Sweep of History

AS IF WE DIDN'T KNOW...

2006-02-16T00:01:00.000-05:00

From the BBC [full article here]

"Ambassador Moriarty said that reconciliation between the king and the mainstream parties was crucial to stop a Maoist victory.

He urged King Gyanendra to reach out to the parties and restore democracy."

Well, we know where the US falls out on this one, no surprise there.

After all, nothing screams democracy like an all-powerful king in the 21st century...or am I getting confused with the screams coming out of the "democratic" toture chambers in Iraq.

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TO THE POINT...

2006-02-15T00:01:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted so in the future I'm gonna do more short posts more frequently. Here's the first of them...

TO THE POINT...

from: Iraqi Officials Condemn Abuse Footage [get full article here]

"Video clips believed aired for the first time Wednesday showing Iraqi prisoners being abused in Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 were condemned by Iraqi officials, including one who complained that the footage would only enflame tensions in the war-ravaged country." (emphasis mine)

[...]

"Labeed Abbawi, an adviser to Iraq's foreign minister, criticized such abuses but questioned the benefit of airing footage of events for which American soldiers had already been punished." (emphasis mine)

[...]

"I feel bringing up these issues is only going to add to heat to an already fragile situation in Iraq and they don't help anybody at all," said Abbawi. "It will only lead to extra condemnation of Americans, British and later Iraqis in the situation of Jadriyah." (emphasis mine)

Hey you know what really "enflames" things? How about an unjust occupation of a third world country by an imperialist superpower, followed by a brutal, murderous occuptation involving torture that produces photos like these?

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AS IF WE DIDN'T KNOW...

2005-12-30T00:01:00.000-05:00

Surprise, surprise, the "anti-Maoist" movement in parts of India is a not homegrown , spontaneous phenomenon but controlled and directed by the Indian state. Not only that it's been bringing terror down on the very people it's claiming to "aid" through forced displacement, physical attacks and other means. You can read the article here.

Excerpts:

A probe report by five human rights groups Friday said the anti-Maoist movement in Chhattisgarh was totally state-managed and "not a spontaneous tribesmen's uprising against Maoists" as was being made out by the government.

A 14-member team of five different rights groups conducted investigations into the movement, locally called 'salwa judum', in areas where it is said to have taken root like Bijapur, Geedam and Bhairamgarh blocks of the Bastar region.

[...]

In its report released Friday, the human right groups said their investigators met thousands of people, senior officers, guerrillas and political leaders and found that the "salwa judum is far from the spontaneous uprising of tribals against Maoists that it is claimed to be. It is an organised and state-managed enterprise".

[...]

Chhattisgarh's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government claims the "tribespeople of Bastar have launched a movement against Maoists and the government is just providing moral support to agitation to wipe out Maoism".

Home Minister Ramvichar Netam informed state assembly Dec 21 that 90 people were killed so far in tribesmen's anti-Maoist movement that broke out in June this year.

But the rights report said: "The salwa judum has led to the forcible displacement of people throughout Bhairamgarh, Geedam and Bijapur areas, under police and administrative supervision. Nearly 15,000 people from 420 villages are living as refugees in temporary camps," the report said.

"Villagers (were) forced to attend salwa judum meetings and those who refused to participate face repeated attacks by the combined forces of the police and the paramilitary troopers and the Naga Armed Police (NAP) deployed in the area," the report read.

"Seventy-five percent salwa judum meetings organised by the collector with the backing of troopers, the main cadre of salwa judum, comprise police officers who are being paid and armed by the state," the report added.

The human rights groups called for stopping the militarisation of society in Bastar, which was pitting tribesmen against each other as part of the anti-Maoist operation and "using people as a shield".

The groups demanded "a judicial enquiry into all killings committed by the paramilitary troopers which have gone unrecorded".

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AS IF WE DIDN'T KNOW...

2005-12-20T00:01:00.000-05:00

The monarchy in Nepal has accused the Maoists, and the seven parties aligned with them, of such horrible crimes as wanting to end the monarchy (um, it's 2005 folks) and, god forbid, "talking about democratic republic."

Read some quotes for yourself, or check out the whole article here:

"Cabinet vice-chairman Dr Tulsi Giri, in the first-ever response from the top government figure concerning the widely welcomed understanding between major political parties and the Maoists, said that the so called accord was motivated by the desire to 'overthrow monarchy.'"

[...]

Accusing the political parties of forging alliance with the Maoists for “bringing an end to autocratic monarchy”, he said, “Parties have committed a constitutional crime by talking about democratic republic even as they have vowed to abide by the Constitution.”

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SNIPPET #2

2005-12-19T00:02:00.000-05:00

Here's another snippet. As a bit of an aside, the same guy, Tim Johnson, also has another article from yesterday about how people still line up in droves to see Mao's mausoleum...maybe he should have picked a different title then.

THE FADING LEGACY OF MAO
BY TIM JOHNSON
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE

excerpt:

"But Mao's ideas appear to have little relevance. Long gone is the cradle-to-grave system of Spartan housing, medical care and schooling that was guaranteed to everyone after the revolution in 1949. Mao reviled capitalism and oversaw industrial and rural development based on egalitarianism and central government planning."

Yeah...housing, medical care, education...who the hell cares about that stuff any more?

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SNIPPETS #1

2005-12-19T00:01:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting--if different--take on China and the Mao: The Untrue Story. The author doesn't differentiate between the socialist period of Mao and the capitalist period of Deng, but still it brings out some good points. You can read the whole article here.

Post-Truthfulness: Chang & Halliday’s biography of Mao

Gwydion M Williams

excerpts:

Though the West now sneers at his memory, he left behind a strong unified state, a healthy well-educated population and a flourishing economy.

You’re nowadays given the impression that China was stagnating during the Cultural Revolution, and only took off economically when Deng took over. But all detailed studies of the actual economic history of 1966-76 agree that China was growing at maybe 6% a year during Mao’s last years. For an isolated mostly-agricultural economy facing the risk of invasion, this was a grand achievement. Especially since China’s norm had been changelessness.

[...]

Starting from a very low base, Mao more than tripled China’s economy during his period of rule. He did this while also uprooting ancient systems of oppression and asserting China’s status as a Great Power. And he did it without much outside help—some Russian help in the 1950s, but at a price.

[...]

With most Chinese still failing to realise that they should be ashamed of themselves, we have this year seen amazing praise in the British media for a thoroughly silly book: Mao, The Unknown Story by Jung Chang & Jon Halliday. Chang told an interesting gossipy tale in Wild Swans; but was gullible and unrealistic when not talking about family matters.

Jon Halliday is one of many former New Leftists who have ‘flipped’ since the Soviet Union collapsed. His previous books include Korea, the unknown war, which is just as silly as his Mao book, though he was then in possession of a different Eternal Truth.

[...]

Chang & Halliday generally shut you off from their sources, which are seldom quoted directly. References are haphazard and you have to guess who is the source for what.

You'd also have to trust them to have 'processed' the source in a fair and accurate manner. Some of it would be interesting, if true. But seeing what they’ve done to sources I have readily to hand, my trust is zero and every single source would need re-checking. It is part of the general pattern of Post-Truthful History, people who fit available facts into their belief-system and ignore the rest.

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OBITUARY FOR RICHARD PRYOR

2005-12-11T00:01:00.000-05:00

Richard Pryor has died. Sadness. Here's excerpts from the Los Angeles Times article:

Richard Pryor, whose blunt, blue and brilliant comedic confrontations confidently tackled what many stand-up comics before him deemed too shocking to broach, died early Saturday. He was 65.

Pryor suffered a heart attack at his home in the San Fernando Valley. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

The comedian's body of work, a political movement in itself, was steeped in race, class and social commentary, and encompassed the stage, screen, records and television. He won five Grammys and an Emmy.

[…]

"I've been trying to figure out the analogies to what Richard Pryor meant, and the closest I can come to is Miles Davis," said Reginald Hudlin, the film and TV director and president of entertainment for Black Entertainment Television. "There's music before Miles Davis, and there's music after Miles Davis. And Richard Pryor is that same kind of person.

"Every new piece kind of transformed the game," Hudlin said. "He was a culturally transcendent hero. His influence is bigger than black comedy; it's bigger than comedy. He was a cultural giant."

[…]

"He was actually one of the rare people of that era who was a product of the chitlin circuit and the white, liberal, coffee shop thing," said journalist and cultural critic Nelson George. "Where Bill Cosby immediately made it into the crossover realm … Pryor was a product of both. He was able to draw upon his kind of raw black experience through his storytelling skills, and that was accessible to a hipper white crowd. He mixed all of those things, but always had a singular vision."

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MAO: THE UNTRUE STORY WATCH

2005-12-07T00:02:00.000-05:00

Aside from postings criticizing Mao: The Untrue Story, I'll be postings quotes from scholars who have given the book favorable reviews.

Bob Avakian has criticized Mao for this idea of "class truth" (see Bob Avakian in a Discussion with Comrades on Epistemology-ON Knowing and Changing the World), but let's be honest: many intellectuals--many of the same who criticize the Cultural Revolution for its utilitarian approach to truth--have had their own version of "class truth"; scholars who know better are letting this horrible book get a free ride. It's been shameful how few intellectuals have stepped forward to denounce this book; it's even more shameful how many have praised it...always with one gentle criticism thrown in for good measure of course.

The first scholar I'm calling out is Michael Yahuda, a professor emeritus at the London School of Economics, and visiting scholar at George Washington University.

In his review, which reads more like a summary, he ends with the following:

"This magnificent book is not without its blemishes. There is no discussion of the quality of the sources or how they were used. The motives of people in general and of Mao in particular are asserted rather than evaluated... Nevertheless it is a stupendous work and one hopes that it will be brought before the Chinese people, who still claim to venerate the man and who have yet to come to terms with their own history, even as they require others to do so."

Well, if the book casts "new and revealing light on nearly every episode in Mao's tumultuous life" and there's no evaluation of these so-called new sources then shouldn't you be somewhat fucking skeptical? That's a blemish!?! That's like saying the "blemish" of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is that it doesn't have endnotes.

Michael Yahuda has failed to defend his thesis, he gets an F.

