Rounding up communists after the Nazi coup of April 1933
Kasama was sent the following piece by a young new writer from the Red Ant Liberation Army blog. The original name of this piece was “The Prototyped Massacre Left Forgotten.”
by BJ Murphy
“First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew,
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.”
~Pastor Martin Niemoller
Many during the 1950′s that lived in the “Land of the Free” feared not the idea of Communism altogether, but the idea of what may happen to those that were found to have been a Communist. As the years increased, the paranoia against Communism decreased as if the event during the 1950′s never happened. Though, it remains a part of history that is forever remembered upon by many, & some to this day that still acts upon the mindset of those anti-Communists in the 50′s.
Such figures like Glenn Beck, a popular Fox News caster by the conservative right-wing, are ones that seem to be bringing the 50′s back, or at least the mindset that took place then, with such claims that the backing of social-justice is nothing more than the backing of “Nazi-Communism”. [1] This misleading statement has been the very slogan well-used by Beck & his followers against those who of today continue to fight for social-justice & worker’s rights under the Communist banner.
Beck’s equating of Communism with what took place during Nazi Germany is not only misleading, but is completely disregards a sad, long, & painful past of those Communists that suffered by the hands of the Hitler-led Nazi forces.
In Nepal, the Young Communist League is playing a special role in training professional revolutionary cadre for the creation of a new socialist state
“There are ways in which a “revolutionary people” rises to the occasion, and makes up for the lack of trained cadre — by rapidly “stepping into the shoes,” by innovating, by unleashing its own great creative initiative. That is part of the communist mass line. And it is not like we should envision our communist movement as a mega-thinktank of revolution, preparing future generals and ambassadors in some academic way. Yes, we mainly “rely on the people” to solve the great problem of leading and administering all of society. and many many people will step forward to take up tasks they would NEVER dream they would do.
“But there is also, alongside that (alongside our PRINCIPAL mass line strategy for solving these problems) also a real need for highly trained and sophisticated political cadre — for statesmen, planners and organizers of a highly trained kind.”
“This is why I have always been wary of arguments that lightly condemn the communist ‘party-state.’ If we are not going to try to seize and wield the OLD state, and if we are not going to generate waves of new cadre within sophisticated party and army formations, where exactly will the many hundreds of thousands of cadre come from to create and lead the new state and the new order?”
“I’m all in favor of the need for a division of labor! but do think that perhaps division of labor gets muddled and misconstrued in practice with the concept of professional revolutionaries—even with the leadership and cadre in a revolutionary/communist organization…
“Within the concept of being a professional revolutionist, further divisions held sway in the hierarchy of the “professionally trained” revolutionary organization I had devoted my life to. The chasm widened and deepened between the theorists and the “practical” workers, leadership and led, under the guise of being professional revolutionaries.
“Without getting into some very crass (and ultimately demoralizing) examples, this experience did make me wonder—was there something inherent in Lenin’s call in the first place that would lead to this kind of practice, or was Lenin correct for his time and in general, but that his call left the door open for future revolutionaries’ misinterpretation, bastardization of the concept, or even an opening for political abuse?”
Part of the question of professional revolutionary is this:
An organization that aims at fighting for reforms needs to be able to organize a mass campaign. And the kind of cadre it trains and develops have to be able to organize a mass campaign (i.e. agitate, organize, fundraise etc.)
But a revolutionary movement aims to replace the existing state, develop an army, organize a planned economy. Its tasks at the moment (writing, organizing, fundraising, dealing with state repression, etc.) are only a distant precursor of the tasks it plans to undertake.
Interesting, I suppose, that we quickly get away from discussing what Lenin wrote and instead into Stalin/Trotsky and the like.
Here, at least along one line of analysis, is the connection. Lenin led a revolution. In this “Unexplored Mountain” essay, Lenin is stressing the need for visionary leadership, which entails not falling back on conventional thinking, especially when the process that is unfolding is entirely new and unprecedented.
