Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan): Condemn the Despicable Assassination of Chokri Belaid in Tunisia!

Chokri Belaid, a popular, prominent, and tireless fighter for the freedom and independence of Tunisia was assassinated in front of his house on the morning of February 6, 2013. Comrade Chokri was the general secretary of the United Party of Patriotic Democrats (PUPD) of Tunisia and a leading member of the Popular Front, a coalition of democratic and left wing forces including the Workers’ Party (PT) of Tunisia.

The criminal assassination of Chokri Belaid is one among a series of repressive acts and barbaric attacks against the activists of the Popular Front that have been carried out for a while with the backing and support of the Tunisian government led by Ennahda Islamic Party. As Comrade Hemma Hemmami, the spokesperson of the Front and the leading figure of PT stated: “The government as a whole is responsible for this crime”.

The barbaric assassination of Comrade Chokri Belaid reminds us of the gradually increasing offensive acts of the reactionary forces of the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, soon after they took power, against the advancement of the Iranian Revolution and against the secular and radical left forces in Iran.

Chokri Belaid strongly opposed the “elected” government of Tunisia dominated by the Ennahda Islamic Party, the Party that was put in power through conspiracy, deception, election rigging, and imperialist backing.

The assassination of Chokri Belaid is a vile act that stems from, on the one hand, the weakness and sagging power of the present reactionary rulers in Tunisia and, on the other hand, the advances of the Popular Front. The democratic and revolutionary forces in Tunisia are extending and deepening their influence among the labourers, toilers, deprived masses, and intellectuals. They are holding high the banner of their national-democratic revolution. This has frightened the regime and decaying forces. The assassins not only have targeted Comrade Chokri and PUPD, but also have targeted all democratic and left forces, the trade unions, the women organizations, all secular and progressive institutions. All these forces were and are under the offenses of the dark and reactionary forces backed by the Ennahda movement.

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) strongly condemns the assassination of Chokri Belaid and expresses solidarity with his immediate family, with the United Party of Patriotic Democrats, and with the United Front. We call on all revolutionary and progressive forces of all lands to condemn the reactionary regime of Tunisia for this despicable act and other ongoing criminal offenses against the people of Tunisia.

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) supports the struggle of the Tunisian people for the continuation of their revolution. We support the Popular Front, the force that is fighting for deepening the revolution and establishing a national and democratic order. We continue to expose the criminal Islamic regime of Tunisia headed by Ennahda, a regime that is backed by imperialists and the remnants of Ben Ali regime.

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) supports the call by trade unions and the Popular Front for general strikes, for dissolution of the government, and for the formation of a new democratic constitutional assembly.

Long Live the Tunisian Revolution!
Down with Imperialism and Reaction!
Long Live International Solidarity!

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan)
February 7, 2013

WWW.Toufan.org
Toufan@toufan.org

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International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations: Resolution on the Situation in Syria

The plenary of the ICMLPO, held for the first time in Africa, reaffirms its support for the right of the Syrian people to live under a democratic regime: a regime that guarantees freedom, equality, social justice and dignity, as well as assures the unity and total independence of the country, including the recovery of the Golan Heights occupied by Zionism since 1967.

The ICMLPO:

1. Denounces the dangerous development of events in Syria. The popular movement of protest has been transformed into a destructive civil war. The bloodthirsty repression is striking the people, and since the beginning, the Assad regime has rejected any democratic reform that would satisfy the aspirations of the Syrian people. This situation is the consequence of the foreign reactionary, imperialist and Zionist intervention, through Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which masked by the so-called “Free Syrian Army” and under the pretext of “saving the Syria people”

2. We reaffirm that this war has nothing to do with the interests of the Syrian people and their aspirations. On the contrary, it serves the reactionary forces of the country, the region and internationally. Syria is at the moment the place of confrontation between, on the one side the U.S., France and Israel and Arab and Turkish reaction that are trying to subject Syria to Western rule and make it break its ties with Iran and Hezbollah. On the other side, Russia and China are supporting the regime to preserve their strategic interests in Syria and the region, after having lost their influence in Libya.

3. We reject all intervention by NATO in Syria under any pretext, given the dangers that this represents for the Syrian people, the peoples of the region and world peace in general. The Conference calls on the Turkish people to oppose Turkey’s intervention in Syria. It sends a call to the workers and peoples of the Western countries, in the first place of the United States, Great Britain and France, whose leaders are threatening military intervention in Syria, to pressure their governments to stop them from carrying out their criminal strategy that caused disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, etc. in the past

4. It is up to the Syrian people, in all cases, to determine their own future. The ICMLPO calls on the Syrian patriotic and democratic forces to unite to save their country from the claws of the Assad regime and the armed gangs and to prevent the foreign powers from mortgaging their future and making use of a part of their minorities to undermine their unity. The ICMLPO calls on those forces to strive to build a new, democratic, secular, independent and united Syria in which the different religions and nationalities live together in freedom and equality.