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READINGS FROM BOB AVAKIAN'S MEMOIR

2005-12-07T00:01:00.000-05:00

LABYRINTH BOOKS PRESENTS AN EVENING OF POETS, ACTORS, ARTISTS,
PROFESSORS AND MORE READING FROM:

From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey From Mainstream America to
Revolutionary Communist, a memoir by Bob Avakian

WEDNESDAY
DECEMBER 7th, 7pm
Labyrinth Books 536 W.112th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam)

Guest Readers:

Aladdin, comedian
Gamal Chasten, Universes, playwright and poet
Joe Fortunato, attorney and member, NJ Green Party
Bill Homan, actor
Noche Lares, member Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, student
Lehman High
Justina Mejia, vocalist, poet, performance artist
Professor Neni Panourgiá, Dept of Anthropology, Columbia University
Reverend George W. Webber, President Emeritus, New York Theological
Seminary

And a conversation with Raymond Lotta, Maoist political economist, and
Martha Quetzal Ceja, Managing Editor of Insight Press

Honorary Co-Hosts:
Father Luis Barrios, Iglesia San Romero de Las Americas, NY
Dennis Brutus, South African poet and former political prisoner
reg e. gaines, poet
Lister Hewan-Lowe, WBAI Burn "Baby Burn/Clappers 99.5 FM;" WUSB-FM LI
"Saturday's A Party”
Nicholas Heyward, Sr., Parents Against Police Brutality
Larry Kirwan, lead singer Black 47, playwright, novelist
Rev. Earl Kooperkamp
Father Lawrence Lucas
Jessica Care Moore, poet and publisher
Ralph Poynter
Juan Rodriguez-Munoz, Professor of Latino & Multicultural Studies
Miles Solay, Outernational
Lynne Stewart, attorney
Michael Tarif Warren, attorney
Naomi Wallace, playwright

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FIVE THINGS FOR FRIDAY...

2005-11-25T00:03:00.000-05:00

...five things that suck about Arrested Development being cancelled

1. It's gonna be replaced by something in the vein of The War At Home or some other piece of crap.
2. All sorts of jokes that have been building in the first five episodes will have to get scrapped with only a few episodes left.
3. The series will probably end awkwardly.
4. There'll be an overpriced 3rd Season DVD with only 13 episodes.
5. It is now that case that there isn't one funny show on TV (yet another reason to make revolution).

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MAO: THE UNTRUE STORY WATCH

2005-11-25T00:02:00.000-05:00

Mao: The UNTRUE Story Watch

Here's an excerpt from an article that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle on some of the controversy surrounding the new book Mao: The UNTRUE Story. It mentions Raymond Lotta who's on the Setting the Record Straight Tour.

Excerpt:

BERKELEY
Mao debunkers defend their book
Critics call it effort to discredit communism

Maoist intellectuals have counterattacked, saying the book negates any historical grounds for the Chinese revolution and positive changes in what had been a corrupt society before Mao's military victory in 1949.

"It's just outrageous," said Gary Miller, a volunteer at Berkeley's Revolution Books, as he leafleted the authors' event on campus. "A lot of people look with a great deal of affection at the Mao years because China's been turned into one giant sweatshop."

In October, the city of Berkeley celebrated Bob Avakian Day in honor of one of the city's most stalwart revolutionary sons. A few weeks later, Raymond Lotta, a Chicago-based Maoist political economist and author, spoke to students at UCLA and UC Berkeley in what he called a bid to set the record straight.

"What sets this apart from other historical studies is that this person Mao, who led an historic revolution and changed the landscape of China and was an inspiration throughout the world -- they're saying this was a scheming, bloodthirsty opportunist who was evil from the day he was born to the day he died and who hijacked a revolution," Lotta said. "I think it's part of a continuing attempt to discredit communism and Maoism and any alternative to the current world order."

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As If We Didn't Know...

2005-11-25T00:01:00.001-05:00

Below is an article from a Nepal mainstream newspaper about the current Chinese revisionists arming the Nepal monarchy against the Nepali Maoists...how much more obvious could it be that China has been on the capitalist road since 1976?

China arms RNA
KOL Report

KATHMANDU, Nov 25 - China has delivered the first lot of military hardware to the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA), the Kantipur daily reported on Friday.

The arms and weapons were brought into Nepal in 18 trucks - 12 on Tuesday and six on Wednesday - via the Kodari Highway, the daily said quoting sources.

RNA officials are yet to confirm the consignment.

"I don't have any information about the arms delivery," RNA spokesman Deepak Gurung said.

The trucks were escorted by the Chinese People's Army up to the Nepal-Tibet border while plainclothes RNA security personnel escorted them inside Nepali territory.

China pledged to provide Rs.72 million military aid to the RNA during Chief of Army Staff General Pyar Jung Thapa's visit in October.

"The aid will be used to strengthen the RNA," Thapa told journalists after returning from his weeklong visit to China.

In June, China had delivered military equipments that include five Armoured Personnel Carriers to the RNA.

China's aid comes at time when India, the United States and the United Kingdom have suspended the supply of lethal military arms to Nepal following the king's February 1 move.

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MAO: THE UNTRUE STORY WATCH

2005-11-24T00:01:00.000-05:00

Mao: The UNTRUE Story Watch

Here's a couple of excerpts from a bourgeois article on the new slander on Mao that passes itself off as scholarship. The article repeats a lot of the previous lies about Mao but it does have some interesting things. The scholarship of the authors of Mao: The UNTRUE Story is so bad that it's even raising eyebrows among anti-Mao academics. You can read the entire article here.

Excerpts:

China scholars across the world are questioning the veracity of historical accounts in a controversial biography of Mao Zedong, writes Hamish McDonald.

A TINY widow aged 85, living in two rooms, an electric rice cooker her only modern appliance, may be a crucial witness to a key dispute involving wealthy Chinese author Jung Chang, who lives in great comfort in London's plush Notting Hill from the proceeds of her worldwide bestselling book Wild Swans.

The dispute is one of many being picked by some of the world's most eminent scholars of modern Chinese history, who say Chang's latest blockbuster book, Mao - The Unknown Story, co-authored with her British historian husband Jon Halliday, is a gross distortion of the records.

[...]

But many agree with Thomas Bernstein, of Columbia University in New York, that "the book is a major disaster for the contemporary China field"."

Because of its stupendous research apparatus, its claims will be accepted widely," he said this week. "Yet their scholarship is put at the service of thoroughly destroying Mao's reputation.

The result is an equally stupendous number of quotations out of context, distortion of facts and omission of much of what makes Mao a complex, contradictory, and multi-sided leader."

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FIVE THINGS FOR FRIDAY...

2005-11-18T00:02:00.000-05:00

...five things I like about Prison Break

1. The prisoners are real human beings, even the good guys are "criminals."
2. The correction officers are villians, the Secret Service are villians, it goes all the way to the top.
3. Michael, the main character, has figured out every last detail but still things don't always go according to plan.
4. It's not Oz.
5. Millions of people are watching a program ever week trying to figure out how to break out of a prison.

New Piece from Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

2005-11-18T00:01:00.000-05:00

Monthly Review has posted a new article from Comrade Parvati a member of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). What follows below is a short statement from the editors of MR and an excerpt I chose. The entire piece is worth reading.

On September 10, 2005, Monthly Review received an article chronicling the emergence of a new state in the liberated districts of Nepal. Since the author (“Comrade Parvati”) is herself a Nepali revolutionary and underground, we were not able to engage in the usual back-and-forth editing process. Therefore we present the piece with very slight editing as a document, accompanied by an introductory overview and some explanatory notes to the text by John Mage, a member of the informal Monthly Review editorial committee.—Eds.

Excerpt:

The Present State of People’s Power in the Base Areas

Out of the three commands—Western, Middle, and Eastern—covering the whole country, the Middle Command has been chosen in this article as a focal command because the People’s War has had the strongest impact in this region. Within this command there are two sub-regional commands: Gandak and Special Sub-region. Within the Special Sub-region all districts comprising Rolpa, Rukum, and Salyan under the Magarat autonomous region are being organized as the main base areas. Among these, the main base area in Rolpa is relatively older, more stable, and consolidated than the rest. Within Gandak sub-region, secondary base areas under the Tamuwan autonomous region in the Northern Gandak and Magarat autonomous region in the southern Gandak are being organized. These base areas, however, are relatively unstable. In those areas which fall between the main base areas and secondary base areas, the vacuum created due to destruction of the old state is being filled by embryonic people’s committees. Similar situations with some variations are operating in the rest of commands throughout the country. The capital Kathmandu and district headquarters are still under the control of the old state, although the surrounding new states are able to impede their functions through national, regional, and local bandhs and blockades of goods, which often paralyze life in the capital.

With the promulgation of the Common Minimum Policy and Programme of United Revolutionary People’s Council and the passing of the People’s Power Directives as guidelines for running the new state, the base areas in particular have started taking organized, systematic shape (see map).

Different Elements of People’s Power

One of the first indications of the failure of the old state and emergence of the new state is in the judiciary. The mobile, locally-based people’s court soon replaced the old formal court system. So popular was the people’s court system that even those who did not readily accept the authority of the new state accepted the service rendered by the new people’s court. Today the Public Code of People’s Republic of Nepal 2003 is being followed to regularize and systemize the functioning of the legal system throughout the country. By 2005, within the Special Region, one male and one female at the district committee level from each of the eleven districts had been given training, enabling them to function in the mobile people’s court. Similarly, an open-jail system is facilitating transformation of convicts into useful citizens. However there is a dearth of red and expert manpower. Although the Party and People’s Committees are now relatively free from getting involved in the day-to-day operation of the judiciary system, there are still tendencies to give justice straight from the Party or People’s Committees without forming separate judicial commissions. As the base areas expand and consolidate, the organizational network of the judiciary system needs to be further developed. The effective and efficient functioning of the judicial system helps in winning the confidence of the masses in the new state and hence in consolidating it. This also helps in transforming people, which is an important part of Protracted People’s War. In addition, in light of the appeal made by the CPN(M) to the United Nations and other international forums for the representation of the people’s power (while opposing the so-called representation of the military-fascist old state), the scientific functioning of the judiciary by the local new states will give further legitimization to its claim.