Trotsky also played a role in leading the Bolshevik Revolution, and it is shameful that this role has been erased from the standard histories of the Revolution promulgated by Stalinists and Maoists. Even the erstwhile Maoists who have recently discovered truth stumble over this point (they choke, really), and we (who want to continue the revolutionary legacy of Maoism and develop it qualitatively) should draw some lessons from this.
My own view, for what it is worth, is that Trotsky’s Marxist theorizing, while interesting and creative, does not help us understand or make a revolution against imperialism; the legacy of Trotskyism is, in the main, to deny key elements of Lenin’s understanding of imperialism, and to return us to “classical Marxism.” Furthermore, for all kinds of reasons, Trotsky was never going to be the leader of the CPSU. However, none of this means that we shouldn’t study Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution and other work [some of which is just as "Stalinist" as anything Stalin wrote], or that we should not recognize the very important role that Trotsky played in the Bolshevik Revolution.
Arundhati Roy during a visit to the forest where she broke the taboo of of interviewing Maoist guerrillas in their base areas.
Last month, quietly, unannounced, Arundhati Roy decided to visit the forbidding and forbidden precincts of Central India’s Dandakaranya Forests, home to a melange of tribespeople many of whom have taken up arms to protect their people against state-backed marauders and exploiters. She recorded in considerable detail the first face-to-face journalistic “encounter” with armed guerrillas, their families and comrades, for which she combed the forests for weeks at personal risk. This essay was published on Friday in Delhi’s Outlook magazine. Arundhati Roy made the pictures in this 20,000 word essay available exclusively to Dawn.
The following was first posted on Dawn.com. Kasama urges all readers to give it close attention and wide circulation. We urge all our readers to share and download this new pamphlet. It makes it much easier for people to study this important work by Arundhati Roy describing the revolutionary fighters and people of India’s Maoist political base areas. This pamphlet includes many of Roy’s remarkable photographs from her trip that bring the text to life.
The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with India’s Gravest Internal Security Threat. I’d been waiting for months to hear from them.
I had to be at the Ma Danteshwari mandir in Dantewara, Chhattisgarh, at any of four given times on two given days. That was to take care of bad weather, punctures, blockades, transport strikes and sheer bad luck. The note said: “Writer should have camera, tika and coconut. Meeter will have cap, Hindi Outlook magazine and bananas. Password: Namashkar Guruji.”
“It’s sometimes claimed that the multi-party elections in this system will take place under the dictatorship of the proletariat. But this makes no sense at all. If it’s a dictatorship of the proletariat how can you allow bourgeois parties to compete for power with the party of the proletariat? It is absurd to believe that elections could routinely take place between two parties both with a proletarian line. The proletariat has a common interest. It’s vanguard should be encouraging unity not institutionalising a split so we can blindly copy bourgeois democracy. Multi-party democracy has a material basis in capitalism because different factions of the bourgeoisie have different selfish interests. Not so the proletariat.”
Joseph articulates here a view and a logic inherited from the Comintern. It assumes that the Stalin-era state form is inherent in the process of socialist transition and in the very nature of the working class as a historic revolutionary agent. I think this views deserves a respectful discussion and repudiation. It is a view that I disagree with on almost every level. I think it is refuted by actual experience (including the experience of capitalist restoration). I think it has been deeply challenged by Mao’s view on continuing revolution — and needs to be challenged even further. This theory rests on a way of thinking that is deeply schematic and mechanical, and really doesn’t bother to look at living reality in a creative or penetrating way.
This letter from Nepal. It was originally published on the new blog, jedbrandt.net.
Greetings from Nepal
by Jed Brandt,
March 7, 2010 — I can’t leave home for a few weeks without everything going crazy.
It took a bit for my time to adjust, to see things as they are coming here and where they’re coming from. Not the instant back-and-forth rhythm of New York multi-tasking anxiety time. Most days the electricity is out in Kathmandu. You can hear chickens in the morning, children playing after school and quiet talk at night when the old women laugh and call across the rooftops. Blackouts make working a computer hard, but the pace of people living by hands and minds alone, without so much mediation, is not a place I’ve ever spent much time. And I do love it here. The city is dirty. The people are upright, direct and curious. I’ve made friends quickly, though I’ve gotten the impression its easier to get married than find a date.
