Civilian Death Toll in Afghanistan on the Rise

More US and allied soldiers are entering Afghanistan, but a United Nations report says the civilians aren't any safer because of this.

1,013 Afghan civilians were killed by bombings and air-strikes in the first half of 2009, and the number of murdered innocents is steadily rising. That is a 24% increase in civilian deaths!

One family was attacked by American soldiers when the troops believed the family's house was being used by insurgent gunmen. The Americans kicked down the family's door and began shooting. The family's mother was killed by the American attack on their home, and their neighbor's nine-day-old baby was also killed by US soldiers. The figures from the UN prove that this attack (along with the 1,013 other deaths) wasn't an isolated incident.

This is the "change" Obama is bringing to the people of Afghanistan and the world, this is the change the US military and its lackeys are bringing to the Middle East.

Chipotle Exploits Farmworkers

The following was taken from an email sent out by the group American Rights At Work.

More than 10,000 activists have urged Chipotle to stand up for exploited Florida farmworkers.

Momentum is building. People around the country have been calling on Chipotle to live up to its “food with integrity” promise – and now they’ve taken their demands to the streets, protesting in front of film screenings sponsored by Chipotle.

Here’s what’s happening: hoping for a bit of good publicity, Chipotle has been sponsoring screenings of Food, Inc., a new documentary about injustices in the food system.

It's a good film – but Chipotle doesn’t seem to be getting the film’s message. It has refused to join in a formal agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers – a widely respected farmworker organization – to improve the rights and working conditions of the Florida farmworkers who pick many of its (Chipotle's) tomatoes. These farmworkers have one of the worst jobs in America, with sub-poverty wages, back-breaking labor, and unimaginable exploitation.

Activists have been demonstrating outside Chipotle’s movie screenings to point out the hypocrisy. Chipotle has tried to stop the message from spreading – even going so far as to remove volunteers from tables they’ve reserved at the screenings!

More than two dozen leading writers, organizers, filmmakers, and farmers – including the director of the documentary Chipotle is sponsoring – have signed an open letter calling on Chipotle to do the right thing and use its influence to protect farmworkers’ rights.

Chipotle can't have it both ways. The company can't claim to stand for "food with integrity" while ignoring worker exploitation in its supply chain. We're going to keep turning up the heat until Chipotle lives by its own "food with integrity" pledge.

Click here to stand up for farmworkers!

Deputy PM Says No to Integration of Maoists into Army

On Thursday, Nepali Deputy Prime Minister Bijaya Gachchadar said the Maoist PLA fighters will not be integrated into the Nepal Army.

"My party has reservation to the very word integration of the army. Maoist combatants should be adjusted to other fields of the society rather than merged into the army," Gachchadar said.

"As the Maoists' Peoples' Liberation Army (PLA) personnel are politically indoctrinated, such kinds of combatants should not be inducted into the national army," the Deputy PM also said.

Gachchadar also put emphasis on a broader democratic alliance to form a stronger "democracy" in Nepal.

"Maoists should also be included in the democratic alliance as the party has already made a commitment to multiparty democracy and peace process. There is a need to forge unity among all the democratic and communist forces in order to take the peace process to the logical conclusion and to draft a new constitution," he said.

I wonder what makes the Nepali national bourgeoisie and their representatives say that the Maoist PLA is politically indoctrinated? The Bhairav Nath Battalion (a special unit) of the Nepal Army has a motto that says “Sacrifice is Satisfaction.” These people are so dedicated to the rulers of their country, many of whom are foreign puppets, that they would be satisfied to sacrifice their lives for them. How is that not a sign of political indoctrination? Or does it only count as indoctrination when the communists do it? The Deputy Prime Minister of Nepal is nothing but a hypocrite!

Victory to the Maoists!

Groups Protest Obama-Arroyo Meeting

By ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – Chants of “US imperialist, No. 1 terrorist!” and “Death to imperialism!” reverberated through the streets as over a hundred activists marched toward the US embassy in Manila earlier today to protest the meeting between US President Barack Obama and Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The rally was spearheaded by Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance) and the Philippine chapter of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS-Philippines).

Rita Baua, vice chairperson of ILPS-Philippines, said the meeting between Obama and Arroyo would serve the agenda of strengthening US military and economic interests in the Philippines.

Bayan secretary-general Renato Reyes Jr., meanwhile, warned the public to “watch out for deals” between the US and Philippine governments as Arroyo seeks Obama’s approval.

“We should be very concerned with the agenda of the Arroyo-Obama meeting,” Reyes said. “We don’t know if Mrs. Arroyo will sell us down the river again. In her desperation to stay in power, she may offer the US de facto basing rights, increased troop deployment and 100-percent foreign ownership of land. We have to closely monitor whatever deal they will strike.”

Reyes also said Arroyo will be seeking Obama’s approval – a view also expressed by Roger Soluta, Kilusang Mayo Uno’s (KMU or May 1st Movement) deputy secretary-general.

Protesters demand justice for Melissa Roxas. (Photo by Alexander Martin Remollino / bulatlat.com) Cherry Clemente, secretary-general of Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) party list, meanwhile, warned that the Obama-Arroyo meeting “could spell more hardships (for the Filipino people) under a kleptocratic and murderous regime.”

Migrante International chairman Garry Martinez said Obama should fulfill his promise of “change” by asking Arroyo to change her government’s policy, “which means putting an end to human-rights violations and corruption.”

The protesters marched from Taft Avenue along Maria Orosa Street before turning to MH del Pilar Street and then to UN Avenue. Police stopped them near the corner of UN Avenue and Roxas Boulevard, and a brief commotion ensued when policemen pushed the protesters with shields. After a few minutes of negotiations, however, the protesters were allowed to reach the corner of UN Avenue and Roxas Boulevard, which is just a few steps away from the embassy’s main gate.

Stalin Was a Faithful Marxist-Leninist

Please note that this article is old, and was written by somebody other than the blogger, so some of the contact details listed might be invalid.

(from "EurekAlert!" http://www.eurekalert.org
Contact Henk Klomp klomp@nwo.nl
31-70-3440714
Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research)

Stalin remained true to the Marxist ideal of a classless and stateless society until his death in 1953. This is the conclusion of researchers at Amsterdam University (UvA) who studied Stalin's annotations in books by Marx, Engels, and Lenin in his private library. The research was carried out in the form of a project funded by the Dutch research organization NWO. Many people have viewed Stalin - who always considered himself Lenin's most faithful disciple - as having betrayed Marxist principles from the moment he came to power. However, the researchers say that Stalin's words and deeds are in fact reconcilable.

The notes originate from the period between 1917 and 1953 and show that the dictator continued to adhere to such Marxist goals as the abolition of the state and the creation of classless society. Moreover, Stalin's correspondence and discussions with such Communist leaders as Mao Zedong and Palmiro Togliatti show a continuing faith in the spread of communism and "world revolution."

Stalin has often been accused of betraying Marxism because of the way he built up a centralised state and because of his principle of "socialism in one country." These political aims are supposed to have undermined the Marxist doctrines of a classless society and world revolution. Stalin's patriotism is also supposed not to fit in with the Marxist world view but to represent a return to ancient Russian traditions.

The Amsterdam historians say that Stalin was not in fact the originator of the idea of "socialism in one country." This principle states that an internationally isolated socialist state has long-term viability and constitutes an intervening phase on the way to the ultimate classless and stateless world society. The idea in fact originated with the German Social Democrat Georg Vollmar, and the orthodox Marxist Karl Kautsky also propounded the idea of an autarkic socialist state when explaining his Erfurt Programme. His comments on the Erfurt Programme were virtually the bible for Marxists in the early twentieth century. Thus the idea of socialism in one country was originally developed within the Socialist Second International, which the Russian Bolshevik party originally belonged to.

According to the researchers, Stalin's patriotism has a Jacobin origin. The Jacobins were a left-wing French political movement in the eighteenth century who aimed to use revolution to revive their fatherland. Stalin, too, saw this as his main aim, believing that it could only be brought about through a revolutionary transformation. He considered the Tsarist-capitalist system as responsible for weakening the Russian state.

The political works in Stalin's private library are almost all by Marxist authors. Books by non-revolutionary Russian political thinkers are not included. The library consisted originally of some 19,500 titles, 5000 of them on political and related topics.

Further information:

Dr. Erik van Ree (UvA)
T +31 20 525 2470
Email e.v.ree@hum.uva.nl

South Korean Fishing Boat Seized by North

The North Koreans have seized a South Korean fishing boat today. The fishing boat accidentally crossed into North Korean eastern sea territory this morning.

