Political, Social Commentaries and the Order of the Day
I am slowly phasing out this particluar blog at the current online address. I have set up another wordpress blog using the same headline title “What is To be Done?” but under Proletarian Internationalist (Marxist-Leninist). The reason I am doing this is so that I can focus “What is to Be done?” more on political matters than as a personal blog per se.
The new blog can be found here:
What is to be Done? Proletarian Internationalist (Marxist-Leninist)
Lackawanna Discussion Group Commission on Rights (LDG-COR)
The Lackawanna Discussion Group Commission on Rights (LDG-COR) calls on everyone to join in a national day of action to oppose the recent massacre in Gaza and increased violence against Palestinians carried out by the U.S. and Israel. On December 27, more than 200 Palestinians were killed and more than 600 hundred were wounded when F-16s and Apache helicopters, provided by the U.S., rained down bombs on the people of Gaza. The brutal bombing campaign took place against civilians at a time when Palestinian children were in the streets on their way home from school. Reports state that the U.S.-backed Israeli Occupation Force destroyed every security station in Gaza and that Israel plans to continue and widen military action against Palestinians. A second day of bombings took place December 28.
The situation in Gaza has already been widely condemned as a deliberate humanitarian crisis. The U.S.-Israeli imposed siege on the city has led to collective punishment of the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. People consistently are forced to go without lights and water, with hospitals and businesses forced to close and starvation being imposed on all.
The U.S. government has stated that Hamas must stop firing rockets in order to end the violence, which clearly turns the truth on its head. U.S.-Israeli state terrorism carried out under illegal occupation of Palestinian land is the source of the violence. We will not allow the victims to be blamed for the crimes of the aggressors!
The U.S. plans to provide $30 billion in military funding alone to Israel in the next ten years. We say NO!Stop funding U.S.-Israeli genocide! We call on all to reject the criminal U.S. support of Israel and stand with the Palestinians and peoples worldwide to salute resistance in Palestine and defend the right of return.
- Statement of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), December 29, 2008 -
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) vigorously condemns the ongoing Israeli aerial bombings of the Gaza Strip that began Saturday, December 27 and calls for an immediate cessation of all aggression against the Gaza Strip and Palestinian people. The heinous Zionist crimes constitute a form of collective punishment by the Israeli State, backed by the U.S. imperialists, aimed at crushing the heroic resistance of the Palestinians to the unjust and illegal occupation. The Palestinians have rejected and repelled — and continue to reject and repel — all efforts and machinations to extinguish their national and historic right to self-determination and their lands.
CPC(M-L) also condemns the outrageous response of the Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon who attempts to blame the Palestinians for these Israeli crimes. Despite the fact that Israel was the first to break the ceasefire with Hamas, Cannon argues that Israel is defending itself and that the only onus on Israel is to try to avoid killing civilians! In this way, he seeks to legitimate crimes against humanity, the outright violation of the principles of the international rule of law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and the attempt to destroy the Palestinian nation.
CPC(M-L) calls n the Canadian working class and people to go all out in condemning this brutal Israeli aggression, demand its immediate cessation and participate in the actions organized on this occasion around the country.
No to Israeli War Crimes! Hands Off Gaza!
Long Live the Heroic Palestinian Resistance!
Here is a photoshop image I put together of the Great Lenin, using an old soviet postcard and following some basic design elements. Hope you enjoy!
BW
Here is an article taken from People’s Voice Organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Ghadar Party of India
November 16-30, 2008
What is Recession?
Recession is a problem that is peculiar to the capitalist system. In this system, production is geared to maximise the profits of the capitalist class. The monopoly capitalists, who dominate the markets for commodities and credit in the present stage of capitalism, are satisfied with nothing less than the maximum rate of profit. The drive for maximum profits in the hands of a tiny minority leads to maximum exploitation of labour and impoverishment of the toiling majority. As a result, the capacity to produce keeps increasing while the capacity of the majority to purchase what is sold in the market remains restricted. This periodically leads to crises of overproduction. When such a crisis occurs, capitalists scale down production and jobs are destroyed.