Kathmandu is a valley. The Tanglang range of the Himalaya is the wall in the sky that separates South Asia from the Tibetan plateau to the north. The white caps are breathtaking when you can see them. Pollution is horrible. Cars only arrived in Kathmandu 20 years ago. Most of the city is built for footpaths, but that doesn’t stop every sort of vehicle from ripping through trying to cut around the traffic jams. It’s some kind of anarchy on the streets. People complain about it, then go do it themselves. I’ve seen three people hit by cars, none of which stopped. Motorcycles are everywhere and drive as they want. I’ve only seen one traffic light and it wasn’t lit. The daily load shedding blackout.
“…countries as diverse as Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Korea, Albania, and men as dissimilar as Lenin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, have all found themselves arriving at the one-party state, then we might be forced to conclude that the proletariat HAS IN FACT ALREADY FOUND the form of political rule appropriate to itself as a class.”
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By John Carter
Comrades,
First, I think it’s extremely cool that Mike has chosen to directly engage the divergent views expressed in this thread. Coming from the orbit of the CPUSA, where criticism is dismissed out of hand when it’s not ignored, I hardly know how to respond … I lack recent practice in maintaining a polemic.
But that’s fine. We need to encourage and find ways to foster and nurture the kind of intellectual and ideological struggle that characterized the Bolshevik Party during Lenin’s lifetime, while still remaining comrades. I quite certain Mike would agree with that.
Anyway -
At first blush, it might seem that allowing room for a multiplicity of competing socialist parties, the basic premise of the Maobadi’s “new mainstream” And here I stand corrected, BTW; it is quite correct that the parties of the exploiters and the bourgeoisie are excluded from this spectrum), is a natrual evolution from the insight that tendencies are going to exist within the vanguard party, and so we might as well let them struggle in the open rather than suppressing them through administrative means or worse.
How ‘Communism’ Brought Racial Equality To The South
Tell Me More continues its Black History Month series of conversations with a discussion about the role of the Communist Party. It was prominent in the fight for racial equality in the south, specifically Alabama, where segregation was most oppressive. Many courageous activists were communists. Host Michel Martin speaks with historian Robin Kelley about his book “Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression” about how the communist party tried to secure racial, economic, and political reforms.
Im Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.
Coming up, whats going on in your house? But it doesnt look like the set of Leave It to Beaver. Writer Rebecca Walker wanted to capture the many new faces of the American family. Well talk about her provocative collection of essays in a few minutes.
But first, we continue our Black History Month series of conversations. Throughout this Black History Month, we have been focusing on new news about black history, new scholarship that has emerged in recent decades that sheds new light on the story of black people in America.
Today, we want to hear about communists in the civil rights movement. Now, that’s a sensitive subject since those working for equality have often been accused of being communist in this country, but some were.
And were joined now by Robin Kelley, author of Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. It documents how the Communist Party worked to secure racial, economic and political justice. Hes a professor of American studies and history at the University of Southern California. And this semester, hes the Harmsworth Professor of American History at the University of Oxford. And we welcome you to the program. Thank you for joining us.
After launching their armed struggle in the late 1960s, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has scored many successes, including the development of significant “guerrilla fronts” across this archipelago.
However, for many years, this revolutionary movement has been unable to break through to a higher level of confrontation with the brutal government — and has not been able to advance toward the seizure of power in significant regions or countrywide.
This kind of frustrating impasse is a situation faced by diverse revolutionary forces in other parts of the world (including in India over many decades, Ireland during the days of “troubles,” Sri Lanka during the Tamil secessionist revolt, Palestine and Colombia.) Meanwhile, obviously, in far too many countries, the most revolutionary forces have not even been able to consolidate themselves into a serious political party, develop significant initial mass bases, and start to confront the kinds of problems that are presented in the Philippines.