Around 6:30 a.m. Thursday (2130 GMT Wednesday) a North Korean patrol boat spotted the fishing boat "800 Yeonan" and took the vessel and those on board into custody. The fishing boat's satellite navigation system malfunctioned, causing it to accidentally cross into North Korean territory according to an official at South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"We immediately radioed to the North Korean navy, requesting the return of the stray South Korean fishing boat, but there was no response," a Joint Chiefs of Staff office spokesman said.

Seoul's Unification Ministry sent a letter to North Korean maritime authorities regarding this matter. The North confirmed that it received the letter and notified the South via telephone that it would look into the matter.

South Korean officials, at the moment, don't know the location of the fishing boat. They aren't sure if it has been towed into a North Korean port, but reports claim the fishing boat was being taken to the North's Jangjon port.

The Western media will be all over this story. More material for them to use against North Korea. If a North Korean fishing boat strayed into South Korean waters and was treated unjustly nobody would say anything outside of North Korea. As if a bad thing is somehow less bad when carried out by capitalists. The media, those morons, act like the South Korean military shoots marshmallows and flowers while the North shoots bullets made from Satan's sperm.

The Newest Episode of Guerrilla TV

Here is the latest episode of Guerrilla TV on the Maoist Rebel News Network. First the host, Red Nick, discusses the Kurdish flag in the background. Then he reports on a meeting of Kurdish politicians who discussed Kurdish freedom and the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party). Then he covers the latest actions of resistance by the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine). He also covers the Indian Maoists ongoing struggle, as well as a boss-napping in France and a plant occupation in South Korea. Please subscribe the Maoist Rebel News to see the upcoming episodes of Guerrilla TV and more! Click here to go to the Maoist Rebel News channel and subscribe.

Why Iran Needs Revolution and Why You Should Hate the Islamic Republic

Here is something for all of the radicals and revolutionaries who support Ahmadinejad for strictly anti-imperialist reasons. I don't think you'll support him after reading this account of the crimes his military lackeys have committed. My point here is that the Iranian people need to support the election results like they need imperialist intervention, which obviously means they don't need either. Iran needs a revolution from below. The establishment of a Marxist republic in Iran will do more harm to the imperialists and their cash-flow than allowing the Islamic "Republic" to exist.

From A World to Win News Service. The following are excerpts from an account by a Tehran doctor that appeared in the UK Guardian July 9. His name and other details were not published.

I have been working in a public hospital in Tehran over the last few weeks. The authorities are covering up the number of dead protesters and their causes of death. The official statistic is 20 dead—that's wrong. In our hospital alone there were 38 riot deaths in the first week. Most died from gunshot wounds.

A colleague told me that in his hospital there were a further 36 gunshot casualties and 10 deaths. Four public hospitals admitted wounded protesters during the riots, but it is hard to know the total figure of dead. Other hospitals were prevented from helping. Basiji militiamen attacked doormen in one hospital for letting in wounded protesters. In the hospitals that were allowed to function, the Basijis replaced the hospital admissions staff and took the IDs of wounded patients.

Medical staff are under huge pressure to cover up the injuries they treated; I know one doctor who killed themself.

If the patients died of gunshot wounds, the Basiji confiscated their bodies and told the families they had been "transferred" for organ donation. They removed the bullets and returned the bodies with a different postmortem report. By the second week the Basiji were better organised and took the bodies directly from the streets. There were many dead the hospitals never saw.

As for the injuries, they speak for themselves. There were multiple points of gunshot impact—proving the authorities were shooting liberally. Their victims were indiscriminate.

Two pregnant women were shot—one through the spleen, she survived and the other died. For the latter, the authorities say a photograph of her circulating the Internet had been taken in another country, but that's not correct. She was wounded, treated and died in Tehran. They shot her three times. One bullet penetrated the foetus's spine.

How can a doctor lie on his medical records after operating on a case like that?

Many of my friends and my cousin even (who was wounded) saw snipers up on the rooftops during the protests. They said these snipers were targeting people through their rifle lenses. The injuries we witnessed in hospital testify to this. One 32-year-old patient had gunshot impact entering the sub-umbilical region with an exit wound on the thigh, which proves the bullet came from above.

From what I have seen and heard, this medical cover-up has been happening all over the country. But unofficially, medical staff report dead in Isfahan, in Shiraz, in many places. Like here, the authorities are making sure the hospitals don't reveal the numbers...

Prison is a question of luck. If you get arrested by the Basiji and taken to a Basiji centre—that's the worst. The Basiji are not supposed to have centres of their own, they are meant to deliver to the prisons, but they have their own rooms—and that's the most dangerous place to be.

Then there's Evin prison. I have one cousin who was taken there for the last student uprising. There is a huge empty room where they ask you to identify protesters. If they sense you are afraid, they force you into confessing anything and identifying anybody. It's not so much what you say as the fact they debased you.

Most protesters are moved from prison to prison, so they become untraceable. Knowing the cover-up in the hospitals, I worry many protesters might be "untraceable" forever.

James Crowley Acted Stupidly

Here is a newsflash for all of you who don't know what really happened with police officer James Crowley and Henry Louis Gates, and those of you who think racism is dead should also pay attention to this. This is proof that just because the President is a minority doesn't mean racism against minorities is dead (some people are dumb enough to think racism is dead).

The 911 tapes from the night of Henry Louis Gates' arrest prove that the cops did, in fact, act stupidly. The caller on the tape doesn't identify either suspect as being African-American. The caller even says the people supposedly breaking into the house might live there due to the presence of two suitcases. Did the police take this into consideration? No, they just wanted to arrest somebody. They probably figured they could get away with it because Gates is a minority, and, whether you want to believe it or not, all bourgeois judges are either racists, judicial activists, on a power trip, or all of those, and judges like that love to send people to prison regardless of whether the suspect is innocent or not. There have even been reports of prison companies paying judges to sentence innocent people to jail-time.

Henry Gates was arrested for yelling, which means Crowley arrested him for no reason at all. Yelling isn't a crime, nor does it meet the requirements to be considered disorderly conduct in Massachusetts. Officer Crowley was trying to fill his arrest quota, not "protect and serve." He acted stupidly, and you mentally-retarded conservatives (because conservatism is a cognitive disorder) need to accept that fact. I know withdrawing from fantasies is hard for right-wingers, but for the good of the world and yourselves, you need to either enter reality or crawl in a hole and die.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

American Influence and Lies in Colombia

The military partnership between the USA and Colombia is expanding. Washington plans to set up new "anti-narcotics operations" at three Colombian military bases.

Many people in Colombia, and around the world, are quite displeased with Washington's plans. One of the displeased is Colombian senator Gustavo Petro. Petro claims the proper way to combat narcotics in Colombia doesn't involve military action, and all Washington is really doing with its latest plans is increasing its imperialist/neo-colonialist influence in Colombia.

The US says it will only use unarmed surveillance aircraft and will not interfere with Colombia's ongoing conflict with FARC-EP.

The US and Colombia haven't reached a deal on these plans yet, but the officials at the American Embassy in Bogota are working to get one finalized.

The Colombian government is saying that the US operations in Colombia will be restricted, and that the American military isn't authorized by the deal to engage in combat in Colombia or attack other countries from Colombia.

The plans Washington and Colombia are discussing have caused tensions in the region, angering Colombia's neighbors Venezuela and Ecuador.

Colombia will soon become the United States' main military base in South America.

"There seems to be no change in foreign policy from the military standpoint between the Obama and the Bush Administrations," Gustavo Petro said. And right he is! When in doubt, ask a well-informed foreigner.

The Republicans are crying that Obama isn't "defending" America abroad, and the Democrats are saying they aren't militarily meddling in other country's affairs. But the quote from senator Petro prooves they are both telling lies.

I wouldn't trust what the Americans and pro-American rulers in Colombia say about this new "anti-narcotics" plan. Just look at the American military's "humanitarian operations" in the Philippines. The White House and Philippine government said the American military wouldn't engage in combat over there, but several American soldiers have been integrated into the Philippine "quick reaction force." One American soldier was even wounded in battle by the NPA rebels. And many similar events have taken place around the world. America has lied before, and it will lie again. The claim that the US won't meddle in Colombia's military affairs is yet another lie, and "anti-narcotics operations" is probably a coverup term for something ten times more sinister that the US wants to do.

Maoists Say Importing Weapons From India Could Hinder the Peace Process

Unified CPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal has reportedly warned Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal that the government's plan to import weapons from India will derail the fragile peace process.

