redFlags

State of Emergency in the Philippines: Crackdown on Legal Parties

Philippine president (and Bush flunky) Gloria Arroyo has declared a state of emergency in the Philippines, according to CNN "after security forces thrwarted what they said was a plot to overthrow her."

The New People's Army, led by the Communist Party of the Philippines has launched "seven tactical responses" to the state of emergency, which in addition to cracking down on factions inside the (unstable) military, is directed against the popular democratic movements. Several progressive, legal organizations have been tagged as "CPP fronts," and this year the Arroyo government has said that the communist insurgency is the Philippines #1 security threat... unlike all those foreign (American) troops running around "advising."

"With Gloria Arroyo arrogating martial law powers and establishing herself as a dictator, the NPA will carry out more and more tactical offensives to weaken her regime and contribute to the people's effort to put an end to her rule," CPP spokesperson Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal said

Sectarian Violence in Iraq: Who's Responsible? Who Benefits?

Received from A World to Win News Service: The US bears a large share of the responsibility for the violence between Shia and Sunni Moslems that has killed so many people in Iraq over the last week, and actually many months.

It has been reported that the blast that destroyed the golden-domed Askariya Shia mosque in Samarra 22 February was carried out by men wearing Interior Ministry uniforms. The dozen or so gunmen, who took over the mosque for about an hour before blowing it up as other men outside cordoned off the building and kept neighbourhood people away, were said to have little fear of being interrupted.

Octavia Butler: A Freedom Dreamer

Octavia Butler was one of the only writers I feel spoke for my culture. Born in 1947, She died yesterday after a fall outside her home in Washington. What can you say about a boundary-buster who's very last novel was titled Fledgling? Diagnosed with dyslexia as a child, she went on to win the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards for science fiction writing. She was also a MacArthur "genius" fellow and deeply loved daydreamer who left us at the height of her powers.

She told stories from the people, with a distinctly African-American sensibility. Butler got weird, such as the insane ethical quandaries of Kindred, the story of a black woman sucked through some portal back into slavery days (along with her white husband!). But isn't that just like life? Problems you couldn't dream up... and that nobody every wants to talk about.

In my two favorite books by her, The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents, she explored the seeds of what is coming to be in the collapse of the American dream through the journey of a young, black woman named Lauren Olamina. She suffers from a condition called "hyper-empathy"  in a dystopic near-future California that's an archipelago of walled communities surrounded by social and ecological disintegration.

In the failure of her father's religion, Lauren becomes the prophet of a new philosophy called "Earthseed," which to my simple eye is good, ol' fashioned dialectical materialism... with a penchant for space travel. Her collected writing are a high expression of what Robin Kelly called the Freedom Dream.

Let the opening words of the Parable of the Sower speak now for Octavia Butler's well-lived life:

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
Is Change.

Kazembe Balagun, a leading voice of New York's lumpen intelligentsia, recently interviewed Octavia Butler for the Indypendent. The full text follows along with some defining titles from the genre of speculative fiction she came to personify.

The Party Line: Bob Avakian's "The New Situation and the Great Challenges"

I am a defender of Bob Avakian and the following piece he wrote is exactly why. Amid the moaning about the "lack of backbone" among Democrats and all the diffuse inertias of "the left," Avakian has his finger on the pulse of this moment -- recognizing both the profound peril, and connected opportunities that cry out for action. He is not another analyst, not a manager. He is a leader.

Currently re-printed in Revolution, the national, bi-lingual newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party, The New Situation and the Great Challenges is effectively the RCP's line on What Is To Be Done. That's an expression that starts as a question, our duty is always to answer it in fact.

For those who can't see how to fight for what they most want, it is a challenge to put some dignity in the struggle... and some struggle in your dignity. Before the next dismissal of Avakian crosses your lips, read this and see what this man is giving his life for -- and what he offers to a world choking on its own impossibilities.

IndyKids: "A Free Paper for Free Kids"

The most recent publication launch from the New York City Independent Media Center is something I've never seen before, a radical paper for primary school students. The current edition of IndyKids features a story about life in West Virginia, how to start a debate and a quick review of the Darwin exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. It's been a few issues now and the project is hitting its stride.

IndyKids is distributed through schools, churches and at libraries... but not at the Queens Public Library where (according to recent rumor) it has been blocked.

For more information about how get involved or distribute the "free paper for free kids," email or call 212.592.0116.