In the following statement, the CPP leadership lays out an ambitious plan to overcome their movement’s long-standing problem: To move from the strategic defensive to the strategic balance with the government forces (a moment Maoists call “strategic stalemate”) within five years. Their plan involves a systematic strengthening of their party and baseareas: with the goals of increasing the number of New Peoples Army (NPA) guerrilla fronts from 120 to 180, greatly expanding party membership, and strengthening its leadership structures in planned and concrete ways.
Kasama received the following statement. We are publishing several statements by communists internationally on the global climate changes. Posting is an invitation to dissect, discuss and develop — it does not represent agreement with the analysisoffered.
Let’s lead mankind out of the cultural and moral chaos, of the economic and political crisis and of environmental disaster in which the bourgeoisie and the clergy bogged it down!
On December 7 to 18, the leaders of most of about 200 countries and major world and regional organizations established on the Planet will gather in Copenhagen. The vast majority of them are individuals promoted to the position they occupy in their country and in the world and stay there as they are useful to ruling classes whose primary role in society is to increase capital. Each their member must raise its money and the one he manages. His morals, his mentality and the rest of his social relations are formed primarily by this social role.
Among the personalities who will gather in Copenhagen, very few are not so. They are the spokesmen of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, North Korea’s governments and of few other countries. Not by chance the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and of other countries of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative) gathered in late November in prospect of the conference in Copenhagen which they would participate in, and, synthesizing their position in relation to the themes that would be on the agenda, drafted a statement entitled “Let’s save the planet from capitalism.”
So, with few exceptions, the people who gather in Copenhagen are delegates, representatives and members of the class responsible for the path that humanity followed up to here. In particular, they are also responsible of the environmental disaster. But they will carefully refrain from honestly show their responsibilities and indicate the reasons.
The environmental crisis is not an accident in humanity’s history. It does not happen by chance. It is not even a natural disaster.
“Sri Lanka solution” threatened for Maoist-led uprising in India – Excerpts from Arundhati Roy
16 November 2009. A World to Win News Service. The Indian government is preparing “Operation Green Hunt”, a counter-insurgency operation on an unprecedented scale. As many as a hundred thousand soldiers and other security forces are to be sent into the forested hills of eastern and central India to crush the rebellion of adivasi (tribal peoples) led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist). This is no short-term incursion: the authorities have announced that they plan to station massive numbers of troops in the tribal areas for years to come.
Several commentators have warned of the danger that the Indian government plans to seek a “Sri Lanka solution”, modelled on the recent protracted government offensive there. Massive ground forces and air assaults were used to defeat the Tamil Tigers, and then hundreds of thousands of the region’s civilian population were imprisoned in detention camps, where most still languish. Now what may be permanent military bases are being built in the Tamil heartland. The Indian government no doubt noted the implicit U.S. approval for that operation. At the U.S ‘s behest, the IMF granted the Sri Lankan government a huge financial package almost immediately after the massacre.
Following are excerpts from an article by Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy that appeared in the October 31 issue of the Sri Lanka Guardian (srilankaguardian. org). The full article online gives much more detail for her arguments and a more all-around representation of her views. The November 2009 issue of People’s March (peoplesmarch. googlepages. com, or bannedthought. net) has two recent statements by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and other material on this offensive.
The low, flat-topped hills of south Orissa have been home to the Dongria Kondh [one of several tribal peoples in the region] long before there was a country called India or a state called Orissa. The hills watched over the Kondh. The Kondh watched over the hills and worshipped them as living deities. Now these hills have been sold for the bauxite they contain…
Demarcations and differences do not require treating others like heretics from some true religion
By Mike Ely
I’d like to build upon what Tell No Lies just said in our discussion of the mentioning of Trotsky by one of Nepal’s leading Maoists.
First, the point in all of this is that we need to find a way to be clearly, shockingly revolutionary, but not sectarian. This is a challenge (in a left where anti-sectarianism is the banner of reformism). I think it is possible, and I think many of us are eager for it.
Starkly non-sectarian, fiercely revolutionary. With all that this implies and demands.