According to reports, the Maoist Chairman called PM Nepal Wednesday morning and expressed the serious objection of his party to Defense Minister Bidhya Bhandari's request to India to resume supplying weapons to Nepal.

Dahal also said that the import of any weapons while the peace process is still on is against the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) and will completely jeopardize the peace process, leading to the resumption of violence and more bloodshed in the country.

India stopped supplying lethal weapons to Nepal following the royal takeover in February 2005, but continued to provide non-lethal military hardware.

On Tuesday, Defense Minister Bhandari met her Indian counterpart A.K Antony and Foreign Minister S.M Krishna in New Delhi and asked for a resumption of military assistance to Nepal. She later told the media that India was positive on resuming the stalled military assistance and that details of the support would be finalized by a meeting of a bi-national committee.

Meanwhile, Raghuji Pant, PM Nepal's political adviser, denied there were any talks about the Defense Minister's request to India for military assistance between the PM Nepal and the Maoist chairman.

He told Republica Daily that Dahal only requested the prime minister to promote a joint secretary to the post of secretary.

He also quoted PM Nepal as telling Dahal that the government is only seeking "logistic support" for the Nepal Army, not any lethal military hardware.

Maoist leaders say the Defense Minister's request to India to resume the supply of weapons to Nepal smells of conspiracy to derail the peace process.

Speaking at an interaction program in the capital city Wednesday, Maoist leader Top Bahadur Rayamajhi said the government's plan to import weapons from India only goes to show that it wants to jeopardize the peace process and invite a situation of confrontation.

He further said that the prime minister and NC President Girija Prasad Koirala's recent statements against integration of Maoist combatants into the Nepal Army reeks of a conspiracy to derail the peace process.

Rayamajhi also accused the government of functioning as per the wishes of the Army.

Talking in the same program, Energy Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat had said the government can import weapons considering the country's security needs, but said a final decision on the matter has not been taken.

The Nepal government has not imported weapons from any country since the signing of the CPA with the Maoists in 2006.

Source: Nepal News

Attack On Gaza Wedding

The salafist Jund Allah group attacked a wedding in the Gaza town of Khan Younis yesterday. Estimates put the number of wounded anywhere between 50 and 60 people. The wedding was for a nephew of Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan. Dahlan supposedly tried to overthrow Hamas in 2007.

A bomb exploded below a stage for dancing before gunmen open fired on the wedding party guests.

Jund Allah is waging a campaign against "corrupt weddings" and is angry at Hamas for honoring a ceasefire with Israel. The group also says Hamas isn't enforcing Islamic law strictly enough.

Hamas police captured three of the bombing suspects today after a siege of the house they were hiding in. Muslim clerics negotiated the suspects' surrender.

Fatah has claimed that Hamas is responsible for the bombing, but they also said people received a warning to leave the wedding party fifteen minutes before the explosion. Other reports claim Fatah has said Dahlan's subordinates were responsible for the attack.

Hamas Willing to Cede Power

Ismail Haneya, the Hamas Prime Minister, said on Wednesday that Hamas is ready to cede power in order to reach an agreement with Fatah and Abbas.

"We are ready to give up our posts in the government and the cabinet for the sake of unity, but we will never drop any of our rights and principles in Palestine," Haneya said.

"[Hamas] does not seek to establish a separate (Islamic) entity," Haneya also said.

Rival factions Fatah and Hamas will hold more Egyptian-mediated unity talks this August. The aim of the talks is to establish a transitional unity government until the elections of January 2010. The mediators are expecting a deal this time.

Indian Maoists Resurface in Lalgarh

July 20: Lalgarh and the adjoining tribal belt in West Midnapore are once again on the boil. Over a month after the drive launched by the West Bengal government to drive the Maoists out, and contrary to chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s claims, the rebels have begun to resurface.

A landmine blast at Bakishole was followed by a fierce gun-battle between Maoists and the security forces near Ramgarh. The road between Dherua and Lalgarh was dug up. The police lathicharged* tribals after members of the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities gathered near the police camp at Gohomi-danga High School Monday morning to demand its "immediate removal." Twelve people, including some women and children, had to be hospitalized. Hours later, state home secretary Ardhendu Sen apologized for the lathicharge and said all police camps would be shifted out of school buildings by the end of July.

When asked about the Maoists’ "rejuvenation" despite the "success" of Operation Lalgarh, Mr Sen said: "It is a long process. The operation will continue."

As the 10 AM Monday deadline for the police to vacate the school camp neared, nearly 6,000 people gathered there, with schoolchildren in the front row, followed by women in the second tier and men at the back. When the police saw the situation getting out of control, the lathicharge began, in which children and women were not spared. Teargas shells were fired as well, injuring a dozen people.

*a 6 to 8-foot long cane tipped with an optional metal blunt (from the time the British controlled India)

Republicans Playing Games With Your Health

The Republicans in Congress only have a 36% approval rating, and 58% of Americans disapprove of the job Republicans are doing in Congress. Not only that, they are suffering from divisions within the party. You'd think a party in such a weak position would stop playing games and actually try to keep itself alive, but not the Republicans. It seems they've shot themselves in the foot again.

"How have they done that?" you ask. Well, most Americans are in favor of health care reform, but the Republicans are saying "no" to health care reform. They are playing games in Congress and are unfamiliar with the actual issue. Then again, Republican Congressman have been paid a lot of money by the private sector of the health care industry just to stop reform. All that matters to them is getting paid, not your health. It's all a big game to them, and, much like athletes, they get paid to play.

Republican Senator Jim DeMint (South Carolina), speaking about the health care issue in Congress right now, recently said, "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."

The main issue with health care should be people's well-being, not these political games. Not this closed-minded "we need to beat the evil president" game that Republicans like DeMint are playing. Even if they do prevent reform, it will be Waterloo for the Republicans, not Obama because, as I've said before, most Americans support health care reform. So, if reform is blocked, the people will be quite angry at the Republicans for not giving them what they want.

When asked about the specifics of Obama's health care plan, Republican Chairman Michael Steele was unable to answer. He knew absolutely nothing about the issue. If you are ignorant about the key issues, if you don't know your enemy, then how can you run a party? How can you expect to be taken seriously? Obviously the Republicans, from the grassroots to the highest echelons of the party, lack the commonsense to ask themselves this. They also lack work ethic. Sitting around all day complaining doesn't allow you to become more familiar with your enemy or the issues, but don't tell that to the Republicans. This is yet another example of how the GOP is playing political games with the health care issue, your health, and not actually taking the heart of the matter seriously.

If they were taking things seriously, then they would actually study the health care issue instead of just saying "no" to it all the time. They'd be able to answer questions about health care, unlike Steele, and they wouldn't be playing these political war-games with an issue millions of people are passionate about.

I hope the Republicans get bored with shooting themselves in the foot and decide they are more interested in shooting themselves in the head. GOP, please crawl off to a dark place and die.

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Italian Communists' Declaration of Solidarity With Militants in UCPN(M)

The position of Proletari Comunisti PCm Italy regarding the situation in Nepal is based on the slogan we launched a few months ago:

With the revolution in Nepal and the Nepalese Maoists engaged in the clash between revolution and counter-revolution, in the complex and difficult phase of struggle for the New Democratic Republic, marching toward the socialism.

In this context we do not support the position of chairman Prachanda but that of the comrades and leaders in the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) that supports another line in the current situation, Kiran and Gaurav [the militants]. We think that this line will become soon majority in the Party and more over in the Nepal revolution and among the masses in Nepal.

We want a national and international campaign with specific committees that invites comrade Gaurav to Italy and Europe.

Proletari Comunisti PCm Italy

Maoist Communist Party of Italy

Revolution Betrayed: The Dysfunctional Family On C Street

Although I don't like Trotsky, and I am not fond of using the Trotskyist phrase "revolution betrayed," it's the only phrase that I can think of to describe what the nuts on C Street believe and do. These Republicans (conservatives) in "The Family" living on C Street have made the founding fathers of America toss and turn in their graves. You can probably hear them doing that, and if you can't, then I'm sure you can hear King George III laughing almost victoriously. Far be it from me to defend an old revolution of the outmoded bourgeois system, but far be it from me to close my eyes to, and not speak out against, injustice carried out by people I consider to be reactionaries. As I'll show you in this little writing here, Republicans are reactionary to both the bourgeois and proletarian revolutions (the latter you already knew, so I won't go into that one).