The people’s committees in the form of nominated bodies came into being once a power vacuum was created by the dispersal of police posts and destruction of the old state machinery. It was only in more stable periods that the people’s committees started getting elected. Today at the central level there exists the United Revolutionary People’s Council, mentioned above; at the regional level various national or territorial autonomous regions exist; and under these autonomous local districts, villages or urban wards exist. In all these levels people’s representative bodies and united people’s councils are functioning. Except for the district headquarters and along the highways, the country is under the new state’s control. In base areas the people’s committees have taken a relatively more consolidated, unified, and centralized form of rule, while in areas of expansion of base area people’s committees are not yet consolidated, with occasional interference from the old state, thus sometimes giving the impression that dual states exist. The understanding of people’s committees as being separate from the Party committees must be constantly hammered into the cadres and masses so that a more efficient and locally accountable functioning of new state power can be expected and the people’s committees have more authority to act independently. Therefore wherever possible regular elections to people’s committees with full recall must be regularly conducted, so that they are under control, supervision, and intervention of the masses.

The public administration as a separate body has not taken shape as yet. The officials working in people’s committees have been carrying out the administrative work themselves. As the struggle has progressed, separate staff, official assistants, and special committees of administration have started coming up. Many times ad-hoc commissions or committees are formed to ward off administrative bottlenecks. With the growing war expenditures a regular record of expenditures is being maintained. The most visible presence of administrative work is the postal courier system, in the form of maintenance of mobile posts at different points of communication. In the absence of a separate administrative body, officials of the people’s committees are given basic administrative training. However, within base areas, there is a need to develop a separate administrative body, which could relieve officials of the people’s committees to concentrate on mass work.

NEW FEATURE--WHINES AND MISDEMEANORS

2005-11-17T00:03:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been reading through material critical of the socialist experince, especially the Cultural Revolution. It's startling how petty some of it is. So in honor of that I'm launching a new feature that will appear frequently though probably not weekly: WHINES AND MISDEMEANORS. These will be short, self-exposing quotes from the "victims" themselves, with my smartass commentary of course.

So without further ado, here's the first one.

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WHINES AND MISDEMEANORS...

2005-11-17T00:02:00.000-05:00

...or the "victims" of socialism in their own words

"...I discovered some unpleasant truth about volunteering: in China it always turned out this way. When you first volunteered, the leaders would be agreeably surprised and would praise you. Pretty soon, however, it became an obligation. They expected you to do it. But that was not the worst. The leaders would also use your example to put pressure on others and make everybody 'volunteer.'" Rae Yang, Spider Eaters, p. 4.

Those commie bastards! When will they learn that some people enjoy the praise that comes with volunteering but don't actually want to do the work that comes with volunteering.

Let's back up. This book is a memoir--actually it's listed on the back as "Literature/Asian Studies/Gender Studies"...and doesn't literature mean fiction?--of the author who grew up in socialist China. The experince she's referring to above is in 1968. Yang, who grew up in Beijing, volunteered to go to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. She ended up in a small village of Manchuria called Cold Spring. Before three months was up she volunteered again and went to work at the village's pig farm.

Lemme see if I understand this...When people would volunteer for certain tasks those volunteers would be upheld and promoted as models to encourage other people to do the same? And if the posts of certain tasks hadn't been fufilled there would be some pressure put on people step up to fill those roles. Oh the humanity...

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Like a Five Year Plan done in four years...

2005-11-17T00:01:00.000-05:00

The five day launch happened in four days...Okay maybe not, I planned to launch a day early but it didn't happen.

I don't entirely know what the blog will look like. The "Refutation of the Week" took me a while to write each time so I might do shorter ones in the future. But here are some things you can expect to see in the future:

-Tracking the developments around the horrible book Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, along with reviews it receives
-"Way Messed Up Bible Quote of the Week" will return
-Excerpts from school papers dealing with questions related to socialism and communism, including art, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and other matters
-More links to worthwhile reading

...And some other stuff I haven't thought up yet

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Just 3 More Days

2005-11-14T00:01:00.000-05:00

new material is just around the corner so hold on tight...

RELAUNCHING IN 5 DAYS!

2005-11-12T00:01:00.000-05:00

Sweep of History will be back.

Apologies for the hiatus but there will be new material starting in 5 days...so spread the word, update your links, hide your Bibles and crank up the volume.

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THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY IS A HORROR...

2005-06-06T23:01:00.000-05:00

...or way messed up Bible quote of the week.

Matthew 15:4 "For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death."

This was printed in this week's issue of Revolution newspaper. It speaks for itself.

As always I challenge anyone to defend this.

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NEW FEATURE--MAO MONDAYS

2005-06-05T23:02:00.000-05:00

Due to a variety of reasons, the collected works of Mao have never been available in English. Every Monday I'm going to post a work of Mao's not collected in the five Selected Works, pulled from a variety of sources. This week's piece is from Stuart Schram's book Chairman Mao Talks to the People. The endnotes are his.

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MAO MONDAYS

2005-06-05T23:01:00.000-05:00

TALKS AT THREE MEETINGS WITH COMRADES CHANG CH’UN CH’IAO AND YAO WEN-YUAN
FEBRUARY 1967

(from Chairman Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters: 1956-1971, edited by Stuart Schram, p. 277-279)

Chairman Mao invited Comrades Chang Ch’un-ch’iao and Yao Wen-yuan to come to Peking from 12 to 18 February, and met them three times within a week. Even before they had arrived at the airport the Chairman inquired whether they had arrived or not, and when the airport comrades said that they would soon be there, the Chairman waited for them in the doorway. They had no sooner arrived than the Chairman asked ‘What is this with the First, Second and Third Regiments? They have come here making accusations against you.

(1) The question of the Three-way Alliances. The Chairman said that for the purpose of seizing power the Three-way Alliances were essential. [2] Fukien, Kweichow and Inner Mongolia did not present big problems, though there might be a little disorder there. In Shansi at present 53 per cent were revolutionary masses, 27 per cent army, and 20 per cent cadres from various organs. Shanghai ought to learn from them. The January Revolution had succeeded, but February, March and April were more crucial, more important. The Chairman said: ‘The slogan of “Doubt everything and overthrow everything” is reactionary. The Shanghai People’s Committee demanded that the Premier of the State Council should do away with all heads. This is extreme anarchism, it is most reactionary. If instead of calling someone the “head” of something we call him “orderly” or “assistant”, this would be really only a formal change. In reality there will still always be “heads”. It is the content which matters.

‘There is a slogan in Honan, “The present-day proletarian dictatorship must be completely changed.” This is a reactionary slogan’

(2) On the Shanghai People’s Commune. The Chairman said: ‘With the establishment of a people’s commune, a series of problems arises in and I wonder whether you have thought about them. If the whole of China sets up people’s communes, should the People’s Republic of China change its name to us “People’s Commune of China”? Would others recognize us? Maybe the Soviet Union would not recognize us whereas Britain and France would. And what would we do about our ambassadors in various countries? And so on. There is another series of problems which you may have considered. Many places have now applied to the Centre to establish people’s communes. A document has been issued by the Centre saying that no place apart from Shanghai may set up people’s communes. The Chairman is of the opinion that Shanghai ought to make a change and transform itself into a revolutionary committee or a city committee or a city people’s committee.

‘Communes are too weak when it comes to suppressing counter-revolution. People have come and complained to me that when the Bureau of Public arrest people, they go in th front door and out the back.
‘The controlling organs in schools can become cultural revolutionary committees or cultural revolutionary leading teams.’

(3) The Central Committee’s Directive on the Cultural revolution (The Urgent Directive). The Chairman said: ‘I have read it and it is well written–it is imbued with the spirit of rebellion. The last point says, “We will take the necessary steps.” If that meeting is held to bombard Chan Ch’un-ch’iao we will certainly take the necessary steps and arrest people.’

(4) [Issues outstanding.] There are a number of accounts still outstanding which must be settled later. First, the demnd made to the Premier by the Municipal People’s Committee; second, the question of the Red Revolutionaries; third the broadening of the revolution to oppose the military seizure of the radio stations; fourth, the opposition to military control at Lunghua Airfield.

(5) [Other matters.] There is a quotation which is currently used a great deal: ‘The world is ours.’ This was said by the Chairman in 1920. [5] He can’t altogether remember it himself and it should not be used in the future.

In future do not say: ‘Overthrow the diehards who persist in following the reactionary line.’ Say rather: ‘Overthrow those in authority taking the capitalist road.’

The Chairman asked: ‘Is T’ungchai University still at the stations and docks?’ [6] Comrade Chang Ch’un-Ch’iao replied: ‘They still are.’ The Chairman then asked: ‘Were they still there when you came?’ Chang Ch’un-ch’iao replied: ‘I’m not sure.’ The Chairman said: ‘That’s excellant. In the past the studenya\s had not realy united with the workers. Only now have they really untied with them.’

[Chairman Mao said:] ‘I’ve read Liu Shao-chi’s How to be a Good Communist [7] several times. It is anti-Marxist-Leninist. Our method of struggle should now be on a higher level. We shouldn’t keep on saying, “Smash their dogs’ heads, down with XXX.” I think that university students should make deeper study of things and choose a few passages to write some critical articles about.’

The people in literature and the arts should return to their own units to carry out the Cultural Revolution.

[The Chairman remarked:] ‘The Wen-hui-pao has done very well I completely agree with their point of view on the struggle with neighborhood cadres and I support them.’ Comrade Chang Ch’un-ch’iao said: ‘The Wei-hui-pao exerts a lot of pressure.’ The Chairman said: ‘We must support them.’

Endnotes
[2] This was the formula put forward in January 1967 for the ‘seizure of power’ by ‘revolutionary Committee.’ The three components were activists who had emerged from the ‘revolutionary masses’, PLA representatives, and Party and state cadres.