Impoverishment of the working people leads to recession. And the typical response of the capitalist class to the problem of recession is to further impoverish the working people.
In the United States, impoverishment of the working class has been a constant trend for the past five years – as shown by the steady decline in the median income. This was accompanied by extension of consumer credit and initially cheap housing loans, which kept up demand growth for a period. The present financial crisis has brought about a turning point, when working people have become wary of spending on credit and becoming more indebted. This is leading to a huge shrinking of the market for consumer goods. It is leading to the loss of lakhs of jobs.
Data on job losses are available on a monthly basis in the US. According to latest reports, the number of jobs destroyed was 1,27,000 in August and rose to 1,60,000 in September. Job losses in 2008 have reached 12 lakhs (1.2 million). Of this total number, manufacturing accounts for 90,000, construction for 49,000, retail trade 38,000, professional and business services for 45,000. The officially recorded unemployment rate is the highest in 14 years.
My apologies this isn’t much of a post coming from me. Since I am away from the computer, I thought this was important to share. Bear in mind, although the article is from the standpoint of Indian context and conditions (of which I remain very ignorant of, but still learning about), it speaks volumes for the Communists abroad and in other countries on the necessity of their role and tasks in taking up organizing work for the fraternal unity of nations and peoples in their respective countries.
This article is from the Communist Ghadar Party of India.
Fraternally yours,
Joshua
* * * * *
Lesson from the Great October Socialist Revolution:
The Working Class must prepare to become the Ruling Class in order to ensure peace, prosperity and progress!
Ninety years ago, the workers and peasants of Russia became the masters of their country by carrying out a revolution which became known throughout the world as the Great October Socialist Revolution. This world historic act heralded sweeping changes in Russia and the whole world.
The imperialist powers of the world – US, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia and others – were at that time embroiled in the First World War for the redivision of the world. The treacherous leaders of workers in different imperialist countries justified the imperialist war. They asked the workers to line up behind the bourgeoisie of their own countries, against the workers of other lands. The working class and the people of the imperialist countries and their colonies were made to pay with their blood for this war.
With the slogan “bread, land and peace”, Russia’s workers and peasants overthrew the Tsar, the rule of the capitalists and landowners, and established their own rule. The Bolshevik Party led by Lenin gave the call “war against war”. It led the workers, peasants and soldiers in converting the imperialist war into a revolutionary civil war ending with the victorious socialist revolution. The Russia ruled by workers and peasants withdrew from the imperialist war.
Capitalists and imperialists worldwide spewed venom at Russia’s workers and at the communists who organized and guided them in the struggle. They hurled all their forces to try to defeat the revolution and overthrow socialism. The workers and oppressed of the whole world applauded the victory of the workers and peasants of Russia. They intensified the struggle against “their own bourgeoisie” for the victory of the revolution in their own countries, and supported this same struggle all over the world.
The workers and peasants rule in Russia began to reorient the economy from the old one geared to fattening the pockets of capitalists and imperialists, to the new one geared to fulfilling the needs of the producers of wealth, the workers and peasants. The colonies groaning in the prison house called Russia were granted full freedom and a voluntary union of consenting nations and peoples was created, called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). All the constituent nations and peoples of the USSR enjoyed the full right to self-determination.
Within a relatively short time the Soviet Union took giant strides in all fields of social endeavor. The incomparable superiority of the socialist system over the capitalist system was brought forth in stark relief before the whole world.
Poverty, unemployment, ill health, and illiteracy were eradicated in a very short period of time. The workers and peasants’ state ensured the emancipation of women, by enabling them to work and participate as equals with men in political and social life. The Soviet Union became the first country in the world that granted women the right to vote. Maternity leave was made a right – again for the first time in the world.