The dysfunctional Republicans living on Crazy Street believe that God, not their constituents (supposing American votes are even counted), has given them their positions in the government. Much like monarchs, especially the absolute monarchs in Europe during their respective era. That is the first reason why Washington, Jefferson, and the rest of the old anti-monarchy fighters are turning in their graves.

The members of "The Family" have taken oaths of secrecy and accountability to each other. They believe they are, to an extent, above morality. They think morality is a thing for commoners, and they don't have to follow morals as much due to their claim of being "chosen" by God. This is probably one of the many reason why three individual sex scandals have come out of the C Street house of "The Family." Because of their oaths to each other and anti-morality, they believe they should be more responsible to each other than to their constituents. Wasn't the American government made "by and for the people," therefore making politicians responsible to the people and not each other? Supposedly it was, which is the second reason the American revolutionaries are turning in their graves, the second way The C Street Family has betrayed 1776.

The C Street Family calls itself a "Christian Mafia." I wonder if they mean Mafia as in organized crime. Coming from bourgeois politicians, I wouldn't be surprised. Anyway, they obviously seek to use Christian scripture to influence their political decisions. That is almost a complete slap to the face of "freedom of religion" (which the American Revolution supposedly stood for). They haven't passed any laws making Christianity the one and only religion allowed in the USA, but a Christian Mafia would certainly do it if they could. It should be obvious that if religion is influencing your political views, and you vote/rule according to your religiously political views, then you are forcing your religion on others. That is what the C Street Mafia is doing. The third reason the founding fathers aren't resting in peace.

The fact that the Republican Party hasn't taken any serious action against "The Family" on C Street is enough to show where that entire party stands. In this case, inaction is consent. They want the ideas of the Crazy Street Mafia to continue to corrupt your government. It's no surprise that the GOP is consenting on this, since both of the major American parties are corrupt to the core.

You'd think supporting the Republicans might bring you some kind of Republic, but it doesn't, it brings you a monarchy. The GOP has betrayed the American Revolution. You might not like it, but somebody needed to say it.

Royal Mail Staff On Strike

More than 12,000 postal workers are on strike as of Friday in a row over jobs, pay and services.

The 24-hour strike will affect cities ranging from Edinburgh to Plymouth. The union has accused Royal Mail of cutting the pay of employees and reducing services.

Dave Ward, the union's deputy general secretary, said: "There are serious and growing problems in the postal sector which urgently need resolving."

"We have renewed our offer of a three-month no-strike deal to Royal Mail in return for meaningful talks over modernization. The current cuts, bullying managers and ever-increasing workloads on a shrinking workforce cannot continue."

"Pressure and stress is at breaking point for postal workers."

Workers based in London, Edinburgh, Bristol, Darlington, Stoke-on-Trent, Plymouth, Norfolk and Essex will be taking part in the strike. Protest letters will be delivered to the Royal Mail's chief executive, Adam Crosier, and Business Secretary Lord Mandelson.

The union said it was receiving an "ever-growing" number of requests for industrial action from postal workers across the country. It said 400 requests for ballots on strike action have already been made and Mr. Ward warned that without progress the dispute would turn into a national strike.

Royal Mail said the CWU was objecting to changes its leaders had agreed to in 2007.

Controversial plans to part-privatize Royal Mail were put on hold by the government in June. The bill was due to go before Parliament before the summer break, but Lord Mandelson said it would not happen until "later".

Strikes Rock Greece Early This Week

Hunger strikes and regular strikes opened this week for Greece. These came after a state-terror filled weekend.

On Monday the 13th, trains across Greece were halted for two days as railway workers refused to work. Workers at Wind, a Greek mobile telecommunications giant, went on strike for 24 hours. Wind workers and strike supporters gathered around the company headquarters and blocked its entrance on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, protesters attacked the central OTE (National Telecommunication Company) tower in Athens. They tried to cover much of the tower with black paint, black to symbolize the criminal information blackout that OTE managers have called for. A lot of OTE workers supported the protest. This came after OTE filed a lawsuit against Athens Polytechnic for hosting the Athens Indymedia.

19 Pakistani asylum seekers, currently being held in a south Athens jail, are on hunger strike. They are protesting the agreement between the Pakistani Embassy and Greek Ministry of Public Order to repatriate the 19 asylum seekers.

Israeli Troops Speak About Gaza War

A document from an Israeli activist group shows that Israeli soldiers were ordered to not worry about killing civilians. Israeli soldiers were ordered to shoot first and worry later during their war on Gaza earlier this year.

"Better hit an innocent than hesitate to target an enemy," one soldier said, describing the orders his superiors gave him.

"If you're not sure, kill ... In urban warfare, anyone is your enemy. No innocents," another soldier said, interpreting his orders for the press.

The document gives details about Israel's criminal plans to demolition Gazan homes during the war, as well as their use of the highly controversial white-phosphorus. Some testimonies even talk about how white-phosphorus was used in the war. White-phosphorus is a weapon that can cause severe chemical burns and is a known killer of innocent civilians.

"The way to do that was to actually fire phosphorus shells from above," one Israeli soldier said, talking about his orders to "ignite" an area.

"What the phosphorus does is to let out an umbrella of fire over the target and naturally that ignites the whole house."

One Israeli soldier described his dislike of using white-phosphorus. "...because in training you learn that white phosphorus is not used, and you're taught that it's not humane."

Some Israeli soldiers described a procedure in which they forced civilians to enter a building before they did. That way, if Gazan militants were hiding inside ready to shoot, they'd shoot the civilians and the Israelis would know the building contained their enemy. Kind of like a human shield, which these Israeli (and other imperialists) hypocrites always criticize Islamic groups for supposedly doing.

An older report by Amnesty International accuses Israel of violating the laws of war and putting civilians, especially children, in harm's way "by forcing them to remain in or near houses which they took over and used as military positions."

The Israeli military killed over 1,300 Palestinian civilians in Gaza, many of the dead civilians were children. They left over 600,000 tonnes of rubble for the people of Gaza to clean up.

Israel is naturally denying the charges against it.

This is what happens when you have a bourgeois military serving the interests of the government and the capitalist companies that control it. Hamas wouldn't be in Gaza if Israel had stayed within its original (as in very first) borders, and the war in Gaza would have never happened. These civilians wouldn't be dead if the Israeli ruling class didn't profit from destruction and land-grabbing. War crimes could have possibly been prevented, or lessened, if the soldiers were allowed to elect and recall their "superior" officers like Soviet Red Army soldiers could do during the Russian Revolution. The Israeli government and Israeli military leaders are war criminals. They should be hanged.

Do you want to see war criminals, both Israeli and otherwise, be brought to justice? Do you want a democratic military controlled by the people and not the profit and power-hungry CEO's and their government stooges? Do you want to see civilians stop dying? Do you want to see peace in the Middle East? If so, make a move for real change, not Obama pseudo-change. It's class against class in this world, support your class, support the masses, support communism and the world revolution!

If Texans Are This Dumb, Why Not Mess With Them?

I figured I needed to post something.

I always hated the borderline-retarded chauvinism that comes out of Texas, and I know most people in the Texan state government (on all levels) are idiots, but I didn't know Texas was this bad. The Board of Education in Texas needs to be fired. Just look at what the idiot Republicans are proposing there. Watch the video.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

36 of the Enemy Killed by CPI (Maoist)

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Indian Maoist rebels have successfully killed a police superintendent who has been on their hitlist for quite some time. The Maoists shot two police officers, and then ambushed the team of police who were sent to investigate the shooting later in the day.

Landmines were used on the responding police before the Maoists open-fired with their guns.

“26 personnel, including the SP, were killed in the ambush,” a senior police official said. The Maoists successfully escaped into the forest before police reinforcements could arrive.

The Maoists later destroyed a police jeep near the same area, killing 8 police officers instantly. And with this, the number of capitalist troopers killed by the Maoists reached 36 (all in one day).

Both attacks took place around 90km from Raipur.

Long live People's War!
Victory to the Maoists!


Click here for more details.

Israeli Blockade Taints Water

As you could have guessed, it's very hot in Gaza. People there don't have many ways of cooling off, so they go to the beach every weekend. It's the only recreational area in Gaza. Unfortunately, they can only go to a small part of their beach.

The most polluted area of Gaza is in the center of the Gaza Strip and up to the north of Gaza City. So people have to go to the southern part of Gaza to swim. The only reason the southern part is clean enough to swim in is because an Israeli settlement used to be there, and the settlement had a sewage treatment plant to go along with it. Unfortunately, the Israelis removed the plant when they left.

