redFlags

Wage Peace: Short Movie from AFSC

The American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) have produced a powerful short movie for online viewing about the cost of the war. Simple, humane and interesting in how simple it is to produce and distribute. Watch  or download direct (zip)

Arundhati Roy: A Writer's Place In Politics

From Free Speech TV: Roy was trained as an architect. Her first novel,The God of Small Things wond the Booker Prize in 1997. She speaks of her part in battles to block the corporate pillage of India, including the campaign to stop now collapsed Enron's take over of Indian power utilities. "Cynics say that real life is a choice between the failed revolution and the shabby deal...We need to search for and find the politics of resistance,of opposition, of forcing accountability...In the present circumstances, I'd say that the only thing worth globalizing is dissent."  Watch (RealPlayer required)

Mao's Legacy in China's Current Development

Pao-Yu Ching writes:

A Chinese worker said,”This is not socialism with Chinese characteristics as Deng Xiaoping told us. Instead, what we have here is capitalism with Chinese characteristics.”

A Chinese peasant said, “When Chairman Mao warned us about the restoration of capitalism, we really did not understand what he was talking about. Now we do.”

In China & Socialism -- Market Reforms and Class Struggle[i], Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett argued successfully why the so-called “market socialism” in China is in fact the restoration of capitalism, and that China’s economic Reform of the past twenty-five years can not serve as a socialist model of development for other less developed countries. Hart-Landsberg and Burkett’s research on this topic in current literature (in English) is very thorough and includes perspectives from the Left liberals and some progressives, who had mistaken China’s economic development since the Reform as socialist. Hart-Landsberg and Burkett also give a detailed and accurate account of the Reform itself from 1979 to the present.

 

Philippines: NPA grew beyond "critical mass" in 2005

Alexander Martin Remollino writes for Bulatlat: Rebel spokesman Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal claims the New People’s Army (NPA) now has an equivalent of 27 battalions or roughly around 13, 500 regular fighters. These exclude members of barrio militia units or what Rosal describes as “peasants by  day, NPA fighters by night.”

A few weeks ago, Malacañang spokespersons were quoted in the news as aying that the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed component of the clandestine Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), remains “the biggest  threat to national security.”

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) described the NPA as the country’s “No. 1 security threat” in mid-2004 – for the first time since the early 1990s.

Prachanda Interview With Time Magazine

Time South Asia bureau chief Alex Perry interviewed CPN(M) chairman Prachanda:

Where does your revolution stand at the moment?
  Prachanda: The great People's War has entered its last stage. When our party initiated the People's War in 1996, we had not a single modern weapon nor any trained armed groups, only an ideological, political and military line and a   plan. In the plan, we defined three strategic stages: strategic defensive, strategic equilibrium and strategic offensive. We have a strong People's Liberation Army,   we have liberated vast rural bases and are fast growing our political power in the rural areas of the country. We have confidence in the masses and in ultimate   victory, although we cannot predict an exact time frame. We have already pushed  the RNA [Royal Nepalese Army] into defensive positions and confined them to the capital, district headquarters and their barracks. Our strategy for this last stage will be to fuse urban insurrection to protracted People's War.

Prachanda Statement on NGOs in Nepal

From a Dec. 21 statement on behalf of the central committee of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist): The CPN (Maoist) is fighting against all sorts of injustice, exploitation, deprivation & poverty. In this context we appreciate in principle the Basic Operating Guidelines of the United Nations and other development agencies & organizations operating in Nepal and have instructed cadres and local people's representatives to cooperate with it as per the specific situation of the place. We also appeal to the international community and development agencies to work in regular consultation and cooperation with our party and new people's representations at the central & local level to execute  the development programmees in keeping with the current civil war situation in the country.

A little white lie about the Little Red Book

This wins the award for best excuse for a late paper in years. Claiming agents from the Dept. of Homeland Security visited him after checking out an original Peking edition of Mao Zedong's Red Book, a student at UMASS Dartmouth came clean about the hoax when his professor visited the family. It sounded crazy, but not as crazy as this.

Taking the Christ Out of Christmas

In celebration of our holiday season, coinciding with something like the 2,000th Christmas without the promised return of Jesus, Red Flags highlights these lectures by Bob Avakian for your listening pleasure.

Sartre was wrong, love is other people. Happy Holidays.   

God Doesn't Exist - And We Need Liberation Without Gods
Part 1 | Part 2 | Q&A

Christianity & Society: The Old Testament and the New Testament, Resistance and Revolution
Part 1 | Part 2

And one to read. Can We Do Without Myth?

How to Think: A Marxist Study Primer from the Sojourner Truth Organization

Mostly known these days by connection to Noel Ignatiev, author of How the Irish Became White and promoter of the Race Traitor theory with the clever tagline, "Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity," Sojourner Truth Organization was among the more intersting grouplets to arise in the ferment at the end of the 1970s. They were interested in popular agency, among other things. They also had intellectuals who could write. Sojourner Truth had this study primer called How to Think that roughly started with this sharpie by Lenin:

"People for the most part (99 percent of the bourgeoisie,   98 percent of the liquidators, about 60‑70 percent of the Bolsheviks)   don't know how to think, they only learn words by heart."

Lots of philosophy and interest in people helping each other learn how to learn. It's also interesting to look at the ways different organizations and collectivities have shared knowledge.

How to Think
A Study Primer from the STO

--------- A more recent piece along the same lines was sent out by Bob Avakian, Epistemology: On Knowing and Changing the World.

Maoists Declare "All-Out War" on King's Fake Polls

The Hindustan Times reports: Nepal's Maoist guerrillas have declared an all-out war against the civic elections called by teh government on Feb. 8 and virutally ruled out any further extension of their unilateral ceasefire that ends January 1... Baburan Bhattarai, one of the front-ranking leaders of the underground communist insurgents, has said his banned party would "obstruct" all processes adopted by the royalist government headed by King Gyanendra to hold municipal elections. [read]

The 7 parliamentary parties are also boycotting the municipal elections.