[3] This refers to the urgent telegram sent to Shanghai by the Cultural Revolution Group under the Central Committee on 29 January 1967, criticizing the Red Revolutionaries (see below, note 4) for turning the spearhead of the struggle against Chang Ch’un-ch’iao and Yao Wen-yuan, rather than against the old Party leadership headed by Mayor Ts’ao Ti-ch’iu, and threatening them with ‘all necessary action’ if they persisted in their errors. (Hunter, op. Cit., pp. 240-241)

[5] For the source of this quotation (in fact from 1919) and the significance of the point at issue, see the Introduction, p. 22)

[6] The ‘Mao Tse-tung’s Thought Red Guards’ “East is Red” General Headquarters of T’ungchai University’ were supporters of Chang Ch’un-ch’iao

[7] Liu Shao-Chi’s work on 1939, which had been re-issued in 1962 was known under this title in English, prior to the Cultural Revoltion. It was violently attacked in April 1967 as the quintessential expression of the revisionist and careerist thinking. Since that time, the title has been translated literally as On the Self-Cultivation of Communists (Self-Cultivation for short).

YO! BACK THAT S!*# UP...

2005-06-02T20:30:00.000-05:00

...or refutation of the week

"The Atrocity Hunter: Human-rights investigator Peter Bouckaert risks his life to hold the tyrants accountable" by David Case (Rolling Stone, June 2, 2005)

INTRO

Okay, the refutation of the week thing will not solely deal--though this is the third time in a row--with the "caught in the middle" line repeated ad naseum in the media. For those of you just tuning in, in short, this is the line that the masses of poverty stricken people in an oppressed country are caught between the violence of the state on the one hand and the violence of the rebels on the other any time a revolutionary armed struggle develops--but I opened Rolling Stone the other day and I saw a piece on our old friend Peter Bouckaert from Human Rights Watch. You may remember Peter the NGOer who left us with the following gem “No one wants to abandon Nepal to the Maoists…” from Eliza Griswold's piece on the people's war in Nepal featured in my very first refutation of the week. Apparently, the Maoists winning the masses of people of Nepal in their millions to support the revolutionary transformation of the country would be abandonment.

Now there’s a lot in this article that could be gone into, some of it just plain ridiculous: “Sometimes his work has changed history. Evidence that Bouckaert collected was used in The Hague to charge Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic.” (p. 54, emphasis added) (Are we to understand that if not for Bouckaert’s work that petty dictator might have slipped through the U.S. hands? Perhaps this is why the U.S. hasn’t charged Pinochet or Marcos or other dictators with war crimes, they didn’t have enough documented evidence…or perhaps not.)

What I am going to focus on here is some of the article that deals with Nepal.

THE ABUSE OF LANGUAGE…or who needs facts when we have Hollywood movies

Actually the subtitle in the newsstand version of the RS issue is a bit different than the internet one: "From the killing fields of Nepal to mass graves in Iraq, human-rights investigator Peter Bouckaert rushes in before the blood is dry and risks his life to hold the tyrants accountable." To be fair, the article isn't as quite as bad as this subtitle implies, but it needs to be said that this is an incredibly slanderous, underhanded use of language. As soon as you use the phrase "killing fields" it instantly conjures up the film, um what's the name again, oh yeah The Killing Fields! This film is about the Pol Pot regime in the "Year Zero." (See the excellent article in A World To Win "Condescending Saviours: What Went Wrong with the Pol Pot Regime"). Pol Pot wasn't a communist by any means but the most common description of Pol Pot in the media of that of an "ultra Maoist" as if he was somehow more Maoist than Mao or was some type of extreme Maoism. As soon as you start using the phrase killing fields in relation to a country with a Maoist revolution the implication is that the Maoists are just slaughtering people indiscriminately in their millions, .

It should be pointed out that this article, which follows the "James Bond of human-rights investigators" (ugh!) who's armed only with "a notebook and a camera" DOES NOT DOCUMENT THE MAOISTS KILLING ANY CIVILIANS IN THIS ENTIRE ARTICLE! Don't worry though, there's baseless slander hurled at the Maoists.

THE WAR CRIMES OF THE MAOISTS… or I packed my camera, my notebook, and, oh yeah, my bourgeois prejudice

Though the article does some good exposure of what’s going on in Nepal, how it’s leading the world in “disappearances,” how the army kills Maoists in custody, how it is torturing massive amounts of people, through out the article are sprinkled slanders of the Maoists: “Maoist rebels dominate the countryside torturing ‘revisionists’” (p. 54), “Maoists routinely murder soldier’s relatives (p. 55), “Maoists have recently blockaded the city for two weeks, threatening to cut off the hands of anyone who drives in or out.” (p. 59)

These are the main things worth getting into.

1) The implication is that the Maoists kill “revisionists” for thinking different from them. The policy of the Maoists has never been to kill people over ideological differences. Strangely, the term revisionists is never even defined in this article. And while people familiar with Marxist language will know what it means, to most people they would associate it with something along the lines of the “Advocacy of the revision of an accepted, usually long-standing view, theory, or doctrine, especially a revision of historical events and movements.” (from dictionary.com) The implication is that the Maoists are somehow relics of the past as opposed to fighters for the future.

But to get more into it, yes, the Maoists have killed some members of “revisionist” parties (actually let’s get rid of those quotation marks). But, again, this was not for what they thought but for what they did. Some members of the UML, a “Marxist-Leninist” parliamentary party that when it held power carried out vicious acts against Maoists, their supporters, peasants, women and students. So it’s not surprising that some members of these parties would form snitch networks and snitch networks get people killed, that’s part of their purpose. The first entry of Li Onesto’s Dispatches From the People’s War in Nepal actually documents the role of a UML member in spying and getting seven guerillas killed. It should be pointed out that when the treacherous role of the UML became more and more open some members left the party, and it turn some began working with local Maoists with varying levels of unity.

Lastly, here’s what Comrade Prachanda, the leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) had to say in 2003 on this topic:

“As per the physical liquidation of class enemies and spies, our Party's policy has been: to practice it on the selected ones and to the minimum, by informing the masses and obtaining their consent as far as possible and by not resorting to any ghastly methods.”

“Of course, we should not be unduly carried away by the vicious propaganda of the enemy and the opportunists about the physical annihilation of the enemy. However, while annihilating somebody if we fail to develop and observe concrete policy on class analysis, nature of his/her crime, democratic legal process to establish the crime and the method of annihilation, it may have negative consequences. It can't just be dismissed as a baseless charge of the enemy & the opportunists that in the past some of the annihilations have taken place flimsily on the grounds of not giving enough donations, not providing shelter & food, having politically opposed our movement, suspicion of being a spy, or having enmity with our local team members. Hence, if one has to resort to annihilation in the rural areas henceforth, it is essential to ensure that it is not done directly by a particular team or its definite members but a certain minimum legal method is adhered to. It should be strictly expressed in both our policy and practice that red terror does not mean anarchy.” (from Section B. On Annihilation of Class Enemies and Spies, “Let's Concentrate Total Force to Raise Preparations for the (Strategic) Offensive to a New Height Through Correct Handling of Contradictions”)
2) Once again, it is not the policy of Maoists to murder someone just because they have family members in the army. It’s been the state that has raped, tortured and killed family members of Maoists. From the same document:

“The manifestation of a correct policy, as we have been hammering since the beginning, is to enlighten the family members of those serving in the enemy's army and police force, to organize them and protect them. From now onwards we should strive to assure and make them realize that their family members would be safe when at home either after or without leaving the (enemy) service.” (from Section C. On Action Against Enemy Soldiers and Police Forces, “Let's Concentrate Total Force to Raise Preparations for the (Strategic) Offensive to a New Height Through Correct Handling of Contradictions”)

3) The claim that the Maoists threatened to cut off the hands of people is completely without merit. Actually, these are the types of acts that the Royal Nepal Army has carried out. But more important this claim comes from the very government that is leading the world in disappearances. Shouldn’t the legitimacy of the Nepal government making these claims be viewed at least sceptically, especially when we find out in the article that:

“’Three or four men entered our home, but there were fifty outside. They pretended they were Maoists, saying, “Let’s go blow up a bridge.” When they told my sons to get dressed, we realized they were from the army. They threatened to kill us if we didn’t stay quiet.” (p. 56) Is this the “caught in the middle” evidence? When I read this bells are going off. This article is admitting that the government army goes around pretending to be the Maoists and threatens people with murder!! Shouldn’t that make us back up for a second. Shouldn’t that make us question these claims of threatening to cut off people’s hands?

We follow the article for some time to Rajapur—deep in “Maoist territory”—where dozens of people have been reportedly “disappeared.” From the tone of the article we think that they were probably killed by the Maoists since it was on their turf, but when we finally get there we find out they were killed by the government army!

Neither the author nor Bouckaert seems to be able to comprehend that the Maoists actually have popular support. Take, for example, the following description:

“The peasants here are Tharu, an ethnic minority considered even lower than those known as ‘untouchables.’ For generations, they have been enslaved, through crippling debt to landlords. The Maoists, who have killed or chased away the oppressors, consider the Tharu prime recruiting fodder.” (p. 56)

And what have the Maoist done with this ”fodder?” Only led the Tharu people to rise up and establish their own political power in the form of an autonomous regional government!

“The declaration of the Thurawan Autonomous Government was part of the CPN(M)’s policy of winning the right to self-determination for oppressed nationalities and regions within Nepal. Over the last few centuries, a great many of the Tharu people who live in this region had become bonded labourers, not very different from slaves, of the high caste idle landowners (zamindars) linked to the monarchy and the government. Generation after generation, the peasants had to turn their lives over to the landlords to pay off debts. Four years after the people’s war began in 1996, the government abolished the formal system of indentured labour. But land ownership remained unchanged. Now in much of the region the people have seized the land and zamindars have been forced to get jobs. ‘All the zamindars are scared of us now,’ a young student from a family of bonded labourers happily told a New York Times reporter recently. (“Maoist-led former slaves ruin king’s party in Nepal” From A World To Win News Service February 9, 2004)

While it can’t be denied that Bouckaert, and others like him, has done some important exposure, ultimately he’s blinded by his outlook that causes him to say outrageous things like “The abuses on one side are fueling the abuses on the other—that’s what happened in the Balkans.” (p. 56) How is the liberatory people’s war led by the CPN(M) anything like the horrible civil war that tore apart the Balkans? The revolution in Nepal is transforming the very conditions of Tharu and other peoples of Nepal.

-Out-

Coming soon...

2005-06-02T15:42:00.000-05:00

This week's "refutation" will be up later tonight/early tomorrow.

Also starting this Monday there'll be a new weekly feature.

THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY IS A HORROR...