The sewage treatment center in Gaza is built to only treat 40,000 cubic meters of sewage per day, but the people of Gaza produce over 60,000 cubic meters of sewage per day. Over 20,000 cubic meters of raw sewage is dumped into the ocean every day.

The Israelis continue to disallow more equipment to be sent into Gaza, even to clean the water. So the people of Gaza are forced to live next to a sea of their own sewage, their own bodily waste! That is neither healthy nor humane.

The US Military is Filled With Nazis

Growing evidence suggests that neo-Nazis and other white-supremacists are infiltrating the US armed forces. The Southern Poverty Law Center recently urged Congress to conduct an investigation into this matter to make sure the military isn't training future terrorists (neo-Nazis are the real "domestic terrorists").

The SPLC sent a letter about this issue to the chairmen of the House and Senate committees on Homeland Security and Armed Services.

The SPLC recently found a website that is similar to Facebook, only for neo-Nazis. Dozens of its racist members listed "military" as their occupation. There are also FBI and Department of Homeland Security reports that back up the SPLC's claim that the military is being infiltrated by neo-Nazis.

"Evidence continues to mount that current Pentagon policies are inadequate to prevent racial extremists from joining and serving in the armed forces," SPLC founder Morris Dees said. He continued, "Because the presence of extremists in the armed forces is a serious threat to the safety of the American public, we believe Congressional action is warranted."

In 1986, the SPLC gave evidence to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger that some Marines were participating in Ku Klux Klan paramilitary activities. Weinberger issued a directive about this, but it was inadequate. In 1996, three soldiers from Fort Bragg murdered a black couple in North Carolina for a racially-motivated ritual.

Last year, the FBI released a document that supports the Southern Poverty Law Center's claims about neo-Nazi infiltration in the military. This past April, the Department of Homeland Security said that Nazis and other white-nationalists are joining the military to gain combat training and weapons. It also said that right-wing extremists are the number one domestic terrorist threat in the USA.

In 1994, over 12,500 American military personnel were discharged simply because they were homosexuals. "It seems quite anomalous that the Pentagon would consider homosexuals more of a threat to the good order of the military than neo-Nazis and other white supremacists who reject our Constitution's most cherished principles," said Mark Potok, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project, which monitors extremist activity.

Click here for the source.

Nepali Maoists Begin CC Meeting and Allow House to Resume

The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) began its Central Committee meeting recently. They will debate on Pushpa Kamal Dahal's (Prachanda) 19-page political document. The document states that the formation of a Maoist-led national government should be the party's top priority. This document was recently passed by the politburo.

The meeting will also make decisions on the party's strategies, division of responsibilities to central leaders, management of party full-timers, integration of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and the party's general convention.

Debate on these issues, as well as other issues, will begin once debate on Dahal's document is finished.

The Nepali parliament resumed Monday after the CPN (UML) and UCPN (Maoist) reached an agreement on the parliament issue.

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal agreed to address the Maoists' demands in the parliament if the UCPN would allow it to resume its functions. Nepal also agreed to define the powers of the president and PM within one month.

Prachanda has accused the UML of being controlled by foreign powers with imperialist agendas. He also said his party has decided to allow the parliament proceedings as a reply to those who are trying to subvert the very essence of the parliament.

Iranian Revolution? Part 2

A few weeks ago now, I began to analysis the electoral crisis in Iran. I apologize for the delay in releasing the second part. In trying to understand the recent mass protest against the "re-election" of Ahmadinejad I felt it necessary to put everything into it's correct context by looking in more depth at the last 50 years or so of Iranian history. While events may no longer be in the mainstream news, it would be foolish to assume now that everything is okay.

Last time, I discovered how British and American interventionism in Iran during the 1950s when Mohammed Mossaddeq, and his threat of Oil nationalization, was removed in a coup and the Shah, or King, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was put in his place.

The longer the Shah remained in power, the more authoritarian he became, indeed many of his behaviors violated the 1906 Iran Constitution. The Communist party at the time, the Tudeh Party of Iran, was shutdown and forced underground by the state. Political activists from the whole spectrum were arrested or spied on. Speaking against the Shah became a crime. The Shah created a cult of personality for himself. Pictures of him where everywhere throughout Iran, including massive posters on the streets and honorific pictures were shown before movies at the cinema. If anything, the Shah became a dictator. But while the US was bitterly locked in the Cold War with the USSR and its allies, the US was all too happy to support and prop up the Shah's dictatorial regime. This hypocritical behavior did not escape the Iranian people.

In 1963, the Shah introduced, well at least tried to introduce, a series of political and economic reforms aimed at improving the life's of the Iranian people, namely the White Revolution. This included 19 "elements", among them; allowing Women to "vote", ending feudal practices, increasing public health care, combating illiteracy and so on. While these reforms appeared to be such positive moves to us, they were severely criticized by the elitist, Conservative Islamist clergy. This band of clergy was led by Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini. Such was the opposition to said reforms that it led to mass protests, which due to the oppressive regime of the Shah quickly led to the deaths of many student protesters who were shot by armed police and military. Speaking at a protest on the 22nd of March 1963 Khomeini showed his opinion to Jews and Christians by saying;

"I have repeatedly pointed out that the government has evil intentions and is opposed to the ordinances of Islam. ... The Ministry of Justice has made clear its opposition to the ordinances of Islam by various measures like the abolition of the requirement that judges be Muslim and male; henceforth, Jews, Christians, and the enemies of Islam and the Muslims are to decide on affairs concerning the honor and person of the Muslims."

And later he in June of that year he showed more Antisemitism by asking at a protest if the Shah was an "infidel Jew". Khomeini then went into exile in November of 1964.

In 1971 the Shah was invited to the US to a meet and greet with then US President Richard Nixon. Further angering the oppressed Iranian people.

The Shah celebrated 2500 years of Iranian monarchy in October of 1971. It was reported to have cost hundreds of millions of dollars, all while millions of Iranian people were still living in poverty. Dozens of western and non-western leaders attend the celebrations.

In 1975, the Shah abolished completely a multi-party "democracy" and created his one party rule under the newly formed Rastakhiz Party. Democracy had slowly been eroded since '53 and now had completely gone. A Persian volcano of anger was building up in the Iranian people, the coming explosion was inevitable.

To be continued....

Click here to go to the original source of this article (Confessions of a Marxist)

A Communist for Mayor of NYC

Frances Villar, a 26-year-old mother of two and City University of New York student, will challenge New York City’s richest man in the 2009 New York City mayoral race. Villar will run on the Socialism and Liberation ticket.

"In the middle of the worst economic crisis our country has seen in decades, New York City deserves a candidate that speaks in the name of poor and working people, not for the billionaires,” Villar announced.

“My campaign will put the issues of unemployment, evictions, education and police brutality as the first order of business for the city to tackle—not the interests of the banks and billionaires,” she continued. “We live in the richest city in the country, but you would never know it by walking through the communities where most of us live.”

Villar is a student leader who has worked tirelessly against the city's and state’s efforts to make CUNY students pay for the budget crisis. She is the president of her building’s tenants association. She has organized against the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and against the occupation of Palestine.

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What the Frances Villar for Mayor (PSL) 2009 Campaign Stands For

• The billionaires are going to pay for this crisis! They created the crisis—now they should be the ones to pay for it. Tax Wall Street and the big landlords.

• People before banks! The city currently pays $5 billion every year to the banks in debt payments—before it ever makes it to the city budget. We are calling for the city to put the banks at the back of the line.

• Every New Yorker has a right to a job!

• New York City should be an eviction-free zone. No foreclosures or evictions in the city.

• Education is a right. Make sure every child in the city has a safe and modern classroom. Raise the salary for every public school teacher in the city, and make parents have a real say in their children’s curriculum. CUNY should be free.

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The above information was taken from this website (click here).

Here is a somewhat non-biased report on Villar by Russia Today. Unfortunately, the people at Russia Today who produced and edited this news video don't know anything about communism.



I just have one criticism. Shouldn't students be given a "real say" in their curriculum? After all, they are the ones forced to take these shit classes for the profit of the book companies, computer companies, the bourgeois state, etc.

I'd vote for Frances Villar if I lived in NYC.

Attack on Greek Judge

ATHENS, Greece- Police say a small incendiary device has exploded under the parked car of a top Greek judge in Athens, causing damage to the vehicle but no injury.

Panayiotis Pikramenos, the newly appointed Council of State president, was not near the car at the time of the brazen midday attack near the court in the city center Thursday.