TNL said (excerpted from among other things):
“I am quite pleased to see Bhattarai quoting Trotsky, if only to shake up the dogmatists. … I’d love to see a similar openness to the full range of heretics from Gramsci through Fanon and beyond. Being “on guard” against heretical ideas is deadly to revolutionary theory… A genuinely scientific outlook is unafraid of heresy and knows that seemingly disproven ideas come back to life all the time in the light of new experiences or theoretical advances in other areas. The Trotskyist critique of building socialism in one country was problematic more because it was politically paralyzing than because it was analytically wrong about the limits of what could be achieved and its revival in a much smaller country in a more globally integrated world economy makes complete sense to me.”
I think there are a number of sides to approach here.
1) Treating ideas as heresy has been a way of shutting down debate without engaging deeply with the actual lines. It is a terrible method. Communism is not a religion with religious doctrines, apostates and heretics.
Today, seemingly a world away, the population of a small, oppressed nation is engaged in an ongoing revolution that is straining and maneuvering for a decisive victory. Rather than pursuing a rigid path in a sterile and dogmatic way, these revolutionaries have employed a diversity of tactics — from a people’s war to political negotiation to mass protests — aimed at freeing the country’s people. Their thinking is fresh, and they’ve wedded creative innovation with a movement committed to socialism and worldwide liberation from capitalism and imperialism.
They deserve our active political work. We need to help break through the mainstream media whiteout — so more people here in the U.S. can see the ways this revolution is radically changing society, and so we can stop the U.S. government from intervening in Nepal while falsely branding revolutionaries there as terrorists.
In this interview, taken from the October 17, 2009 issue of Open, Ganapathi, General Secretary of the CPI (Maoist), talks about the party’s work in Lalgarh, its response to the government’s upcoming military offensive, the political situation in Nepal, the defeat of the LTTE, the contradictory nature of Islamist movements in the world today, and the role of the new chieftain of US imperialism.
“We Shall Certainly Defeat the Government”
The supreme commander of CPI (Maoist) talks to Open in his first-ever interview.
At first sight, Mupalla Laxman Rao, who is about to turn 60, looks like a school teacher. In fact, he was one in the early 1970s in Andhra Pradesh’s Karimnagar district. In 2009, however, the bespectacled, soft-spoken figure is India’s Most Wanted Man. He runs one of the world’s largest Left insurgencies—a man known in Home Ministry dossiers as Ganapathi; a man whose writ runs large through 15 states.
The supreme commander of CPI (Maoist) is a science graduate and holds a B Ed degree as well. He still conducts classes, but now they are on guerilla warfare for other senior Maoists. He replaced the founder of the People’s War Group, Kondapalli Seetharaamiah, as the party’s general-secretary in 1991. Ganapathi is known to change his location frequently, and intelligence reports say he has been spotted in cities like Hyderabad, Kolkata and Kochi. Read the rest of this entry »
Peru's Shining Path -- armed Maoist villagers, not special elites of "heroic guerrillas"
By Mike Ely
Tell No Lies posted a criticism of the article I wrote evaluating Che Guevara. And I think he gets at some important things.
In this exchange, I hope to argue for a few core ideas:
1) We should deepen our understanding of the importance of contrasting ideological and political line.
This means examining policies and ideas in terms of where they lead — toward what? Toward revolution and communism, or somewhere else?
Che was an important revolutionary figure who became a truly unique global symbol of armed struggle and internationalism. But we should pursue a critical evaluation of the LINE he represented as well.
2) We should embrace a deeper understanding of the mass line – the principle that revolution must be the act of the people themselves (and that a socialist revolution requires an embrace of communist organization and consciousness within a larger, active, emerging “revolutionary people” — an actual section of the people.)
3) We need a renewed materialist appreciation of particularity — the relative uniqueness of each moment and place. I.e. we need to be wary of that casual universalization of strategic ideas that often burdened previous generations of revolutionaries.
