redFlags

We — featuring the words of Arundhati Roy

       

This is a public service announcement... Some anonymous pirates took Arundhati Roy's historic Come September speech and adapted it for the web with video and music to illustrate her plea for our common humanity. We is not about Roy so much as all of us, and the place we find ourselves at the start of this century. We is the future of agit/prop. Words of genuine wisdom, song and movement — anonymous and catalytic. Undeniable. This is our one and only life.

Free for distribution as a stream or download,(100mb, wmv), a $5 DVD is also available at WeRoy.org

Cell phones – Even worse for security than you thought

RedFlags is syndicated on the Indyblogs roll, and I check in from time to time to see what other Indymedia-identified bloggers are up to. Delete the Border, one of the more active sites, had a post that confirmed every paranoid assumption I ever had about cell phones (before a job with Indymedia, ironically enough, compelled me to buy one).

Not only are cell phones effective positioning devices, that say where you are and where you have been, but the feds (and likely largely police departments like the NYPD) have the ability to turn on your microphone and listen to you even when you aren't making a call.

This auto-bugging is amazing. Even if you power your phone down, that doesn't turn the microphone or broadcasting off. The only way to deal with it is by taking out your phone battery. Even then... who knows. Read the original article.

Battle Cry For Theocracy! Meet the Shock Troops of the Christian Right

Sunsara Taylor is sounding the cavalry bugle, and you better listen! In today's CounterPunch, the New York-based initiator of World Can't Wait lays out what is happening with BattleCry, the Christian Fascist youth movement led by the Pharisees from on high... She already debated Battle Cry leader Ron Luce on Fox, but this isn't a debate. It's war.

If you've been waiting until the Christian fascist movement started filling stadiums with young people and hyping them up to do battle in "God's army" to get alarmed, wait no longer.

In recent weeks, Battle Cry, a Christian fundamentalist youth movement, has attracted more than 25,000 to mega-rally rock concerts in San Francisco and Detroit and this weekend they plan to fill Wachovia Stadium in Philadelphia.

They claim their religion and values are under attack but, amidst spectacular lightshows, hummers, Navy Seals, and military imagery on stage, it is Battle Cry that has declared war on everyone else! Their leader, Ron Luce, insists: "This is war. And Jesus invites us to get into the action, telling us that the violent--the 'forceful' ones--will lay hold of the kingdom."

No joke, people. Read the full piece on the link.

      

Afghanistan Maoists on the clashes between Sunnis and Shiites

A World To Win News Service writes:

There have been many indications that the US occupation forces have worked to encourage the sectarian fighting between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq. They have organized a puppet government along religious ad ethnic lines.  Most basically, the occupiers have revived and allied themselves with feudal warlords, tribal sheiks and religious authorities, each fighting for supremacy. The following article analyses how the American-led occupation of Afghanistan is having similarly disastrous effects on that country. It is edited and excerpted from the March 2006 issue (no. 11) of Sholeh, newspaper of the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan.

The Shia religious holiday Ashura (9 February) this year saw a kind of religious warfare Afghanistan has never known before. It is estimated that in the three days of bloody clashes between Shiites and Sunnis in the northwest province of Herat, more than 50 people were killed, mostly Sunnis, and more than 300 injured, some by security forces.

The Revolution is here in Nepal

I'm currently working on a short article about the rapid developments in Nepal. It will be up soon in place of this. For now, I've posted an open thread where any reporting/comments on the unfolding revolution can be posted.

The Royal army has encircled the king's palace with barbed wire. Democratic protests in the cities defy shoot-on-sight curfews. The People's War proceeds virtually unchallenged in the countryside. Prachanda warned on the eve of these protests that King Gyanendra faces "exile or death" for his crimes.

The Communist Party of Nepal has risen above Stalinophilic nostalgia and seeks a 21st Century communism, and sees the liberation of Nepal in both a regional and global context of revolution.

Will red flags fly from Katmandu? Have we finally kicked the end-of-history shroud? Is a secular, popular and revolutionary communist force pointed a way beyond the "clash of barbarisms?"

News & Views on Unfolding Revolution in Nepal
On the Scene in Katmandu: Revolution interviews Nepal expert and anthropologist Stephen Mikesell | Li Onesto's digest of breaking events: Mass Upsurge Against the King | Sudhanva  Deshpande: Nepal on the Verge of Bastille | International Nepal Solidarity Network -- tons of articles | Maoist Information Bulletin from the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) | The Royal Regression and the Question of a Democratic Republic by Baburam Bhattarai

UK Guardian: Protesters Plan Final Heave to Rid Nepal of Monarchy

And, like anyone asked, according to (boo, hiss) Bloomberg: US Demands Nepal's King Relinquish Power

And... word from the fierce one...
CPN(M) Chairman Prachanda:
Constituent Assembly Now!
Prachanda, the political and military leader of the revolutionary forces demands an "unconditional constituent assembly."

The tried ceasefires, they tried to negotiate -- but the people are done with all of it and will not wait for permission to proceed. The King's statues are being torn down and the monarchy is in fact over on the ground. The King is now the mayor of his own palace, hiding behind barbed wire and (if he's smart) checking if JetBlue has any specials to Dehli.

Bella Ciaos for the Red Rebels of Nepal!