The State took on the responsibility of bringing up children, including providing them education, as well as care for the aged and the infirm. Free education and health care were provided to all. All the languages of the peoples were encouraged to be developed.
The Soviet Union became a beacon of peace, progress, prosperity, and enlightenment, for people the world over. The 1936 Constitution of the Soviet Union remains todate the most advanced constitution world over in terms of affirming human, democratic and national rights.
The strength and superiority of socialism, of the rule of workers and peasants, was revealed before the people of the whole world during the Second World War. When Hitler’s hordes invaded the Soviet Union, the people united as one to resist and eventually defeat this onslaught. Despite suffering the greatest human and material losses of the War, the Soviet Union made a decisive contribution to the liberation of Europe, and the world, from Nazi fascism.
The world’s first socialist state is no more. Sixteen years ago, the open rule of capital was formally reestablished in Russia and other republics of the former Soviet Union. The capitalists and imperialists of the whole world rejoiced at the downfall of socialism in the Soviet Union. Today, Russia is an imperialist country, where workers and peasants are savagely exploited, and unemployment, prostitution, drugs and other evils of capitalism are flourishing.
We communists have been studying why and how capitalism returned to the Soviet Union and other countries. We must ensure that when the working class comes to power in India, we remember each and every one of the lessons learnt from this study of the successes and subsequent downfall of the Soviet Union. The class struggle must continue, and mechanisms put in place to ensure that political power remains in the hands of workers and peasants.
The degeneration of socialism in the Soviet Union began in the fifties of the twentieth century, with Nikita Khrushchev coming to the head of the Bolshevik Party after the death of JV Stalin. Khrushchev refused to address a number of problems in the fields of political theory, philosophy and political economy, which emerged at that time. Instead he supervised the transformation of the socialist Soviet Union into a social imperialist country – a country that was socialist in words, but capitalist and imperialist in deeds.
It attacked Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, and contended and colluded with the US for world domination. The Soviet Union, increasingly, was no longer the source of inspiration it had once been to the workers and oppressed of the world. The economy was reoriented towards militarization and achieving global imperialist aims of a new emerging bourgeoisie. Within the Soviet Union, Great Russian chauvinism was encouraged and national oppression of various nations and peoples was restored.
All this was carried out in the name of communism and the working class, which was systematically marginalized from the political system and process. The militarized and crisis-ridden economy could not satisfy the needs of the populace. At the same time, the new bourgeoisie which had emerged over the years was impatient to get rid of the shell of socialism which was hampering its growth. In these conditions, the bourgeoisie rode on the discontent of the working masses to dismantle this shell, and restore capitalism.
Ever since the victory of the workers of Russia 90 years ago, the principal aim of capitalists and imperialists around the world has been to destroy socialism and to prevent the triumph of proletarian revolutions. With the destruction of socialism in the Soviet Union and some other countries, world imperialism regained the initiative. Revolution went into retreat.
However, the fundamental contradiction of the epoch remains between capitalism, the old system, and socialism the new. The contradictions between capital and labour, between imperialism and the peoples, as well as the inter-imperialist contradictions are all sharpening.
The workers and oppressed peoples and nations of the world are waging fierce struggles against globalization, liberalization and privatization, against imperialism, fascism and imperialist war. It is a matter of time before the tide of revolution changes from ebb into flow. Communists must prepare the conditions so that when the tide turns in the favour of revolution, the working class comes to power.
In the period since the end of the Cold War, the question of democratic renewal has come to the fore in India as well as in other capitalist countries. It has become clear that the system of rule in a majority of countries including India, the parliamentary system of representative democracy, keeps the working class and broad masses of people out of power. The working class and people are showing everywhere that they are not satisfied with a political system that marginalizes them.