It is important to study revolutionary victories (and defeats) for lessons and applicable insights. But there is a history of much too lightly declaring that the specific forms of one revolution are “models” or “universal principles” for other places. This has played a rather destructive role — both in the sense that it had real (often fatal) results, but also in the sense of deadening the creative theoretical impulses of living movements. And this kind of universalization was done by codifying both focoist theory and the Chinese experience of protracted peoples war into universal models.
As the Nepali Maoists insist, you can’t copy previous revolutions. Each struggle and victory will have a great deal of innovation and shocking particularity. Future revolutions will prove to be as startlingly different as snowflakes.
Now to return to evaluating Che Guevara and TNL’s comments.
Che was executed in cold blood 42 years ago by a U.S. lead death squad that captured him in Bolivia. Then, as now, he had emerged as a prominent symbol of self-sacrifice, armed struggle, internationalism and uncompromising opposition to U.S. domination. His death stands as a glaring example of the role the U.S. and its agents play in the brutal repression of humanity’s highest aspirations. The torturers of the CIA were not invented on 9/11 — but have a very long and bloody history.
Che is a highly romantic martyr of the people’s cause. But he was also a revolutionary leader and thinker in a particular complex time; he was associated closely with a specific series of approaches and strategies.
Che (and the Cuban movement he was part of) had a particular line on the role of the people in their own emancipation. It was a view that exalted the actions of small military groupings of “heroic guerrillas” (called focos) in galvanizing revolution. Unlike the Maoists at that same time, Che and Fidel Castro were not advocates of a “land to the tiller” agrarian revolution, but sought to nationalize the existing plantation structure of Cuba and similar countries.
The fact that so many people revere him is a testimony to the deep desires for liberation throughout the world. And at the same time, revolution is not made by symbolism alone. The controversies surrounding Che’s strategies have contemporary significance.
The following piece was written over ten years ago in appreciation of Che’s impact — while also making a critical assessment of his strategic concepts. There has been considerable excavation of these events since this piece was written. Kasama intends to publish other essays on Che reflecting a number of different assessments.
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October 9, 1967: The CIA Murder of Ernesto Che Guevara
By Mike Ely
Thirty years ago, on October 8, 1967, gunfire echoed through a steep ravine of the Andes Mountains in southern Bolivia. The guerrilla band led by Ernesto “Che” Guevara was pinned down and surrounded by Bolivian Army Rangers.
Less than a year earlier, Guevara and a team of cadres had secretly traveled from Cuba to Bolivia to launch a guerrilla war, hoping to topple Bolivia’s pro-U.S. military government. Guevara had gone up into the mountains with about 50 supporters. Within months they were discovered by Bolivian troops. And an intense pursuit started.
El 8 de octubre de 1967, en una quebrada de los Andes en el sur de Bolivia, se oyó un nutrido fuego: Ernesto “Che” Guevara y sus guerrilleros se encontraban rodeados por el ejército boliviano.
Poco menos de un año antes, Guevara y un grupo de cuadros viajaron clandestinamente de Cuba a Bolivia para iniciar una guerra de guerrillas y tumbar al gobierno militar. Guevara y unos 50 guerrilleros se internaron en las montañas. Pocos meses después el ejército boliviano los detectó y empezó una intensa persecución. Para eludirlo, Guevara dividió al grupo en dos, pero jamás pudo reagruparlo. Su diario indica que para fines de agosto los guerrilleros de su grupo estaban fatigados, desmoralizados y que solo quedaban 22; el 31 de agosto el segundo grupo fue aniquilado al cruzar un río.
El 26 de septiembre, el ejército emboscó al resto de los guerrilleros cerca del poblado de La Higuera. Varios guerrilleros cayeron en combate y el Che quedó herido en una pierna. Luego, el 8 de octubre lo capturaron con dos combatientes y los llevaron a la escuela del pueblo.
Al día siguiente, llegó en helicóptero un tal “Félix Ramos” en uniforme de oficial del ejército boliviano y se encargó de los prisioneros. Dos horas después, el Che y los dos combatientes fueron ejecutados.