Police say the homemade device consisted of four camping gas canisters — the kind typically used by small Greek anarchist groups.

Such groups frequently carry out nighttime arson attacks against symbols of state authority and wealth to protest government's social and economic policies, but very rarely strike in broad daylight.

There has been no claim of responsibility.

Immigrant Solidarity Demonstrations in Athens and Thessaloniki

Recently the Greek state and its neo-Nazi thugs seek to intensify their attacks on poor immigrants. Anarchists (most of them are of the anarchist-communist variety, those who read Bakunin and Kropotkin) and anti-authoritarians (a label that includes anyone fighting against state oppression, not necessarily an anarchist) from Greece called for a march in Athens on 7 July 2009 at 19.00 o'clock, against what they call a "modern apartheid" (referring to the recent attempts by fascists in the Saint Pandeleimonas district, where immigrants mainly stay, to disallow immigrants from entering into communal spaces such as play grounds or parks, but also to the cop operations in central Athens "clearing" the city of unwanted immigrants en masse with no regard for their human rights). It's worth mentioning that the Greek press and television has taken extreme xenophobic views recently, fully supporting the government's attempt to drive people's attention away from the economic crisis. There are also alarming government plans for all unwanted immigrants to be arrested and held at concentration camps for years.

The call to march was publicized on many places, including the Athens Indymedia (athens.indymedia.org) website, which operates from occupied computing equipment in the Athens Polytechnic university (NTUA), and the government and OTE (the major ex-public Greek telecom company) are desperately trying to locate and shut down. Anarchists in Greece also publicize their news and calls with wall posters, graffiti messages, anonymous blogs, through gatherings at occupied buildings or university campuses, and pirate radio stations (some of them operating from university campuses or near them). It is for these reasons that the Greek state seeks to end the anonymity of blogs and put cops inside university campuses, which are one of the few places in Greece still free of cops (the other one being the Exarchia district in Athens downtown which is traditionally controlled by anarchists and any cops there are attacked with Molotov cocktails, even though it is only a few hundred metres away from the high-society bourgeois district of Kolonaki and the police headquarters in Alexandras Avenue).

The march began at 20.00 o'clock in Omonoia Square, downtown Athens, the capital city of Greece.

Hundreds of counter-information flyers were distributed and a speech was made. The march (as shown in the photos) had about 2500 comrades, which scared the cops away for a while.

During the march various texts were distributed, anarchist graffiti was drawn, security cameras were destroyed, as well as bank ATM's. The march proceeded towards Saint Pandeleimonas (a neighborhood in Athens were lots of immigrants stay, who have recently came under attack by fascists) and when the head of the march was about to enter the district the cops immediately fired tear gas and shock grenades, with the comrades replying with stones and flare bombs.

The march had good defense and moved towards ASOEE (a public university in Athens specializing in economics; comrades in Greece take advantage of a sanctuary's law, called asylum, that disallows the cops to enter university premises). There was somewhat of a chaos there for a while, as some comrades where entering the university campus while others were leaving to go fight the cops in the nearby Patision street. The whole Patision street was in fire.

Barricades built with trashbins set on fire were keeping the cops away and after the usual (for Greece) violent fighting between anarchist comrades and the cops (and the huge amount of chemicals released by them) the cops came under a well-organized attack that forced them to take cover in the 3rd September street, while the whole Patision street was again set on fire.

Many immigrants were participating in the march and they attacked Delta guards (Deltades) in Victoria Square (Deltades are stupid thugs the state uses as light-cops until real cops can arrive): when comrades informed the immigrants that real cops were coming to Victoria Square (so that those with no passports could leave in time to avoid arrest and forced repatriation), the immigrants, disregarding their own individual self-interest, attacked the Deltades thugs, who took cover at the nearby OTE bulding (OTE is the Greek National Telecommunications Company, recently privatized and sold to German T-Telekom).

After the march, the Saint Pandeleimonas district was full of immigrants and clear of fascist scum or cops. The fascists supported the cops in their attempt to drive the march out of Saint Pandeleimonas.

A fascist accidentally set himself on fire while trying to use the anarchists' weapons against them, a sport the fascists aren't good at.

The anarchists carried multilingual banners in Greek, English, French, Arabic, Albanian, and other languages known to the immigrants. A banner held by comrades carrying black and red flags, both men and women, read: "war against bosses - solidarity to immigrants".

Some of the graffiti created during the march included: "death to fascists" on a bank's window and signed with the anarchists' circled-A symbol; "don't touch the Efetio" on the OTE building (telecom company) walls (the Efetio at the Sokratous Street is a big occupied courts building in Athens downtown where lots of immigrants live rent-free and was recently attacked by neo-Nazi thugs and cops, with the government eying to re-take it by force); "cops - TV - neo-Nazis, all the bastards work together" on a shop's security walls and signed with the anarchist circled-A symbol; "immigrants, my siblings, all of us together, black flag we rise to any authority" on a wall and signed with the circled-A; and a big circled-A symbol painted on a bank's advertisement immediately under the advert's words: "we are besides you".

A block of EEK members (EEK or Workers' Revolutionary Party is a Greek Trotskyist political party with about 6,000 votes) was also seen marching in the streets near the anarchists but not really intermingling with them. Anarchists in Greece generally boycott the elections, but a few anti-authoritarians sometimes do vote for small leftist parties. But even the bigger political parties on the left of the political spectrum, such as the Syriza coalition, try to persuade anti-authoritarians that they support their views, because they want to capture for their interests the dynamism of the anarchist and anti-authoritarian scene, which is particularly powerful and influential in Greece, especially amongst the youth. While anti-authoritarians in Greece sometimes do support particular parties, anarchists keep true to Kropotkin and other classical anarchists' call for revolution without representatives. The fact that leftist parties carry on trying to win votes from anti-authoritarians and the anarchist-influenced youth reveals the strong influence of anarchism in contemporary youth culture in Greece, and also explains why the Greek government is so desperate to upgrade its repression and surveillance apparatus (it recently asked the Scotland Yard for help and plans to introduce DNA databases and ban anonymous mobile phones).

A march also took place in Thessaloniki in northern Greece (the second biggest city of the country). Bank ATM's were also set on fire there.

Fire engines were seen driving out of downtown Athens by 21.30-22.00 o'clock after their attempts to put down the fires and the revolutionary spirit with them. But no matter how many fires they put down, they and the whole state apparatus won't succeed to put down the coming revolution, because that's what the people want.

NASA Confirms that Polar Ice is Melting

NASA has released new satellite data that confirms what research released a few months ago stated. The information from NASA says that Arctic sea ice has been thinned extremely in the past four years, and that for the first time in recorded history seasonal sea ice cover has replaced multi-year ice as the dominant type of ice. In fact, multi-year ice cover the size of Alaska has been lost between 2004-2008.

NASA says it used ICESat measurements to determine that Arctic sea ice has thinned by 7" per year. This resulted in a total loss over the past four winters of 22.2". The total area multi-year ice cover has shrunk by 42%.

Average multi-year sea ice is 9' thick, while average seasonal ice cover is 6' thick.

The ice is thinning because the sea ice lost in the summer was too much to be replaced in the winter. NASA says these losses are due to "to the recent warming and anomalies in sea ice circulation."

The following quote is from Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In it he explains the significance of this new data.

"Ice volume allows us to calculate annual ice production and gives us an inventory of the freshwater and total ice mass stored in Arctic sea ice. Even in years when the overall extent of sea ice remains stable or grows slightly, the thickness and volume of the ice cover is continuing to decline, making the ice more vulnerable to continued shrinkage. Our data will help scientists better understand how fast the volume of Arctic ice is decreasing and how soon we might see a nearly ice-free Arctic in the summer."

Sadly, conservatives will deny that polar ice is melting, therefore denying this data, and refuse to believe in global warming. Why? Because they can't tell the difference between reality and their fantasies, much like a severely retarded person. As a matter of fact, only a person with serious mental retardation would say NASA is wrong. Which means conservatives (conservatards) are all mentally retarded.

Check out the links below for more information, unless you are a conservatard, then you aren't intelligent enough to comprehend the articles (not to mention how to work the links to get to them).


http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/jul/HQ_09-155_Thin_Sea_Ice.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/07/nasa-confirms-dramatic-thinning-arctic-sea-ice.php

Police attacked again in Crete’s Zoniana

Police officers have been assaulted and threatened in the notorious Cretan village of Zoniana, the scene of a botched raid two years ago, in an incident that has been kept quiet for several weeks, sources told Sunday’s Kathimerini.