Replacing this representative democracy by direct democracy, in tune with the conditions of India is the challenge facing the workers and peasants of India. Blocking this transition are the bourgeoisie and imperialism, as well as political parties that represent their interests. Building the alternative, direct democracy, is the task that communists and workers and peasants of India have taken up. This struggle for democratic renewal, for replacing representative democracy with direct democracy, is the form in which the contradiction between capitalism and socialism is being played out at this time.
As we mark the 90th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the challenge facing India’s working class and communists is clear. The rule of the bourgeoisie needs to be replaced by the rule of workers and peasants. Only then will India march on the road of peace, prosperity and progress for her people! The struggle for democratic renewal — the struggle of the working class led by the Communist party to replace representative democracy with direct democracy — is opening the way to the establishment of the rule of workers and peasants on Indian soil.
http://www.cgpi.org/pages/latest/0710030-Great_October_Socialist%20Revolution.aspx
It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted. Lately things have been busy in my life, certain changes taking place. I am curently working on a literary visual project which is important to me. I am also in a new relationship with a most amazing woman! Blogging has taken a backseat for now. However with that said, the situation in the U.S. is getting much grimmer for U.S. imperialism and monopoly capitalism.
More recently, there has been quite alot of movement for the Louisiana Jena Six, (six African Americans who stood up against segregation and racism in their school and community and who are being targeted by the state and government for their resistance), and the movement to Return and to Rebuild New Orleans, in which the International Tribunal on Katrina and Rita shows the failure of the US state in actually providing assistance to the people of New Orleans and exposes the criminal activities of the US state and government against the people. For more information on this please visit www.usmlo.org:
Justice After Katrina
http://usmlo.org/arch2007/2007-09/VR070919.htm#oa
Katrina “Shoot to Kill” Orders Gave Green Light for Jena
http://usmlo.org/arch2007/2007-09/VR070921.htm#1
Katrina, Jena, Iraq Show Necessity
http://usmlo.org/arch2007/2007-09/VR070930.htm#01
In addition to this, is the ongoing activities of the U.S. imperialists to militarize the society. Part of this is the role of the police, of which the NYPD, is trying to establish as a standard for all police throughout the country. Here is the report and analysis of this:
NYPD Report on “Homegrown Terrorism”
http://www.usmlo.org/arch2007/2007-09/VR070925.htm#03
The NYPD report in .pdf format:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/files/NYPD_Report-Radicalization_in_the_West.pdf
Another part of the militarization of society is the military excercises of NORTHCOM [Northern Command] and NORAD known as Vigilant Shield 2008. Here is the article: http://www.usmlo.org/arch2007/2007-09/VR070925.htm#02
* * * * *
In the world of art, I am currently impressed by the work of Matthew Woodson, whose work can be found here: www.ghostco.org His illustrations are awesome!
Also check this little vid out:
The Communist Ghadar Party of India has an excellent article on the life of Shadid Bhagat Singh. S R
No matter, if your Government tries and succeeds in winning over the leaders of the upper strata of the Indian society through petty concessions and compromises and thereby causes a temporary demoralization in the main body of the forces. The war shall continue. It may assume different shapes at different times. It may become open, hidden, purely agitational, or fierce life and death struggle. The choice of the course, whether bloody or comparatively peaceful, rests with you. Choose whichever you like. But that war shall be incessantly waged with new vigour, greater audacity and unflinching determination till the Socialist Republic is established. Till the present social order is completely replaced by a new social order, based on social prosperity and thus every sort of exploitation ends and humanity is ushered into the era of genuine and permanent peace. The days of capitalist and imperialist exploitation are numbered. The war neither began with us nor is it going to end with our lives. It is the inevitable consequence of the historic events and the existing environments.
These words were among the last penned by Shahid Bhagat Singh before he walked to the gallows, confident that the people of India would continue, and finally win “the war.”
This letter was addressed to the Governor General in India, the tip of the spear of British colonialism in the country.
Bhagat Singh had been sentenced to death for killing a British officer as revenge for the brutal assault on Lala Lajpat Rai, that led to the old freedom fighter’s death. Along with his comrades – brothers as he called them – Sukhdev and Rajguru, he was to be hanged for treason against a King he had never accepted.