La mano de Estados Unidos
Las armas y el equipo de los asesinos fueron Made in U.S.A. El oficial boliviano que lo tomó preso estudió en Fort Bragg, Estados Unidos, donde se preparan golpes de estado, asesinatos y campañas de contrainsurgencia. El tal “capitán Ramos” era Félix Rodríguez, un viejo agente de la CIA.
Obviously this report is not from our perspective — but it is, nonetheless, revealing of the situation and possibilities.
Transcripts (thanks to D Pugh):
Here is a transcript of Radha’s comments if you don’t have time to watch this 30 minute video.
India’s Battle against Its Maoists
by Nick Clark, Inside Story, Al Jazeera
Nick Clark:
Click for full map of the Maoist Red Corridor (note: Nepal is at the northern edge of that corridor)
India says it’s adamant to finish off what it calls “leftist extremism” as its army prepares for an all-out assault on Maoist rebels. . . . The conflict between the two sides has been going on for more than four decades, and now the government hopes an all-out assault would end the insurgency once and for all. It’s expected some troops will be withdrawn from the troubled Kashmir to fight the so-called Naxalites in an operation of more than 100,000 troops. . . . The Maoists have been active since the 1960s. According to the Indian intelligence, up to 22,000 Maoist rebels are active in more than half of the country’s 29 states, creating what’s known as the “Red Corridor” from the country’s northeast to the deep south. The movement is fragmented into several disputing factions: some of them are politically inclined, while others are involved in armed guerrilla fighting. In recent years, they’ve dramatically stepped up their attacks; thousands have died in Maoist campaigns right across the country. They say they are fighting for the rights of the poor, but the Indian government considers them terrorists and recently banned their political wing from Parliament. . . .
Radha D’Souza, Reader in Law, University of Westminster:
Yes, the Indian government is throwing resources at it. One only wishes that the resources were thrown at the issues that Maoists are raising. If you look at the national debate on this issue, everybody, across the political spectrum, agrees that there has been a serious failure of social justice, of development, and serious injustices to the poor. On this I think everybody agrees. But the thing is, what are we doing about it? Instead of sending the armed forces there, if the government were to spend that money in actually doing something for the people there, I think they will have less of a problem on hand, but they’re not doing that. They see the military solution as the only option. . . .
The Red Guard movement -- that arose to revolutionize education and society itself.
It is the 60th anniversary of the 1949 countrywide seizure of power by workers and peasants in China It was the beginnings of the revolutionary power for a quarter of humanity. There is much to say and sum up about that moment — and the great socialist experiment that unfolded afterwards.
Here is a list of some of the essays on China’s revolution that have appeared on this Kasama site:
It is hard to capture how much Peter, Paul and Mary were part of the very atmosphere — in the New York left subculture as the civil rights movement rumbled in the South, and the soul stirrings of the 60s were just starting.
They commercialized the folk current, and started the breakthrough from a small cafe-and-summer-camp underground to a much wider audience… just as the left politics they embodied was starting to break through as well. It was a time when Kumbaya was a heartfelt anthem, not a mocking rightwing punchline.
Their music and politics (so heavily influenced by the Communist Party milieu) were soon both over-shadowed by far more radical and hard-driving currents — by the emergence of defiant revolutionary politics, by the creative explosion of new Black music, and by the rebel drumbeats of rock-and-roll.
But Peter, Paul and Mary played their role — helping bringing leftism out of the closet where it had cowered, trembling, for so much of the 50s. By donning the moral righteousness of the civil rights movement, and by presenting a claim to a popular authenticity (through the questionably authentic form of folk) — Pete, Paul and Mary found the courage (and audience!) to sing their hearts out, and help wake many of us up.
I was a boy in New York City’s Greenwich Village in 1960. I remember well those days, those circles, that music, the Bitter End, the Cafe Wha? and all those new hopes rising suddenly.
Let’s not share moment of silence for Mary, but instead a remembrance in song. Her songs are designed for singing along together.
In this interview, taken from the October 17, 2009 issue of 