Goodbye, Christ - a poem by Langston Hughes you probably never read

When you see that copy of Langston Hughes Selected Poems at the bookstore, know that the "selection" had more to do with meeting the ideological needs of the McCarthy era than sharing the full power and popular grace of his collected work. Faith Berry  did the great service in 1973 of assembling his uncollected radical poems and writings from the Soviet Union in Good Morning Revolution. With all the talk about religion, and so many leftists allergic to telling the truth about the God racket, I'm just loving Langton's love of the people and not their illusions. He writes:

Listen, Chirst,
You did alright in your day, I reckon—
But that day's gone now.
They ghosted you up a swell story, too,
Called it Bible—
But it's dead now.

Anti-Islamic cartoons: Communists speak out

Time to stop choosing sides set by our enemies. The imperialists in Europe and the USA hide behind the mantle of liberal psuedo-tolerance while Arab reactionaries and autocrats claim the name of Allah. A World To Win News Service distributed an editorial at the beginning of the anti-Islamic cartoon controversy that stripped away the bullshit on all sides. Send this to everyone you know, especially to countries where communist writing is banned. When versions of the AWTW commentaries are available in Farsi, Arabic and Urdu, I will post them here.

---------------
From A World to Win News Service:
The anti-Islam cartoons and the imperialist powers’ strategic considerations

The worldwide upsurge of anger sparked by the anti-Islamic cartoons was the main item on the agenda for the meeting of Nato defence ministers at the weekend. This reveals how much all the imperialist powers feel that their strategic interests are at stake. It is impossible to understand the fury surrounding these caricatures first published in Denmark without looking at the material interests and political and economic factors involved. It is also important to examine the relationship between those interests and the propagation of certain ideas, and the complex interaction between those two spheres.

European March for Women's Liberation in Iran

Too much dissembling from the liberals and the mullahs has distorted international solidarity around the women's liberation struggle against the semi-feudal Islamicist regime of Iran. In the still boiling atmosphere around the anti-Islamic cartoons, the call by Campaign for the Abolition of All Misogynist, Gender-Based Legislation & Islamic Punaitive Laws in Iran to stage a continental, mulit-national march throughout Europe is right on time.

This campaign has united a core group of hundreds of Iranian and international women activists and personalities who have long been fighting for women’s rights, including some who have spent many years in the dungeons of the Islamic Republic. More than a hundred women and men fighting for women’s rights in Europe and elsewhere in the world have signed the call. Iranian women’s groups and individual activists, academicians and artists in exile, among them the 8 March Women’s Organization (Iran-Afghanistan), have been the backbone of this effort. So far it has been able to unite a broad array of Iranian opposition movement in exile, from communist and labor movement activists to progressive democrats.

For the last 27 years these Islamic laws have deprived women of their most basic rights as human beings and intensified the marginalization of women, creating a gender segregation that has made society a hell for all and forcing many women into suicide, prostitution, and drug addiction. Women are setting fire to themselves in increasing numbers. These laws represent and impose a state of semi-slave social relations on women. They have strengthened the already brutal patriarchal and male supremacist relations in the country. A vast apparatus of morality police has been set up to keep an eye on women and punish them if they violate these medieval moral codes of conduct. This is the dark ages in the 21st century.

Read the entire call: European March for Women's Liberation in Iran

Also see Doug Ireland's reporting on the wave of anti-gay persecution the Iranian mullahs seem to enjoy much like their American counter-parts: Kidnapped: Another Gay Iranian Torture Victim Speaks

ANSWER statement on harassment of Puerto Rican independistas

The ANSWER coalition released a statement on the continuing FBI harassment of Puerto Rico's independence movement. Five months after the elderly leader of the Macheteros was gunned down by US government agents, raids and arrests continue. Just last week, police arrested five people for painting the mural above. (Tip: pr.indymedia.org and leftspot.com)

Setting the Record Straight: The Legacies of 20th Century Socialism

Set the Record Straight is challenging the anti-communist hegemony that has passed for conventional wisdom for the last couple of decades, particularly on college campuses. For anyone who has never heard the revolutionary communist read on their own history, it beats the hell out of trying to disentangle the lies promoted by the "end of history" crowd.

Starting with a speech by the Maoist political economist Raymond Lotta: Socialism Is Much Better Than Capitalism and Communism Will Be a Far Better World, their website ThisIsCommunism.org features a growing list of articles on the epochal changes that socialism brought to the world in the 20th Century: Socialist Experience. All of the articles are written from the perspective pioneered by Revolutionary Communist Party chairman Bob Avakian.

Raymond Lotta will be speaking on Thursday, February 23, 6:00 pm, in Harvard Yard, at Emerson Hall, Rm 105.