As the world celebrates the hundredth birth anniversary of this great martyr, these words still hold a message – and a challenge for the youth of today.
India gained independence from the British Empire in 1947, but the dreams of Bhagat Singh and his feisty comrades, as seen by the words of this letter, have remained unrealised.
At the young age of 24, on the cusp of martyrdom, he was letting the British know that he understood the power games they were playing with the Indian elite. He understood that the Indian National Congress led by Mahatma Gandhi was compromising the vision of freedom that ordinary Indians held through deals with the British.
Deals through which the Congress “led” the independence struggle only to borrow the former coloniser’s Westminster model of “democracy” and embrace the capitalist laws that were behind the country’s plunder for two centuries that Britain ruled over us.
Three questions come to mind on reading this crucial letter.
How did a young Bhagat Singh, understand the present and foresee the future in a manner that appears nothing short of clairvoyance?
The answer lies in the science of Marxism-Leninism, which he had ardently studied, discussed and debated.
He had sacrificed his life, and was facing death for striving for a revolution that was nowhere in the immediate horizon. Wouldn’t it be natural for him to, at least now, question the success of the revolution he dearly believed in? What if he had been wrong all along? How could he continue to call the revolution “inevitable”?
Once again the answer lies in Marxism Leninism. The science had taught Bhagat Singh that the revolution, and the victory of socialism over capitalism, could not be stopped.
Nor had he failed in his mission. Far from it – every little detail of the period prior to his death had been carefully planned and skillfully executed.
He and his comrades in the Hindustan Republican Socialist Association had shaken the British empire to a stage that they had to pass the Arms Act – meant to curb the spread of weapons among the revolutionaries – through an ordinance.
With the whole of India closely following the trial in the British officer’s murder, Bhagat Singh and his comrades used the open court as a forum to speak to Indians, and ignite a revolutionary spirit in them. When the British got wise to the aims of the revolutionaries, they were forced to drop the charade of “law and justice”, and hurriedly convicted and sentenced them while banning them from court.
The revolutionaries were thus able to expose the tall claims of justice that the British claimed to uphold.
A final question remains though. What about Bhagat Singh’s firm conviction that “the days of capitalist and imperialist exploitation are limited?” It has been over seven decades and both capitalism and imperialism appear to be going strong. Could the Shahid have been wrong in this assessment?
Not at all. In fact, Leninism teaches us that imperialism is the last stage of capitalism, it is capitalism that is rotting. And over the decades since Bhagat Singh wrote this letter, the moribund features of imperialism has only become further accentuated. All the illussions promoted by the ideologues of capitalism of a world without wars, of capitalism acquiring a “human face”, of capitalism without the plunder of nations and peoples, have been proven to be just that — illussions to somehow safeguard the imperialist system from the revolution.
It follows that a system that has reached stagnancy must go. And like Bhagat Singh, it is the youth who have to once again take the initiative.
Long Live the Revolution!
http://www.cgpi.org/pages/latest/0709017-bhagatsingh.aspx
The issue of building a Marxist-Leninist Party in the United States is a critical and important one. Defending principles and upholding principles is a vital matter of state and the issue of the Party is crucial to this end. The question of what kind of society do we want is very much related to what kind of Party are we to have? Furthermore it points to what organization is needed to uphold and defend rights and principles and why present organization of society is incapable of organizing to meet and defend such rights and principles.
As things stand right now, in my view, there is no genuine Marxist-Leninist Party in the U.S., no genuine Vanguard Party of the Proletariat and no genuine Mass Communist Party to lead, defend and assist the working class and people to become an independent sovereign and political force, with the aim and goal of building new arrangements of society that will defend their interests – to build socialism and communism. As contradictions in society are accentuating more and more along class lines and the wrecking of society is being consciously organized by the bourgeoisie and ruling class, the necessity for such a Party exists.
