print the PDF. (Thanks to the Fire Collective for pointing this out.)
Barack Obama & the New Afrikan “National Question”
Are We Free Yet?
by Kali Akuno
May 24th, 2008
In Honor of the 83rd Birthday of Malcolm X and the clarity he brought to the New Afrikan[1] revolutionary movement.
Since the stunning Iowa victory of Senator Barack Obama in January, a great deal has been said and written about the declining or ongoing significance of “race” and “racial prejudice” in US society and the prospect of a person of Afrikan descent being its President as proof of its substantive social transformation. While this discussion must be regarded as an advance over the conservative moralistic and race-coded discussions that have dominated political debate in the US since the 1980’s, we must acknowledge its critical limitations.
In the main, these discussions individualize the issues and only engage the behavioral and subjective aspects of inequality and oppression. What is fundamentally missing is a critical discussion of the structural and systemic nature of oppression and exploitation within the US and how the Obama campaign “phenomenon” relates to these structures and dynamics.
Honoring George Tiller, the martyred women's doctor and advocate
by Mike Ely
Scott Roeder gunned down the truly heroic women’s doctor George Tiller in cold blood.
The motive was clear: Tiller provided women with abortions in the center of the U.S. where such services are hard to get. Roeder was a violent rightwing fanatic who imagined he was delivering justice. (He testified that he had considered cutting Tiller’s hands off with a sword so he couldn’t operate, but settled on killing.)
But in the courtroom and outside, the fanatical right tried to portray Roeder as justified, and demanded that the jury convict him of a lesser charge than first degree murder.
Such a verdict would have been terrible: It would have vindicated rightwing religious terror against abortion providers. It would have encouraged more killings, terrified more doctors, and further restricted women’s access to reproductive services.
In a climate of debate over “health care reform” — can we start with this one: Don’t shoot down courageous women’s doctors or harass women seeking to control their own lives.
Kansas laws have a loophole allowing a lesser charge for killings motivated by “an unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force.” And Roeder argued that he was motivated by the (delusional, mystical, reactionary) belief that killing Tiller was saving the lives of thousands of “babies.”
In this case, the jury did the right thing — and found this vicious killer guilty, after only 37 minutes of deliberation. It is a vindication of women’s rights, and a message of an existing consensus around the existing right to abortion.
Kansas has disappointed before — we all remember the bizarre school board escapades there, where creationism was given serious yardage in the public debate. Well, for once we are not saying “what’s wrong with Kansas?” This time the “heartland” reputation of this very rural state helps make clear what is just and what is not. The hero here was George Tiller — who will not quickly be forgotten. His killer was just that — a killer. A killer of women’s dreams and women’s rights. A killer of rational thought and human choice.
The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics will be the largest security operation in Canadian history. It will include more than 15,000 Canadian Forces, private security personnel, along with the RCMP and other police agencies. The U.S. will also provide security and support for the Games. With the Olympics fast approaching, the fear of terrorism is back in the public’s psyche. Although there has been no specific threats to the Games, more than anything, it is the danger of terrorism which is used to justify the huge security operation. This is further advancing the militarization of North America and U.S.-Canada military and security integration. The Olympics will take bi-national security cooperation to a whole new level.
Unmanned drones are patrolling the U.S.-Canada border as part of the war on terrorism and to curb smuggling, along with drug trafficking. It is unclear if they will be used for surveillance during the Games, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman, Juan Munoz-Torres has stated that, “If the RCMP or Canadian government believes they can make use of the aircraft for support during the Olympics, we will be more than willing to provide it.” In Afghanistan, Pakistan and other parts of the world, armed American drones continue to carry out strikes against suspected terrorists and insurgents. It is interesting that many of the weapons used in the war on terrorism overseas are later deployed for domestic purposes. The use of unmanned drones on the northern border will only add to the further militarization of North America.
Mayan urban civilization arose and then receded. Was there any directionality to that experiment with class society?
“Nando, if every road is open at all times, if capitalism has infinite possibility of regeneration , if there’s no direction to history (even if the way is twisted and tortuous), where does your REVOLUTIONARY OPTIMISM come from? Is revolution, for you, just one ‘option’ among others?”
by Nando Sims
In a nearby discussion Servir le Peuple (SLP) put forward several assertions and challenges that focus on the idea that capitalism is reaching limits, and that this defines the framework for revolution. I would like to share a reply (with minor editing or paraphrasing in SLP’s quotes for clarity).
“In the world’s current economic crisis, reformist politics is no longer possible. Any ‘political mechanism’ someone might try to use [within the official political system], would lead to betrayal within a year… Everywhere in the world, any wish for “change” or reform now pushes events immediately toward military coup. Look at Honduras. People’s war is the only way — now more than ever.”
Howard Zinn, my hero, teacher, and friend died of a heart attack on Wednesday at the age of 87. With his death, we lose a man who did nothing less than rewrite the narrative of the United States. We lose a historian who also made history.
Anyone who believes that the United States is immune to radical politics never attended a lecture by Howard Zinn. The rooms would be packed to the rafters, as entire families, black, white and brown, would arrive to hear their own history made humorous as well as heroic. “What matters is not who’s sitting in the White House. What matters is who’s sitting in!” he would say with a mischievous grin. After this casual suggestion of civil disobedience, the crowd would burst into laughter and applause.
Only Howard could pull that off because he was entirely authentic. When he spoke against poverty it was from the perspective of someone who had to work in the shipyards during the Great Depression. When he spoke against war, it was from the perspective of someone who flew as a bombardier during World War II, and was forever changed by the experience. When he spoke against racism it was from the perspective of someone who taught at Spelman College during the civil rights movement and was arrested sitting in with his students.
And of course, when he spoke about history, it was from the perspective of having written A People’s History of the United States, a book that has sold more than two million copies and changed the lives of countless people. Count me among them. When I was 17 and picked up a dog-eared copy of Zinn’s book, I thought history was about learning that the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. I couldn’t tell you what the Magna Carta was, but I knew it was signed in 1215. Howard took this history of great men in powdered wigs and turned it on its pompous head.
Help us circulate this essay widely. Please post it on websites and email it. Print it up using our pdf version. (Greetings to the many people who have started taking up this important work.)