Three local police officers were allegedly beaten and threatened that they would be killed after they followed a pickup truck that had crashed into their vehicle and then drove off into the village.

The incident occurred on June 18 but authorities chose to keep it quiet, as there is already a highly tense atmosphere in the area since the trial of 42 locals began earlier this year in connection to the shooting of a police officer in November 2007. The policeman was left paralyzed after locals opened fire on officers.

Sources said that some of those who attacked the policemen last month are suspects in the ongoing trial.

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I love the Greek people. They don't take crap from bullies, especially those with badges and uniforms.

Sarah Palin is Stupid

Sarah Palin doesn't know anything about the government or how the presidency works. Check out this video by The Young Turks on Palin's latest idiotic comment about the "Department of Law" which is not a real department, or a real anything. Ask yourself this, do you really want a borderline retarded airhead as the president of the US? If you don't, then don't vote for Palin.



Even a staunch conservative woman on Fox News hates Palin and thinks she is unqualified to be president or governor. Just take a look at this video.



I would have just typed the information up myself like I normally do, but I wanted to make sure the Republican't Party members and their other conservatard friends know I'm not making things up.

Sarah Palin

As most political people in the US should know, Sarah Palin resigned from her position as governor of Alaska recently. She offered very few hints as to what she would do next. All the world knows is that she is pursuing a nationwide agenda now!

Palin has been disengaged and uninterested in her now former job as governor since her campaign for vice president ended with a failure.

"She had a surprising amount of disinterest in state government after November," said state Rep. Les Gara. "This state has a lot of problems, and she showed a complete lack of interest in solving them."

Palin has recently had multiple complaints filed against her with the state personnel board. Her appointment for attorney general became the first appointment to ever be rejected by the Alaskan legislature. Palin faced a potential veto override of around $29 million in federal stimulus funds for energy efficiency programs.

Last week Vanity Fair magazine published an article in which real aides of John McCain's presidential campaign doubted that Palin is ready to be president.

Sarah Palin has received nothing but flattery from uninformed morons (who prefer the term "Republican") in other states, but she is receiving tons of criticism in Alaska. If she had stayed as governor the criticisms would have increased. She only left to save her career. She cares more about her career than the good she can supposedly do for Alaska, not that a conservative could ever do good. She is a self-centered, elitist careerist and not a woman of the people.

If only the rest of the US knew what the Alaskans know, which is that Sarah Palin is lazy and incompetent. Just because she resigned as governor doesn't mean she won't continue screwing things up.

Fascist Conservative Police Attack Democratic Fundraiser

Although I don't agree with much, if anything, the Democrats say and do, my heart goes out to these victims of fascist (also called "conservative") police brutality.



As of July 3, the ACLU has issued a statement saying that the San Diego police violated the 4th Amendment rights of Democratic Fundraiser hostess Shari Barman (age 60) and used excessive force. All Barman was doing was holding a fundraiser for Francine Busby, a Democrat candidate. The fundraiser took place on June 26.

“The Sheriff’s deputy may have illegally entered a private home, disrupted lawful political activity, demanded personal information that was not required, and used physical force that was unnecessary. It is almost unfathomable how this incident was allowed to escalate to this degree," said Kevin Keenan, executive director of the ACLU San Diego and Imperial County.

“The fact that this incident escalated so quickly, and involved physical force, repeated use of pepper spray affecting numerous attendees, several older guests reportedly knocked to the ground, at least eight law enforcement officers, including a sergeant, a helicopter, an ambulance, two people being booked at Vista Detention Facility and perhaps several others arrested or detained for 'talking back to an officer' or taking photos with their cell phones but later released at the scene—all because of a vague noise complaint—speaks to a serious lack of law enforcement restraint,” Keenan added.

The police came banging on Barman's door when a Hitler-loving fascist (they call themselves "Republicans" now) made a noise complaint to the police. His complaint came after he failed to handle the matter maturely. Instead of respectfully asking Barman to lower the noise level, which he probably over-exaggerated so he'd have an excuse to complain and call the Gestapo...err... I mean police, he went over and yelled like a madman. Then, as the police arrived on the scene and took action, the neighbor, like the mentally retarded, developmentally delayed bigot that he (like all right-wingers) is, yelled anti-gay slurs at Barman and her guests from his property (because Barman is a lesbian). Busby and numerous witnesses, including other neighbors, say that there was no excessive noise, no live music and Busby’s speech ended at 8:30. The officer arrived around 9:30, a half an hour before the County’s 10 p.m. noise curfew.

The officer asked for Barman's date of birth. Barman asked why he needed to know, so the bully-in-uniform grabbed her arm and wrestled it behind her back as he forced her to the ground. This asshole ignored onlookers who kept telling him to be careful because Barman, the fragile old woman, recently had surgery on her shoulder. The so-called defender of the law then pepper sprayed innocent guests, including elderly people, arrested Barman, and called for back-up forces that included a helicopter. Since when do you need a god damn helicopter for a noise complaint? Busby said Barman was clearly in physical pain.

Busby believes the arrest was politically motivated because the police officer told them he heard a complaint about a Democratic rally.

“We will be asking for the records to make sure that if it was politically motivated, it doesn’t happen again," Busby said. "These fundraisers go on for every office from City Council to President…To have the hostess arrested with violence and wrestled to the ground is something that should concern us all…The obstruction of justice is not something to be taken lightly.”

According to the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, peace officers may not enter a person's home without a warrant or consent. The police who showed up had neither. They violated Barman's Constitutional rights!

The San Diego Sheriff's Department has refused to release information such as paperwork and 911 tapes regarding the incident. The ACLU is pushing for such materials to be released. The ACLU is also demanding an independent investigation into the incident.

All police should be put on trial. If a cop has done nothing wrong, then the cop should have nothing to fear. If the cop is a criminal with a badge, then he should be sentenced to hard labor like the pig that he is. The police need to be kept in check under this capitalist system, and until serious reforms are made or revolution comes, strictly defensive arms need to be taken up against the police. This way the average person will have some bargaining power.

Nepali Maoists Update

The marathon meeting of the Politburo of the Unified CPN (Maoist) concluded on June 29. The Politburo decided to aim for a Maoist-led national government.

"We had serious discussions on the current problems in the country as well as the party's internal issues during the politburo meeting. We were successful in reaching the right conclusion and consolidating the party unity," party chairman Prachanda said at the end of the meeting.

Prachanda said the Politburo has decided to push for a national government in place of the "unethically and unconstitutionally established" government of 22 parties. He claimed that the national government would be formed in a few weeks.

Saying that the reactionaries are trying to derail the peace process and keep the Constituent Assembly inactive, Prachanda said the party has vowed to stand up to the conspiracies of reactionaries. He also said the party would continue agitations unless the President's unconstitutional move of reinstating Army Chief Katawal was rectified.

The Politburo meeting, which ran for two weeks at the office of the Maoist sister organization at Koteshwor, passed Prachanda's 19-page long political document with a minor amendment.

Senior leader Mohan Baidya (Kiran) and his hardliner loyalists had criticized Prachanda's document for deviating from the long-held policy of "people's revolt" to establish a "people's republic". However, they did not bring up a separate proposal to counter Prachanda's policy document.

It was the first meeting of the Maoist Politburo after the party's exit from the government.

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Speaking to journalists in his home district of Chitwan on Wednesday, Unified CPN (Maoist) leader Prachanda said he was now concentrating on forming a "national government with civilian supremacy," which would come into existence in a month and a half. He made it clear that his party would not join the present unconstitutionally-formed government.

"They must be day dreaming if they are expecting us to join the present government," Prachanda said, accusing the ruling allies of ganging up against the Maoists in order to prolong their stay in power.

He also claimed that thousands of UML cadres were going to join the Unified CPN (Maoist) within a few days.

Prachanda recently claimed that the current UML-led government would collapse within weeks, giving way to a Maoist-led national government.

Review of The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee

The Coming Insurrection was written by an anonymous collective of people called "the Invisible Committee." This book has gained some popularity in anti-establishment circles. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that they were mainly anarchist circles.

The book is basically a big rant against modern society. It mainly rants against French society, but there are more similarities than differences in the Western world. And no, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with ranting intelligently like this book does.

The book begins by talking a little about communism, but the book seems anarchist in its action plans. If you only have elementary knowledge of anti-capitalist ideologies, then you might be confused by this. So I don't recommend it for beginners.

The book briefly states that Marxism-Leninism "mistakes provocation for affirmation", but doesn't explain how or why. To be fair though, I don't think explaining something like that was the point of the book.