Recently, a comrade shared with me an article they were especially interested on The Question of Building a New Type of Party by Baburam Bhattarai of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). This must of course be seen in the context of the CPN(M) document of Problems and Propsects of Revolution in Nepal This exchange of ideas can be read in the comments to my Dear Memnoch post.
Although, overall, I still need to examine Bhattarai’s documents and statements and investigate it more and thoroughly before coming to any conclusion, I simply do not agree with his introducing the notions of how the Party in the Soviet Union under Stalin could be seen as an end to itself and overlooking the aims and goals – and the aspirations of the working class and people towards constructing and building socialism and communism. This is how Bhattari presents the issue:
“…As an objective necessity to lead the war and construct socialism (which is by its very nature planned and centralized) in the period of worldwide fierce revolutionary upheavals prior to and just after the Second World War, this over centralized and militarized structure of the Party became a need and an inevitability, and it was indisputably established throughout the world through the Comintern. However, as Mao was to evaluate later, due to some metaphysical weaknesses inherent in Stalin the Party was seen as a monolithic and uniform object rather than as a unity of opposites and a basket of contradictions, and in the absence of a mechanism and process to continuously proletarize the Party with the participation and supervision of the class and the masses a new bureaucratic capitalist class was born and raised within the Party… [QBNTP, Bhattarai]
From what I can observe, Bhattarai targets the word “monolithic” and “uniform” in relation to the concept of the Party. Never does he decsribe the role of the Party and it was in these terms and context that the concept of the Party of the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin can be seen as monolithic, solid and uniform on the basis of upholding political principles – a solid foundation for assisting the working class to rise to power and for addressing problems and contradictions as they arise in social life, but never as something that is eternal, forever and an end to itself, without an aim or a goal. Without upholding and defending principles, the fight against bureaucracy, against revisionism and opportunism, will weaken the role of the Party in defending and assisting the working class. By strengthening the Party on principles and to actively defend and assist the working class and people to become a political and sovereign force, it will draw the working class and people to further proletarianize the Party.
In response to this document on the issue of Party Building by Bhattarai, I am presenting the document What Kind of Party that was presented by Comrade Lal Singh on behalf of the Central Committe of the Communist Ghadar Party of India to the Second National Consultative Conference held on Dec 29-30, 1993, and was realeased for discussion in DISCUSSION: Quarterly Review of Contemporary Marxist-Leninist Thought. Although the document is within the context of India’s circumstances and situations during this period of the early 1990s, the basic concept of the role of a Communist Party and furthermore What Kind of Party is needed for the development of the working class and people in their fight for sovierein political empowerment is vitally important for comrades in the U.S. to think about.
(Document adopted at the Second National Consultative Conference of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, held on December 29-30, 1993.)
Preface
We are standing at a very particular time in history, a time when the world bourgeoisie and reaction are launching their greatest offensive against the livelihood of the people and against the progress of society. There is a great offensive against Communism and many parties have turned their backs on the ideology and vision crucial for the working class to emancipate itself. This is a period of the retreat of revolution, the ebb of revolution, a period when the forces of counter-revolution are on the offensive.
The Second National Consultative Conference was organised by the Communist Ghadar Party of India (CGPI) as part of the struggle to preserve the progressive forces and expand their ranks, to extend the space where the doctrine of communism can flourish and to prepare for the time when the working class and people will launch their own offensive against the world bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie in India has launched an unprecedented attack on the livelihood and rights of the people. It is blocking the path for the progress of society. At the same time it is caught up in a profound crisis, especially in the political sphere. To say that this crisis is because of the refusal of the working class and people to go along with the political system as it exists in the country today will be to state the obvious. It cannot be denied that the present economic and political system just does not work. It does not provide for the people. The system cannot benefit society and is only exacerbating the contradictions inherent to it. It is also doing the same internationally.