2005-05-30T23:01:00.000-05:00

...or way messed up Bible quote of the week

Judges 1:4: "And Judah went up; and the LORD delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand: and they slew of them in Bezek ten thousand men."

We have a new record. I found this week’s quote in less than sixty seconds.

The drill is as follows I flip through the Bible and pick a “book” (i.e., Genesis). Then I start reading the book from the beginning until I find something disturbing enough to be a quote of the week (it's actually hard to narrow it down once I start reading).

So this week I flipped to Judges and before I even get to Judges Chapter 2 we have something that sounds like what just might be the world’s first horror movie.

We get Judah and Simeon slaughtering ten thousand Canaanites and Perizzites in Bezek, then Judah and Simeon cut off Adonibezek’s “thumbs and great toes,”—apparently because he had done the same thumb-toe thing to 70 kings—and Judah’s homies destroy and set fire to Jerusalem, then Judah attacks the Canaanites of Hebron (Kirjatharba) killing Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai. Caleb wants to do his part so he promises his daughter Achsah as a wife to whomever does the smite thing to Debir (Kirjathsepher), which is disgusting enough but then it turns out to be Othniel—her cousin!

But wait there’s more Canaanite slayin’ action ‘cause Judah and Simeon kill every Canaanite in Zephath (Hormah) and totally destroy the city, then Joseph and his crew show some “mercy.”

Here’s a little known fact. Apparently “mercy” used to mean kill everyone in a city except for one family…’cause that’s exactly what they did. Joseph has some spies go and check out the city of Bethel (Luz) and when the see some resident and they make him an offer he can’t refuse. Do they say check out this religion thing and you too can have eternal happiness chillin’ with God? No. Do they say this Bible is available absolutely risk-free for 30 days; simply take this Bible home and if you’re not fully satisfied return it for a full refund no questions asked? No. They say show us the entrance to the city and we’ll show you some “mercy.” And these guys go and get their “mercy” on by killing everyone in the city except for this guy and his family.

And this is just Chapter 1!!!

As always I challenge anyone to defend this.

-Out-

ZHANG CHUNQIAO, LEADER OF CULTURAL REVOLUTION, COMRADE OF MAO, DIES

2005-05-10T09:39:00.000-05:00

It's being reported that Zhang Chunqiao (Chang Chun-chiao), one of the so-called Gang of Four, has died. (His death has been reported before but this time it seems to be accurate.) It's reported that he died on April 21 of cancer at the age of 88.

In October 1976, one month after Mao's death, he and other genuine revolutionary communist leaders were arrested in a coup that overthrew socialism in China. Along with Jiang Qing (Chiang Ching), Mao's wife, Zhang refused to capitulate in a kanagroo court show trial run by the revisionists--phony communists who had usurped power. (While Jiang constantly exposed and ridiculed the court proceedings, Zhang was ill and protested by refusing to utter a single word in court). With the international communist movement having taken a big blow with the loss of revolutionary China, it was very inspiring to see Jiang and Zhang uphold Mao, the Cultural Revolution, communism, in the face of the threat of death from the courts.

(Chairman Avakian's "Revisionists are Revisionists and Must Not Be Supported; Revolutionaries are Revolutionaries and Must Be Supported" in Revolution and Counter-Revolution: The Revisionist Coup in China and the Struggle in the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, is immensely helpful in understanding the coup in China.)

Zhang was one of Mao's closes comrades in the Cultural Revolution and wrote some very important works. Had Mao had his way, quite possibly Zhang would have become Chairman following Mao's death.

*****

"Our country is in an important period of its historical development. As a result of more than two decades of socialist revolution and socialist construction, and particularly of the liquidation of the bourgeois headquarters of Liu Shao-chi and of Lin Piao in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, our proletarian dictatorship is more consolidated than ever, and our socialist cause is thriving. Full of militancy, all our people are determined to build China into a powerful socialist country before the end of the century. In the course of this effort and in the entire historical period of socialism, whether we can persevere all the way in the dictatorship of the proletariat is a cardinal issue for China's future development. Current class struggles, too, require that we should get clear on the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Chairman Mao says, 'Lack of clarity on this question will lead to revisionism.' It won't do if only a few people grasp the point; it must 'be made known to the whole nation.' The present and long range importance of success in this study cannot be overestimated." (from On Exercising All-round Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie, 1975)
http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/ARD75.html

See Raymond Lotta's And Mao Makes 5: Mao Tsetung's Last Great Battle (1978) for a collection of primary sources from the Left and Right forces of the Cultural Revolution.

-Out-

THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY IS A HORROR...

2005-05-09T23:01:00.000-05:00

...or way messed up Bible quote of the week.

Exodus 20:17: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's."

You might be familiar with the abridged version of the above quote--a.k.a. "Thou shalt not covet"-- better known as the 10th Commandment.

First off, it's pretty offensive to put some people in the same category as houses, asses, oxen, which are clearly property...oh wait...these people are property too, hence the italicized "is."

"Wife" is pretty clear but what about "manservant" and "maidservant?" Well, there is a claim that the King James Version purposely mistranslated the Greek word "doulos" meaning slaves to much nicer sounding words...but hey, this Bible thing is the word of God, right? So let's see what God's playbook has to say about all this:

Exodus 21:2-4: "If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve free: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing."

"If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him."

"If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself."

Quick crashcourse in slavery: when some people buy other people those that are bought are slaves.

As always I challenge anyone to defend this.

-Out-

A short message before we start refutin'

2005-05-05T16:47:00.000-05:00

Okay, this refutation of the week thing is harder than I thought it would be. I figured in the course of one week I would read one thing I thought was worth refuting. It wasn't until a couple of days ago that I came across something I thought would be appropriate. I didn't start this feature just to air disagreements, after all disagrement is a healthy part of struggle and debate and if you're open-minded you can learn a lot from people who come at things differently than you.

What I do want to do is take on things that are either outright distortions and slanders (see last week's Refutation related to Nepal) or are built on such distorted ideological frameworks that it blinds the author to the reality of the world (see next week's Refutation...intrigued yet?)

This week's piece is on Peru and the people's war. Even though my refutation covers some similar ground to last week's piece on Nepal I decided to do this piece because I think it serves as sort of an important bookend with the Nepal refutation.

Because while it's true the Communist Party of Peru has never given up the people's war, it is the case that they took an immense hit with the capture of Chairman Gonzalo and other top leaders in 1992. Since that time they have not recovered and it's not as if life for the masses of Peruvian people has flowered, which is what people unsympathetic to the people's war always tell us, "if only the rebels would surrender, then freedom could flourish and poverty could be ended"...umm, no.

-Out-

YO! BACK THAT $!*# UP...

2005-05-05T16:14:00.000-05:00

...or refutation of the week

"Plotting Fear: The Uses of Terror in Peru" by Jo-Marie Burt (NACLA: Report on the Americas, May/June 2005)

INTRO

In reflecting on the article, three major omissions jump out:

1) At no point is there any explanation of what the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) is, what are its purposes and aims. It's just an amorphous cloud of terror hovering over the Peruvian countryside.

2) The bloody history of the Peruvian government is almost completely ignored.

3) The U.S., and its role in Peru, is not even acknowledged.

WHAT THE PCP IS AND WHAT IT STANDS FOR... or ignore the PCP's principles and then act like they have no principles

The reader gets no sense of what the PCP actually is; the pages just paint a guerilla group of roving terror. The most detailed description of the PCP (as usual the author refers to it as the Shining Path) is that of the "Peruvian Maoist Group." The word communist or communism does not appear once in the entire article. A common assault on the genuine revolutionary movements is to deny the ideological component...and then just portray them as aimless killers.

And this is exactly what Burt does when she portrays the PCP as murderers who just want to control their turf:

"In the 1980s and early 1990s, Shining Path's drive to establish itself as the sole representative of the urban and rural poor collided with the non-violent organizational efforts of Peru's vibrant social movements and the United Left coalition, which rejected the Maoists' methods and dogmatism." (p. 34)

And just to make it clear Burt tries to point to how the PCP kills other leftists. On page 34 we're told of the PCP's "brutal tactics against trade unionists, community organizers, and peasant leaders" and in case you suffer from short term memory loss, Burt reminds you again on the next page that the PCP killed "scores of trade unionists, community activists and peasant leaders."

(As a bit of a tangent, I know there's a tendency to exaggerate slanders against communists each time they're repeated, but to go from the accusation of "brutal attacks" to "scores of killing" in one page might just be a record.)

Perhaps Burt could spell out what she means by "non-violent organizational efforts" because the UF had members in the Peruvian government at points when the government was carrying out vicious counterrevolution against the Maoists. And one thing the Peruvian government has never been shy about is admitting that it kills Maoists.

Another tactic of these slander pieces is to refer to things so casually it's almost as if it's so true it needs no explanation, like we know Columbus discovered America no need to back it up with facts...oh wait a minute...

Perhaps there are some incidents where the PCP killed union leaders, but it's a little hard to investigate this claim when Burt makes no reference whatsoever to any kind of incident. Community organizers? Hey Jo-Marie, do you think you could vague that up a bit? Organizing for what!?!

Are we talking about the infamous Moyano incident where the PCP killed the "left-wing" community activist? Okay, let's break it down. Moyano was a member of a political party the MAS, a party that held positions in Fujimori's government. Political prisoners claimed that Moyano fingered at least 15 revolutionaries, who were in turn arrested and later killed. She was even beginning to organize urban rondas. Is it any wonder that major figures of the Fujimori government attended her funeral?

Even though Burt tries to portray the rondas as some kind of spontaneous grass roots movement among the peasants to drive out the PCP, in reality they are paramilitary groups created, armed and led by the Peruvian army.

"Some campensinos formed civilian self-defense patrols, or rondas as they were known, while others collaborated with the Armed Forces to expel the Shining Path from their communities." (p. 34)

The true purpose of these groups is revealed with the phrase "collaborated with the Armed Forces."

Another slander often hurled against revolutionaries that take up arms is that they just use people as way to achieve their means with no concern for the masses of people. As Burt puts it:

"the Shining Path supposes that its endorsement of social movement protests, such as the cocaleros' [coca farmers] livelihood in the face of the U.S-sponsored War on Drugs, will invite government repression, which in turn will favor its organizing efforts." (p. 35)

In other words do what you can to invite the repression of the state coming down and when the violent force of the state comes down on people it will create more favorable conditions to organize. This is upside down and inside out.