Around the end of the book it says people should abandon their political milieus and groups because all they do is hinder revolutionary progress. It then says we should form communes in their place. I don't think this is a good idea. If radicals weaken their groups and gather together in communes they'll be more vulnerable. The authorities will finally have many, many radicals together in one spot, making it easier for the bourgeoisie to keep the radicals under control. Then again, staying scattered, divided, and weak in thousands of political/activist circles will never accomplish anything either. I think a nice balance between communes and milieus would work just fine. It might have to take a form independent of both though.

The Invisible Committee goes on to suggest in this book that communes should try to remain in the shadows and hide from public attention. I agree that too much attention could be a bad thing, but if communes remain entirely secretive they will never grow to a size big enough to carry out the revolution simply because most comrades won't have knowledge of their existence.

Most of the ideas regarding communes laid out in this book are weak and basic. Either the intention was to only give people the general idea or it wasn't thought out very well. In the case of the former, it wasn't made clear enough so you know some idiots somewhere will try to use the book as a manual and get hurt.

It's possible that I may have misunderstood something in the book, but I don't think I did.

This is one of those books where it can't be rated as a whole, but rather on individual characteristics. I give The Coming Insurrection five out of five stars for its polemics against the current society, and I give it two out of five stars for its ideas for action.

North Korean "Rockets Red Glare" on July 4

South Korean sources are now saying North Korea has fired three missiles off of its eastern coast on Saturday (Saturday in Korean time). The launches came around 48 hours after North Korea test fired four short-range missiles.

The US is still trying to get major support for tougher enforcement of the UN resolution imposed on the Juche nation for its May nuclear test.

South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff say that the North fired two missiles early Saturday morning, and the third was fired later in the morning. They Joint Chiefs of Staff declined to tell us what type of missiles were fired, but military officials are saying the missiles appeared to be a kind of Scud missile. The missiles are believed to have a range of 300 miles (500 kilometers).

"Our military is fully ready to counter any North Korean threats and provocations based on strong South Korea-U.S. combined defense posture," the Joint Chiefs of Staff statement said.

The North Korean media hasn't reported on the launches yet.

"Our ships and forces here are prepared for the tracking of the missiles and observing the activities that are going on," the chief of US Naval operations Admiral Gary Roughead said.

North Korea has warned shipping to stay away from the east coast through July 10.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on the missile launches.

If you are going by KST (Korea Standard Time), which all Koreans are, then the missile launches took place on the USA's Independence Day (July 4). Some believe this was done to intentionally snub and defy the United States. If you leave North Korea alone, and stop trying to starve them into Western "democracy" with sanctions and resolutions, then the world wouldn't have this sorry excuse for a missile crisis.

Imperialist hands off of both Koreas!

More North Korean Missile Tests

According to South Korea, the DPRK (North Korea) has test-fired four short-range missiles on Thursday. South Korean officials say that the North could be testing mid-range missiles in the following days. The DPRK could possibly launch four missiles.

North Korea has threatened military action if anyone tries to intervene in their domestic affairs. Intervention includes the search, and possibly seizure, of North Korean ships.

Japan has called Thursday's missile tests a provactive act, and South Korea has raised its security alert. The Russian government has not yet released an official statement on the recent missile tests. Russia has been trying to persuade the North Koreans to come back to the six-party talks.

Russians living near the North Korean border are very concerned about radioactive materials coming over from the DPRK's side of the border. They blame their worsening harvests on the North Korean nuclear tests.

South Korean civilians, however, aren't very concerned at all. They think North Korea's threats are empty. They are more concerned about their families and the South Korean economy. When you really think about it, especially if you compare the advanced military technology in South Korea to the outdated weapons in North Korea, you will see that the South Korean civilians have every right to be apathetic. They don't constantly live in fear as the imperialist media might have you believe. Undoubtedly, however, there are probably some who do have a legitamate fear of North Korea, but the North has more to fear from the South.

North Korea is conducting these tests with a goal in mind, to get one-on-one talks with the United States. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working. Hey Obama, why will you talk to the Taliban but not the North Koreans? The Taliban doesn't want to negotiate, but the North Koreans do!

Release Asit Kumar Sengupta and all political prisoners now!

Following is a press release from the organisation Struggle India dated June 2009, signed by M. N. Ravunni, its Acting General Secretary. (Contact: M.N. Ravunni, Mundur P.O, Palakkad District, Kerala, India. Phone: +91 9249713184).

On the afternoon of 22 January 2008, the notorious Chhattisgarh police raided the home of comrade Asit Kumar Sengupta and took him away. The same evening, they again raided in large numbers and searched his house for two days. His wife was detained for questioning. The police seized all the copies of the revolutionary internationalist journal A World to Win, titles put out by his publishing house Puravaiya Prakashan, all the books in his personal library and his PC. Violating the norms laid down by the Supreme Court, his arrest was formally registered only after two days. He has been accused of waging war against the state in association with a banned organisation, the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

Who is Asit Kumar Sengupta? Why was he declared an enemy of the state?

Awakened to radical politics through the 1960s mass struggles and mobilisations in West Bengal, Asit was attracted to the revolutionary movement through the Naxalbari armed struggle of 1967. Since then, his revolutionary cultural activism and work as a propagandist, begun at the age of 20, has never ceased up till this arrest. This creativity in the service of the people has, over more than four decades, spanned the diverse fields of literature, drama, publishing and journalism. A number of his short stories, short plays and articles in Bengali, Hindi and English have been published in various journals. His short plays were staged in a number of places, including in Delhi by students of the National School of Drama. With this literary and cultural background he took an active part in the formation of All-India League of Revolutionary Culture (AILRC) and later served on its executive committee for several years.

During the 1980s he was in the Central Reorganising Committee, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) [a grouping, since dissolved, that came out of the Naxalite rebellion that had led to the formation of the CPI(ML) after a split in the revisionist CPI(Marxist)]. He edited its Hindi mass paper Rashtriya Mukti, and also served as an Editorial Board member of its English periodical Mass Line. He fought revisionism within the revolutionary movement and played an important role in the process of reorganisation leading to the formation of the CPI (M-L) Naxalbari. He was prominent in propagating Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and presented a paper on behalf of A World to Win journal at the joint seminar in Kolkata commemorating the 150 anniversary of the Communist Manifesto.

Asit published A World to Win from Delhi for nearly a decade. He started publication of its Hindi edition Jitne Ke Liye Hai Puri Duniya, handling on his own almost all the translation and other editorial tasks. He launched a publication centre by the name of Puravaiya Prakashan (East Wind Publications), which brought out more than 20 Maoist titles, in English, Hindi and Malayalam. The A World to Win stall at the annual International Book Fair at Kolkatta used to be a well-noticed centre for revolutionary literature from all over the world.

When Struggle India was launched in May 2007 as an anti-imperialist, all-India mass front, he was elected its General Secretary.

The state-sponsored Salwa Judum [militia] in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh State of India, aimed at smashing the People's War led by the CPI (Maoist), is waging an inhumane campaign of suppression. Even the Supreme Court has called for ending it. Continuous and powerful protests of human rights and cultural activists were instrumental in this exposure. The state is doing all it can to suppress such opposition and clamp down on revolutionary propaganda. The arrest of Asit Kumar Sengupta is a part of this. Nearly two years back, Dr Binayak Sen, an international award-winning people's doctor and human rights activist, was arrested on charges similar to those foisted on Asit. Though an international campaign called for the release of Dr Sen, the notorious Chhattisgarh state government had denied even his right to bail. (It has now been granted by the Supreme Court.) Asit, too, is denied bail, while this case drags on without trial. During the 15 months since his arrest, the police could not produce any evidence in support of their charges other than the perfectly legal Maoist literature they have seized from his house. Yet they deliberately persist with the case so that this revolutionary intellectual will remain locked up in a prison cell, cut off from the people.

This is not a chance incident. Boasting of being the world's largest democracy, the Indian state deliberately targets revolutionary and progressive writers, publishers, journalists and human rights activists. This is done relentlessly in order to block exposure of its anti-people activities, its corruption, and the inhuman torture, killing and "disappearing" of those who resist. Not only Asit and Dr Sen, the Indian state has imprisoned hundreds who dared to raise their voice against it. We from Struggle India appeal to the fighting masses and justice-loving peoples throughout the world to support, by all means, our campaign for the release of Asit Kumar Sengupta and all political prisoners languishing in different jails in various parts of the country – immediately and unconditionally.