It will be another truism to say that the reason why the people of India suffer such problems as poverty, communal and other forms of violence, state terrorism, national strife and every kind of diversion, is because they do not have power. Hence the most important question which presents itself is how to provide the people with power. This is the key question of modern democracy and it is a challenge to the communists, to the working class and all those who are genuinely concerned about the plight of the people in India to provide a solution to this problem. Such a question cannot be answered without the clearest possible enunciation of the theme, What Kind of Party?
Addressing the problem of how people can come to power poses a number of burning questions. There is the question of dealing with the existing parliamentary system, especially the role of the political parties; there is the question of the political process and the question of empowerment of the people. In reality, these problems are organically linked with one another and its is within this context that the questionwhat kind of party is needed to ensure the empowerment of the peoplehas emerged as the most important problem requiring immediate theoretical and practical answers.
The CGPI has organised itself as a political party of the working class. However, the reality is that the vanguard of the Indian working class is split into many parties and groups. This is the single most important subjective factor holding back the revolution. To build the unity of the working class, and to restore the unity of its vanguard communist party, is the need of the hour. The discussion on unity can no longer be delayed because, even in such critical times, various factions of the fractured communist movement are sending entirely different and contradictory messages to the class. The time has come to elaborate these matters in full view of the class and answer the question, What Kind of Party? Once such a question is elaborated, all those in whose interest it is to build such a party will join together while those who persist on the path of disunity will part company.
It is for this reason that for Party estimates that the work initiated by this conference is one of the most important tasks of the present period. No party can carry on the basis of an outmoded programme or obsolete tactics. The communists of today must have the resilience to deal with the present problems of the movement and of society, as was done by the communists before within their own conditions.
In the course of elaborating the question What Kind of Party? the CGPI will work for the restoration of communist unity as the main means of strengthening the working class movement, while at the same time uniting with all the political forces for the empowerment of the people.
Read the full document:
What Kind of Party?
http://www.cgpi.org/pages/documents/wkp.aspx
A repost from the Buffalo Forum!
Bush Executive Orders: Impunity Cannot Crush Resistance
President George W. Bush has issued yet another executive order aimed at resistance in the U.S., particularly against all who oppose the Iraq war. Titled “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq,” it directly serves to criminalize the anti-war movement, its organizations, those that support them, as well as individuals. It gives the executive the sole power to decide who is guilty. Those branded by the government will have all assets taken, including funds, membership lists, equipment, buildings, and so forth. As with previous executive orders and terrorism laws like the USA PATRIOT Act, the language of the order is so broad it could apply to anyone. Indeed, the language is “any person determined” by the executive, to pose “a significant risk of committing” acts of violence that threaten the “peace or stability of Iraq,” or economic reconstruction or political reform of Iraq. The order also targets those who “materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act.” The desperation of the government to stop resistance is such that one could simply know someone planning an action the government deems might have violence — which is pretty much any demonstration — to be targeted (see article below “New Executive Order Can Be Used Against Protests” for more specifics). Resistance is a right that cannot be crushed with such orders. It is the government impunity such orders unleash that is criminal.
The significance of this particular order is that it is geared toward those opposing the Iraq war and that it so broadly sanctions impunity. It could for example, be used not only against the movement but against rival factions within the ruling class, such as at the upcoming Democratic convention. It is also coming at a time when Bush has systematically put in place other executive orders and directives allowing the president to usurp the power to declare a national emergency and then take over all governance. One such order states directly that “The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government” in an emergency, declared again, by the president alone. As well Congress, far from rejecting these orders, adds to them. Last year’s Defense Authorization Act, for example, allows the president to use the military inside the country for law enforcement against Americans and to take over the National Guard of all 50 states without the approval of the governors, both illegal at that time.
These fascist arrangements must all be rejected as part of the struggle for rights.
http://buffaloforum.org/2007/08/impunity-cannot-crush-resistance.html
FYI:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070717-3.html