First, we should ask why it's the case that if the PCP says it supports something that that will inevitably lead to the murderous repression of the state? What does that say about the army and government of Peru that that is their only approach? Second, the Peruvian state wasn't a peaceful paradise before the PCP came along. Even the RAND Corporation quotes an observer that says that Chairman Gonzalo is the "'only man with a plan' for Peru's future." (The Shining Path and The Future of Peru, 1990)

I think one very cold, calculating quote from the RAND corporation (a conservative US think tank that made stopping the Peruvian revolution one of its top priorities) makes this abundantly clear:

"To succeed, the army would have to kill or incarcerate SL [Sendero Luminoso, Spanish for "Shining Path"] members and sympathizers at a faster rate than SL was generating them." (The Shining Path and the Future of Peru, 1990) Well, that was pretty clear, wasn't it?

In criticizing the PCP, Burt's article is full of such generalities that it reads as if she just punched in "Shining Path" in some anti-Maoist template.

*****

To step back a bit, what is the PCP? The PCP is a Maoist party and when it launched its armed struggle in 1980 it followed the path of protracted people's war laid out by Mao. Basically the strategy is to carry out small scale guerilla warfare in the countryside and grow in strength and size as the guerillas ambush the enemy and seize its supplies. The party establishes political power in the form of base areas in the countryside, from there it surrounds the city and seizes power nationwide.

Even the RAND Corporation admits the strength and support the PCP had at the time:

"Between 25 and 40 percent of Peru is now [1992] estimated to have come under either open or shadow Sendero administration. Collectively, this administration represents an attempt to build an institutional alternative to the State. It is this presence, which serves as the basis of the guerrilla military position, rather than their militant actions per se, that poses the greatest long term threat to the central government..." (Statement by RAND Corporation analyst Gordon H. McCormick before the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, March 12, 1992, emphasis added)

"The movement is firmly entrenched in the highlands and is already a permanent presence in and around Lima. Its growth has not always been rapid but it has been steady. Sendero (PCP) now enjoys a substantial base of support in the countryside and has begun actively recruiting from among the urban work-force and the country’s rapidly growing mass of urban unemployed." (The Shining Path and the Future of Peru, 1990)

THE COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY NATURE OF THE PERUVIAN STATE...or I think we met before but you probably don't remember me because I was a hooded judge at the time

"As the intensity of the conflict declined, the Fujimori regime was more concerned with maintaining its own political power rather than any genuine rebuilding of Peruvian democracy, much less addressing the root causes of the insurgency." (p. 33)

Let's be clear. The PCP was not getting in the way of, or postponing democracy for Peru. It was bringing about the new democratic revolution. Semi-feudal relations were being broken down, traditional patriarchy was beginning to be overturned, land was collectivized among the poorest peasants, peasants were learning to read and write. These were the things happening in the base areas of the PCP.

And on the flip side, it was not neglect or the wrong priorities that led to the Peruvian state not ushering in democracy.

One thing glaringly absent in Burt's article is any mention of Fujimori's self coup in 1992, the numerous massacres of prisoners, the mass graves and his other crimes (the word corrupt might be mentioned but that's about it).

Instead what we are greeted with when we turn to the beginning of the article is a picture of someone holding a smiling picture of Fujimori. The caption reads:

"A resident of a shanty gets ready to go to the last rally of the Fujimori campaign in Lima 2000."

Three things should be noted. One, voting in Peru is mandatory, with serious consequences for those that didn't vote during the '80s and '90s (partially because the PCP called for election boycotts). Also the elections are so rigged and corrupt, that they're a joke. Two, to choose this some kind of representative photo is ridiculous. People in the shantytowns live there because they were almost literally pushed out of the countryside by the economic policies of succeeding Peruvian governments. Three, the Fujimori fled the country and dare not come back to face the crimes he's charged with.

Since we're always told that rebels must put down their arms and work for the "peace" of the nation let's see how things have progressed in Peru (while the PCP hasn't surrendered, it has suffered serious setbacks that have resulted in the PCP not having nearly the impact it did earlier on the political landscape).

Let's even quote Burt's own article back to her just to be fair:

"salaries are stagnant, unemployment has not decreased, poverty continues to afflict 52% of the population and inequality has increased." (p. 36)

Well, I think those numbers speak for themselves.

But to be fair, Burt criticizes the Peruvian state. She was actually a consultant of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Here's what she has to say about the commission:

"The CVR [the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission] worked over the course of two years, presenting an impressive nine-volume report that pulls no punches."

Oh man, Jo-Marie's about to rundown the atrocities of the government carried out during the people's war, this should be pretty stinging.

"It clearly states that the armed forces engaged in systematic violations of human rights 'in some places and in some times...'"

Ummm, that's it? That's "pulling no punches!?!" Well, let's at least see what she has to say about the PCP:

"...it also documents the massive abuses by Shining Path against state officials and civilians alike, which amounted to more than half of the cases heard by the CVR." (p. 35)

Being that Burt was a consultant for the CVR I can only say that she is guilty of conscious distortion. By mentioning that over half of the heard cases of abuse accused the PCP, the implication is that the PCP is responsible for the majority of dead in the course of the people's war. That's actually not what the CVR report says. (The numbers the PCP is accused of in the CVR report are still outrageous and distorted). And if you really want to dig, you'll find in that report that the CVR admits that "non-governmental human rights groups have attributed a much smaller percentage of deaths to the PCP--from 5% to 16%." ("Peru: The Truth About the "Truth Commission")

THE U.S.'S ROLE IN PERU...or come for the imperialist domination stay for the counterinsurgency

In an article about Peru and the counterrevolution how many times would you guess the U.S. comes up? Yep, twice. I'll italicize them just so you don't miss them:

"the Shining Path supposes that its endorsement of social movement protests, such as the cocaleros' livelihood in the face of the U.S.-sponsored War on Drugs, will invite government repression, which in turn will favor its organizing efforts." (p. 35)

"U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told his hemisphere counterparts last November that drug traffickers, along with terrorists, hostage takers and criminal gangs 'form an anti-social combination' aimed at destabilizing civil societies in the region, and he called for a greater role for the armed forces in combating these scourges." (p. 36)

(I don't know what's more absurd having someone who was a member of Reagan's cabinet warning about "drug traffickers" or someone who's a member of Dubya's cabinet giving us a picture of the "real situation" in a volatile region of the world. Lucky for you, you don't have to make that choice because they're both the same guy--Rumsfeld!)

The U.S. has openly talked about Peru, and the rest of Latin America, as its backyard.

The U.S. principally responsible for the state of misery and poverty in Peru today. There's nothing major that goes on in Peru that the U.S. isn't in some way, shape or form involved in on some level. On the day of Fujimori's self-coup he met with Bernard Aronson, the top official for Latin America policy in Bush I's cabinet.

The U.S. aided the counterrevolution (at one point Peru was the highest recipient of aid in Latin America), aided in the capture Chairman Gonzalo and has completely distorted the economy to serve imperialism. What's produced in Peru has nothing to do with what the people of Peru need but is based solely on the dictates of the capitalist market.

I'll close with one sickening, murderous example of how imperialism is quite literally killing the people of Peru.

A little over a decade ago, the IMF (which is mostly controlled by the U.S.) restructured some loans to Peru to deal with its immense debt. One of the consequences was, of course, the cutting of basic social programs. Long story short, the price of firewood went up and basic people couldn't afford it. Since they didn't have the wood for the fire, they weren't able to boil the water. The result? A cholera epidemic...at the end of the 20th century!

These are the benefits of U.S. democracy in the world today.

-Out-

THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY IS A HORROR...

2005-05-02T23:01:00.000-05:00

...or way messed up Bible quote of the week

Numbers 14:33: "And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness."

Numbers 14:35: "I the LORD have said, I will surely do it unto all this evil congregation, that are gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die."

Let's back up a bit. Basically Moses is leading folks through the desert and they're complaining about Moses and God (a big no no in God's eyes).

Moses, on the order of God, basically puts togther a dirty dozen of spies, each one the head of one of the twelve tribes, to go into Canaan and scout ahead.

After 40 days they come back and say "yeah, it's just like you promised, a land of milk and honey and all that" but it's there's just one problem: "the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great" (from 3:28).

This is where God gets straight gangsta: "And the LORD said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me?" (from 14:11) and it's not long before God starts dropping bodies. God kills ten of the twelve tribe leaders because they don't think they're strong enough to invade and conquer the peoples who occupy the "chosen land": the Amalekites in the south, the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites in the mountains, and the Canaanites by the sea. He lets Joshua and Caleb live because, like the good capos they are, they are all about invading and conquering the "promised land" and doing the Don's--I mean God's--work.

As always I challenge anyone to defend this.

-Out-

I need your help...all you out there in blogland

2005-05-02T09:47:00.000-05:00

So as people may have noticed I have 2 features on my blog so far:

1) THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY IS A HORROR... or way messed up bible quote of the week on Tuesdays

2)YO! BACK THAT $!*# UP... or refutation of the week on Thursdays

I've been considering others but this has already taken more time than I thought it would. Also I was recently fired from my job so I have more time now than I will very soon when I start working again. My hope is that as I get better at the writing and better at the computer stuff I'll be able to do this stuff quicker and can add more weekly columns.

With that being said if readers could assist in two departments that would be great. Those two things are:

1) going into Christian blogs or chatrooms or whatever and telling people about the way messed up Bible quote of the week thing and challenging them to defend the weekly quote. (Actually this great idea was suggested by a reader.)

2) suggestions on what should be the weekly refutation. I'm not looking to show something's wrong for its own sake, or to say "I'm right, you're wrong." I'm looking for things that have some level of nuance, or slickness. I'm not ruling out maybe doing a critique of a Bill O'Reilly type thing, but there's already people who monitor just about everything he and his cohorts say and people do a fine job exposing them.

I look forward to comments.

-Out-

Happy May Day!

2005-05-01T13:53:00.000-05:00

Today is May Day, holiday of the international working class.