Bella Ciao is a song of revolution. Its anonymous composer fought in the hills of Italy against the fascist Mussolini, who thought himself a Caesar and ended hung from a street post by the people he sought to rule.

They say you are East and we are West, but we, together, know the world is round. The hope and solidarity of millions are with the brave protesters in Nepal and the People's Liberation Army. For land and liberty, for communism! For a new world.

Bella Ciao (Rita Pavone)

Bella Ciao (Manu Chao)

Bella Ciao (Punkreas)

Bella Ciao (Spanish Revolution)

Bella Ciao (Tryo y Zebda)

Bella Ciao (Yves Montand)

Bella Ciao (PL)

And I"m looking for Chumbawumba's english remix...

Translations from the original Italian on the link...

More fellow travelers...

There is something of a flurry of communist blogs popping up. I've been swamped and unable to find a long day to make all the necessary updates, but one new blog from the Bronx Boshevik has one of the best personal introductions ever. From Freddy Bastone in the boogie down:

I'm an 18 year old revolutionary from the Bronx. Have been a Maoist for the past 3 years. I try to get my HS a little bit more political and try to organize some of my brothers and sisters. I also like Mod and Skin culture. I love Britpop kind of stuff. All my friends believe I'm some kind of nut-case orator who went pyscho because I read Mao. Now I tell them that revolution with guns is the only solution.

Conditions of the Working Class in China

The SLAM X panels and celebration brought Old Heads from around the country back to New York. One old comrade came, and over a heated game of Risk (that he won!), he argued that China was essentially socialist. Why? Because they claim to be. Because state ownership plays a significant (determining?) role in the economy, regardless of foreign capital penetration (WalMart) or planning mechanisms — and because he saw no fundamental difference between the triumph of the "capitalist road" politically with the (appaulingly evident) changes in the "mode of production."

If we want to know where the sharpest argument is brewing in the International Communist Movement -- the questions of state capitalism, revisionism and popular agency are the key points of disagreement. After a year of profound growth in all camps, the bases of unification and advancement are upon us. And I'm concerned that if revolutionary, MLM advancements are not made far beyond their current fractional status, we won't be able to sum up the last century to advance towards communism. Revisionism can win. How do we know? Because it already did win everywhere socialism was established.

So read on. And let's get into it.

Here understanding China is key. And rather than just say "but the Chinese bourgeois dictatorship is creating the world's largest proletariat," we might all gain from some more serious analysis. The argument was not so much over whether China was something to emulate, as what was the bottom line basis of unity. My argument was that China was essentially fascist: state capitalism, dictatorship over the proletariat and with no possibility of popular agency within the confines of the capitalist state. In other words, we cannot accomodate with revisionism, as the range of an imagined possible, and build a liberation movement.

Red Cat, White Cat is an essential introduction to the "contradictions of market socialism," and its author, Robert Weil, has just written an extensive class analysis of contemporary China. What follows is Conditions of the Working Class in China and an attached Word version of the entire document at the very end. An abridged version will also be appearing in the forthcoming issue of Monthly Review.

We are the beating heart and nimble hands of our poets

I keep coming back to Roque Dalton. Where Neruda was the poet of the people in all, Dalton is a tangible breath of communists and rebels. He was critical without cynicism, advanced without detachment. As I'm just poetic, I turn to the poets.

FOR A BETTER LOVE
By Roque Dalton
Trans. Richard Schaaf

"Sex is a political category."
—Kate Millet

Everyone agrees that sex
is a category in the world of lovers:
hence tenderness and its wild branches.

Chinese Gov't Shuts Down Leftist Workers Website

Stephon Phillon conducted this interview with Yan Yuanzhang for MR Zine:

On February 22nd, the Chinese government shut down the China Workers' Website and Discussion Lists because, according to the order of closure, the owner of such a website must make a 10,000,000 Yuan (US $1.2 million) deposit to register it as a legal one.  The editorial collective responded that they would not be able to pay the fee since they were mostly farmers and employed and  unemployed workers without access to such a huge sum.  Thus the first leftist-run website in China that enabled workers and farmers to talk about their struggles to defend socialism in today's China was shut down. 

Below is an interview I conducted on February 26th with one of the administrators of the China Workers Website editorial collective in Beijing.  He, as well as other members of the collective, is evidence of a new generation of leftists in China who are actively involved in struggles of workers and farmers, stepping into the role that the Party rejected long ago.

Q: Now, why would the Chinese government, a socialist government in name, be concerned about a website run by leftists discussing the kinds of things that were discussed on the China Workers Website?

A: Well, because the government is not making socialism.   

Q: Of course.  I'm asking because outside China there are still some leftists who see China as a socialist country.

A: Well, hearing such nonsense would reduce a pig to tearful fits of laughter!

Our web discussion is designed for workers and farmers to discuss their issues and struggles.  This is the kind of thing a socialist democracy would want, for workers to have the kind of democracy that capitalism couldn't provide.

A National People's Congress will be convened soon, and the government knows that workers and farmers' voices will be heard by representatives and might even make way into the speeches made at the Congress.  The government doesn't want that -- it actually fears even the possibility of it.  So, when the national representatives speak, workers are supposed to keep their mouths shut. [continued]