Below is a letter to the editors of Harpers magazine I wrote after finishing my blog on Eliza Griswold's attack on the people's war in Nepal in the May 2005 issue.

It actually gets deeper into what's so problematic about the false claim that the Nepal Maoists intend to invade the U.S., so I thought I'd include it here.

To read my lengthy blog on Eliza Griswold's article scroll down to where you see yellow text.

(I'm making the weekly features color-coded so they're easier to find. The weekly refutation will always be yellow.)

-Out-

My letter to the editors of Harpers

2005-05-01T13:49:00.000-05:00

I have to say I was very disturbed to read Eliza Griswold's "It's Not Easy Here in Katmandu" in an otherwise enlightening issue of Harpers.

In the article Griswold quotes U.S. Ambassador James Moriarty as saying that "they've [the Maoists] said they're going to invade the United States."

I have followed the revolution in Nepal since its inception on February 13, 1996. Not once have the Maoists put out any statement that could possibly be interpreted to mean that the Nepal Maoists intend to invade the United States.

Considering the Bush regime's doctrine of preemptive strike this is a very serious accusation to make. Griswold's article only serves to justify any possible U.S. intervention in Nepal. Griswold actually portrays the U.S. propping up a brutal monarchy as some kind of defensive measure!

I thought the job of a journalist was to sort out fact from fiction and not to be the mouthpiece of some ambassador trying to justify the U.S.'s role in a country they have no right to be in.

SF CHRONICLE ON BOB AVAKIAN'S MEMOIR

2005-04-29T07:53:00.000-05:00

This is a post of excerpts from today's San Francisco Chronicle on Bob Avakian's Memoir.

My long posts have been kinda visually intimidating--to me at least--so from now on the posts are gonna be shorter with a link to the full article. It was hard to pick just a few paragraphs. I strongly encourage people to read the whole thing.

Berkeley-bred Avakian's new memoir, "From Ike to Mao and Beyond," leaves a breathtaking impression. Having deepened and purified his convictions over 40 years of personal and political struggle, Avakian sounds a high, sustained cry for complete social transformation almost as if he were the trumpet of Lenin himself.
*****
But although Avakian is a devotee of Marx and Lenin, he's also respected in revolutionary circles for his ground-breaking criticism of communist methods. More evolutionary than revolutionary, his nondogmatic communism tolerates contradiction, welcomes dissent and demands the participation of artists and intellectuals in creating a classless society.
*****
Today, Avakian remains party chairman and is perhaps best known as a prolific, uncompromising contributor to The Revolutionary Worker newspaper. In one his latest articles, he says the polarized conditions in America today are similar to those in the 1840s and 1850s, and he predicts a new civil war.
*****
Meanwhile, disgusted with sectarianism and dogmatism in the ranks, Avakian pushed his fellow radicals to stop fighting each other, think big and stay the revolutionary course.

-Out-

YO! BACK THAT $!*# UP...

2005-04-28T15:37:00.000-05:00

...or refutation of the week.

This is the tentative title of the weekly refutation feature. It has a double meaning.

1) get that junk out of here
2) if you're gonna spit wild claims like that come with some facts.

I'm open to better titles.

What follows below is the first entry taking on a horrible article, in an otherwise interesting May 2005 issue of Harpers, smearing the people's war in Nepal. I tried to focus in on a few key points. As soon it's available online I'll post a link.

As always feedback is welcome.

-Out-

YO! BACK THAT $!*# UP...

2005-04-28T15:22:00.000-05:00

...or refutation of the week

"It's Not Easy Here in Katmandu: Caught between the Maoist Rebels and the king's army" by Eliza Griswold (Harpers, May 2005)

INTRO

For quite some time now, there have been these seemingly liberal, humanitarian articles that slander genuine revolutionary movements. It's often done under the guise of reporting on "the people caught in the middle." The basic thrust is that some group starts a revolution--"the terrorists"--and then the state comes down on that group getting more and more brutal as the revolutionary forces grow stronger, and in turn the revolution grows more and more brutal in response, “eating its children” as it were. Soon villagers alternately feel the terror of the revolutionaries and the state army. More or less that's the thesis.

So with that as a preface let's jump in.

IT'S GOOD TO BE THE KING...or the Shangri-Hell of feudalism

The article starts with an anecdote about how in the 13th century the Malla family came from India and founded the Nepal kingdom:

"Every day...the Malla king is said to have climbed to the top of his nine-story pagoda and peered down into his happy valley of serfs. If smoke wasn't rising from each chimney, the kindhearted king dispatched a scout to see what was wrong. That, people say, is how peaceful the Katmandu valley should be when held in the palm of a benevolent monarch." (p. 64, emphasis added)

Griswold's preparation for this article would have been better spent investigating the brutal feudal history of Nepal than consulting fairly tales. To speak of "his happy serfs" and a "kindhearted king" smacks of such chauvinism that it's a bit jarring. This decription is incredibly offensive. The peoples of Nepal have suffered immensely for centuries under these feudal kings. To quote Griswold herself:

"Until two years ago, bonded labor was legal in Nepal. In some cases, families have worked generations to pay off a debt of three dollars." (p. 71)

She also points out how slavery wasn't even abolished until 1924!

One only has to look at the horrific caste system or the treatment of women or the exploitation of peasants. The list goes on and on. But I think a Nepali proverb bluntly captures some of this horror: "To be born as a daughter is having ill fate."

One thing we can thank Griswold for is putting it right out there. Her solution to the ongoing the civil war? The good ole days of a benevolent monarch. As she puts it later "some form of constitutional monarchy is likely to be crucial to a stable Nepal." (p.67) Eliza, helping us build that bridge to the 13th century.

I love how these people talk about how a Maoist revolution "seems anachronistic" and yet a king in the 21st century? Oh, that makes perfect sense.

As Griswold make perfectly clear, she envisions a future that's Maoists-free:
"Given that the Maoists hold power in seventy-three of seventy-five of Nepal's political districts, rejecting them isn't an option just yet." (p. 67, emphasis added)

It might seem contradictory to write a “caught in the middle” piece while upholding the king but two things should be pointed out. First, when these types of articles speak of peace they speak of the "peace" that existed before people righteously rose up in rebellion against their oppression. So the "peace" they speak of is really looking back to when the state had a monopoly on force and the people couldn't do anything about it except live under the boot of the state. Second, Griswold at the very least implies that the king may not totally be in control:

“backed militarily by both America and India…the army answers to no one but the king, if, indeed, the king doesn’t answer to the army. (p. 66)

And later she quotes Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch who says that the royal coup was “less about the king’s power grab than the army’s…” (p. 67)

As a bit of a sidenote, Bouckaert just baldy states that “No one wants to abandon Nepal to the Maoists…” (p.67) Also Bouckaert’s objection to what the U.S. is doing in Nepal is largely based on the idea that it’s undermining the U.S.’s ability to carry out its War on Terrorism:

“What’s happening in Nepal has a direct relationship to the rest of the War on Terror. The United States’ actions have undermined its ability to raise any kind of objections.” (p. 67)

So much for the nonpartisanship of the NGOs!

HAVING PRINCIPLES, STRUGGLING FOR EQUALITY... or the “terror” of the Maoists

Griswold describes the two Nepals as Katmandu--which I think she's confused for a Starbucks, "high-speed internet and 'Hima-lattes'”--and the countryside beyond, held by the Maoists, where there are no hospitals or roads. We’ll ignore this ridiculous image of Katmandu (need Griswold be reminded that Nepal is the second-poorest country in the world?) and move on to the countryside where the Maoists have actually started to build roads and even hospitals where their power is more stable. Later on Griswold admits that the Maoists were building roads and bridges even before they initiated people's war. Of course, Griswold bends the truth some in that process of letting that be known:

"The Maoists stepped into a vacuum, building bridges and roads and establishing infrastructure where the state never had. Then, of course, they called for violent revolution.

"In response, the government waged several disastrous campaigns, most notable Operation Romeo in 1995, which...resulted in 'rapes, executions, and "disappearances."' (p. 66)

Just to be clear this Operation was launched before the initiation of the Maoist people's war, which was in 1996. And as for the rapes, executions and "disappearances" this was exactly the intent of this murderous campaign! This was not some campaign spiraling out of control.

On the other side are the Maoists who seemingly help people but really just use them for their violent ends. In reality, the areas in which the Operation were carried out were in the western strongholds of the Maoists (i.e., Rolpa, Rukum) and the oppressed nationalities who live there have been among the poorest and most exploited for centuries. This is one of the reasons that this region has been such a strong base of support for the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), going back to before the initiation of the people's war.

If brutal repression came down on these areas before the Maoists had an army, before they had weapons, why did masses of people protect the Party during this Operation? The CPN(M) has not received any foreign aid. The only force it has relied on since the beginning is the masses of people. The transformation over nine years has been that from unsophisticated rebels to a force on the verge of winning nationwide power.

There are no "masses" interviewed in the article who support the people’s war. (In these "caught in the middle" articles if you actually support the revolutionary group you're no longer part of the masses you're part of the "rebels.") This isn’t odd since the unfamiliar reader might be taken in by one interviewee who claims that 90 percent of the country hates the Maoists. This is beyond ridiculous. Even people who have no sympathy for the Maoists whatsoever admit that the Maoists have millions and millions of supporters.

The only people who support the people's war interviewed are two full-time Maoists, who we're to assume are Party members, though it’s unclear if they actually are, and Griswold is rather dismissive of what they have to say. For one, she snidely dismisses that the Maoists charge $3 tuition for schools that they’ve set up. When Katmnadu does this its called taxes, when the Maoists do this in areas they control and administer it’s called extortion!

Even a young woman attempting to join the Royal Nepal Army said that "The Maoists have high principles so they attract everyone who is interested in struggling for equality." (p. 65)

WHAT THE HELL IS THE US DOING IN NEPAL ANYWAY?... or last time I checked my "redeemable anywhere in the U.S." coupons weren't any good in Nepal

Griswold's article attempts to make the case that historically the U.S. has played a positive role in Nepal and that the U.S. really just wants to bring freedom and democracy. Griswold inform us that it was because of the pressure of the political parties and the U.S. that King Birendra "relinquished his grip on power."

We find out that in relation to the king's February coup that "Despite the world's disapproval, including the United States, there is little anyone can do." (p. 64)

Let's get real, even Bouckaert says that “It’s very clear that when the U.S. demands something from the government, the government complies.” (p. 67)

She quotes a general as saying “Peace...will be forged only through more military spending, particularly by the United States. (p. 65)

However, the most alarming part of this article is an unchallenged quote from U.S. Ambassador James Moriarty. On this point, it seems Griswold's journalism is one of two things: 1) some of the worst journalism I've ever seen (and by the way that's the best case scenario), or 2) this article is actually trying to create some ideological justification for the possibility of US intervention in Nepal. Peep this bold-faced lie from Moriarty:

"It's not Islamic fundamentalism, obviously, but it is a very fervent brand of Maoism that could cause great trouble in this area. They've said they're going to invade the United States." (p.67, emphasis added)

And what does Eliza do with this lie? Does she point out that the CPN(M) has never, ever said anything even remotely like this? No, she runs with this as somehow some kind of justification, a defensive measure if you will, for the U.S. giving military aid to Nepal. Peep the next paragraph:

"The Maoists have, it is true, raised the volume on their anti-U.S. rhetoric, and before February's palace coup, the United States had responded to that threat with $17 million in military aid to Nepal and an order for 20,000 M-16 assault rifles to be placed in the hands of the Royal Nepalese Army." (p.67, emphasis added).

Shameful.

Considering the Bush regime's doctrine of preemptive strike this is a very serious accusation to make. Griswold's article only serves to justify any possible U.S. intervention in Nepal. Griswold actually portrays the U.S. propping up a brutal monarchy as some kind of defensive measure!

I BELIEVE THE CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE…or the U.S. gets all Whitney Houston on ya

Lastly, there’s the slander about the abductions carried out by the Maoists, because as we all know the U.S. is deeply concerned about the children of Nepal. This is one of the more malicious lies. It's said that people are "disappeared" by the state on the one side and "abducted" by the Maoists on the other. To be clear, there's a stark world of difference between the state and the Maoists. "Disappeared" is just a euphamism that ranges from for rape and murder to imprisonment and torture. This has nothing in common with the "abductions" by the Maoists.

I’ll just quote a snippet from an article that ran in the AFP a while back about these "abductions:"

"Nepalese students, recounting their abduction by Maoist rebels, say the militants treated them well and wanted to hear their views--even if they were critical of rebel actions.

"Ramila Acharya, 15, said she was terrified when armed rebels, who have been waging an increasingly deadly war to topple the constitutional monarchy, barged into their school in Chaimale and told them they were taking them away to teach the students 'what a "people's republic" meant.'

"'I felt like crying and was very upset,' she told AFP, providing a rare account of being kidnapped by the Maoists, whose 'people's war' to install a communist republic had left some 9,500 dead since 1996.

"'But the rebels treated us nicely. They gave us shelter and food to eat,' even if they did make 'us chant slogans like "Long live the Nepal Communist Party-Maoist!' she said.

CONCLUSION

Eliza Griswold’s article is bad. Yep, I think that just about covers it. Though seriously, I would encourage people to write the editors. Short pieces are more likely to be printed.

letters@harpers.org

or

Harper’s Magazine
666 Broadway
New York, NY 10012

-Out-

possibly a new feature -THE WEEKLY REFUTATION

2005-04-27T09:24:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I'm toying with an idea. It's another weekly feature. It would be called the Weekly Refutation, or hopefully something catchier than that. I don't know if I'll really do this every week but I'm going to at least do it this week because the current issue of Harpers (May 2005)--it's not online yet or I'd have a link--has a couple of interesting articles under the banner "The Christian Right's War on America" but it has this truly awful article on the People's War in Nepal. It's called "Among the the Maoist Rebels in Nepal." I hope to have my refutation done by tonight.

-Out-

MISSION STATEMENT (subject to change at any time)

2005-04-26T09:39:00.000-05:00

Why another blog? I plan to accomplish a few things with this blog.

1. I need to write more and I think starting a blog will help me do that. I know if I tried to keep a diary I'd end up with a draw full of notebooks each with only the first page filled out: "Dear diary I purchased you today...umm...lemme holla atcha later."

I also want to get better at writing--I still can't tell the difference between "good" vs. "well"--and as we all know the internet is a virtual mecca of outstanding grammar, punctuation and spelling.

2. I'm going to try and popularize some experience taking out the line, methodology, outlook of Chairman Bob Avakian to some "untypical" places (more on this later).

3. I want to better be able to synthesize--and remember--my thoughts on various books I'm reading, films I'm watching, music I'm listening to.

4. I love lists! They're immensely helpful and they're the most productive form of procrastination.

5. And maybe, just maybe, I'll learn how to do some computer stuff while we're at it...though I doubt it.

*****

Part of how I plan to make myself consistently submit to this blog thing is by creating Features. While I'm still working this out this first one is:

THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY IS A HORROR...

or way messed up Bible quote of the week

Now just to be clear this is not about translations or "misinterpretations" or anything like that. No, this about actual quotes from the Bible that are truly horrible. And I challenge anyone who upholds the "Good Book" to defend them.

We're gonna do this every Tuesday and in honor of the god awful--or is it awful god--Revelations miniseries we're going to start today with a quote from the Book Revelations in a seperate post.

This way when you're around the watercooler--I've held many a job over my few years and I've never seen a watercooler at work--and people are talking about this series you can throw a "way messed up Bible quote" into the conversation.

-Out-

THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY IS A HORROR...

2005-04-25T23:01:00.000-05:00

...or way messed up Bible quote of the week

Revelation 2:23: "And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works."

Just so we're really, really clear this isn't a metaphor; he's going to kill with death. The "her" is Jezebel. The "I"? Yep, it's Jesus. That love thy neighbor, kill thy children Jesus.

As always I challenge anyone to defend this.

-Out-

1ST POST...sorta

2005-04-25T15:40:00.000-05:00

This page just looks barren. So let's spice it up with an excerpt from the editorial--which I didn't write so this is really more of a semi-1st post--from the first issue of the Revolution newspaper, voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. Clink on the link to get the full editorial as well as the other excellent articles.

Editorial
Invitation to Revolution
Revolution #1, May 1, 2005, posted at revcom.us

On this occasion of the May 1st holiday—we in the Revolutionary Communist Party are proud to introduce the first issue of Revolution newspaper! What you have in your hands is no ordinary newspaper.

This newspaper is the voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA and exists for no other reason than to play a role in the emancipation of humanity.
As comrades and students of RCP Chairman Bob Avakian we are passionate about the truth and we are passionate about revolution. Our press is objective—committed to the idea that only by confronting reality as it is can the masses of people know and change the world. And we are partisan—committed to the idea that the people can free humanity from all kinds of enslaving economic and social relations and enslaving ideas.
*****
Formerly called the Revolutionary Worker, Revolution is coming out swinging—hitting the streets with 100,000 copies and daring to dream of a whole different world.

This first issue comes in a time of great polarization in U.S. society.
The promise of unending war on the world made by George W. Bush and company is being delivered with a vengeance. One hundred thousand lives and three hundred billion dollars later, there is no end in sight. At the same time powerful rightwing Christian fundamentalist forces are aggressively seeking to transform the U.S. into a high-tech theocratic state.

There are millions who oppose all of this. Still, there is a major battle to be waged over what kind of world we will live in. It is our analysis that if the people do not oppose the current direction of society with massive resistance, and things are left in the hands of those in power, we could be living in a world where old traditional shackles meet new technology, where rotten fundamentalist ideas serve and legitimate an insatiable bloodlust for profit. This horrible vision would be a society where modern-day U.S. imperialism would be run by religious fanatics. Your worst nightmare meets your worst nightmare.

But today, at the very moment we are haunted by a new "Dark Ages" mentality, the communist project is going through a Renaissance, as Bob Avakian has reimagined the process of socialist revolution.

We have a fighting chance for another future. This future could take human potential and human society to untold heights. An impossible dream? No. If we get way up on the mountaintop of history and look down on the march of humanity, the potential for such a world becomes clear. From this sweeping vantage point we can see that there is the basis for a world without classes, without oppressive social divisions. A communist world .

Sweep of History

AS IF WE DIDN'T KNOW...

TO THE POINT...

AS IF WE DIDN'T KNOW...

AS IF WE DIDN'T KNOW...

SNIPPET #2

SNIPPETS #1

OBITUARY FOR RICHARD PRYOR

MAO: THE UNTRUE STORY WATCH

READINGS FROM BOB AVAKIAN'S MEMOIR

FIVE THINGS FOR FRIDAY...

MAO: THE UNTRUE STORY WATCH

Mao: The UNTRUE Story Watch

Here's an excerpt from an article that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle on some of the controversy surrounding the new book Mao: The UNTRUE Story. It mentions Raymond Lotta who's on the Setting the Record Straight Tour.

Excerpt:

BERKELEYMao debunkers defend their bookCritics call it effort to discredit communism

As If We Didn't Know...

MAO: THE UNTRUE STORY WATCH

FIVE THINGS FOR FRIDAY...

New Piece from Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

NEW FEATURE--WHINES AND MISDEMEANORS

WHINES AND MISDEMEANORS...

Like a Five Year Plan done in four years...

Just 3 More Days

RELAUNCHING IN 5 DAYS!

THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY IS A HORROR...

NEW FEATURE--MAO MONDAYS

MAO MONDAYS

YO! BACK THAT S!*# UP...

Coming soon...

THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY IS A HORROR...

ZHANG CHUNQIAO, LEADER OF CULTURAL REVOLUTION, COMRADE OF MAO, DIES

THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY IS A HORROR...

A short message before we start refutin'

YO! BACK THAT $!*# UP...

THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY IS A HORROR...

I need your help...all you out there in blogland

Happy May Day!

My letter to the editors of Harpers

SF CHRONICLE ON BOB AVAKIAN'S MEMOIR

YO! BACK THAT $!*# UP...

YO! BACK THAT $!*# UP...

possibly a new feature -THE WEEKLY REFUTATION

MISSION STATEMENT (subject to change at any time)

THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY IS A HORROR...

1ST POST...sorta

BERKELEY
Mao debunkers defend their book
Critics call it effort to discredit communism