5. Calls on the patriotic, democratic and progressive forces of the region to urgently mobilize and to undertake the necessary measures of solidarity to support the patriotic and democratic forces of Syria, forces that must act to end the slaughters perpetrated against the Syrian people, to stop the destruction of the country and prevent the foreign intervention, to facilitate dialogue among its inhabitants to achieve their aspirations and break with the tyranny and foreign domination.

Organisation pour la construction d’un parti communiste ouvrier d’Allemagne

Parti Communiste des Ouvriers du Danemark – APK

Parti Communiste d’Espagne (marxiste – léniniste) – PCE(ml)

Plateforme Communiste d’Italie

Parti Communiste des Ouvriers de France – PCOF

Organisation Marxiste Léniniste Révolution de Norvège – Revolusjon !

Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire de Turquie – TDKP

Parti des Travailleurs de Tunisie – PT

Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire de Côte d’Ivoire – PCRCI

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Marxism & Bourgeois Nationalism

As always, a re-posting of articles does not necessarily imply an absolute endorsement of the entirety of its content. However, this well-written article does make a good point about the duality of the bourgeois class, particularly in the Third World and oppressed countries.

– Espresso Stalinist.

Tripoli is burning. Thousands of black Libyans and African immigrants are rounded up by the NATO-backed rebels and thrown into prisons. Supporters of the ousted nationalist government wait with baited breath for the inevitable and bloody purge by the new rebel government. Libyan oil gushes out of Benghazi into the pipelines of Western energy companies. And militia groups, deputized by Interpol and the now-victorious National Transitional Council (NTC) government, hunt for Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and his family across the Libyan desert.

Now that NATO has won this asymmetrical imperialist war, at least in the short term, no one can reasonably say that the Libyan people are better off with the rebel government in power. For all of the flaws of Qaddafi’s government – and other nationalist governments like his – the Libyan people enjoyed the highest standard of living on the African continent, rising from the lowest standard of living in the world as of 1951. (1) The national and tribal governments had an amicable working relationship that allowed for decentralized planning and local decision-making. Moreover, Libya’s natural resources were controlled by a national government at-odds with Western energy corporations, and the wealth they generated was publicly owned and shared. (1) In other words, the Libyan nation exercised its inherent right to self-determination.

Qaddafi’s government wasn’t socialist; it was nationalist. The relations of production in Libya were capitalist in nature, but to deny that Qaddafi’s government was more progressive and objectively anti-imperialist ignores the brutal material reality that millions of Libyans are facing because of the NTC government.

As the West begins to re-calibrate its war machine and set its crosshairs on President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, Marxist-Leninists need to understand their relationship with nationalist bourgeois states, like Qaddafi’s Libya. History has objectively proven those “leftists” who were cheerleaders for the fall of Qaddafi’s government in Libya or Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq wrong.

At the same time, every bourgeois state operates fundamentally in the interest of some sector of the capitalist ruling class, whether national or international, and in time the proletariat will replace that old machinery with socialism through revolution.

I posit these theses:

Because of their relation to imperialism after the fall of the socialist bloc, the objective historical position of nationalist states in the Third World is progressive.

Marxist-Leninists must uphold the right of nations to self-determination, which in the present is principally characterized by freedom from imperialist subjugation.

Where it arises, Marxist-Leninists must support genuine revolutionary proletarian struggles for socialism against bourgeois nationalist governments.

Josef Stalin, author of Marxism & the National Question

What is nationalism?

To understand when and why Marxist-Leninists should support nationalism, it’s important to examine the material conditions from which nationalism arises.

As a starting point, it’s important to distinguish a nation from other units of social or geographical organization, like a tribe or country. Historically speaking, national identity is a relatively recent development in class society. In his seminal 1913 work, Marxism and the National Question, Josef Stalin outlines the characteristics of a nation as “a historically evolved, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.” (2)

Two important characteristics to note about Stalin’s definition. First, while territory and geography is a defining feature of a nation, it is not its sole determining characteristic, meaning that within the existential boundaries of a country–itself a recent social development–many nations may exist. Second, while a common economic life is also a defining characteristic, nations are not formed on the basis of class unity. In other words, there is no proletarian nation or bourgeois nation, but rather these two classes are both part and parcel of their respective nations.

In its inception, nationalism arises as an ideology of the bourgeoisie. From Marxism and the National Question:

The chief problem for the young bourgeoisie is the problem of the market. Its aim is to sell its goods and to emerge victorious from competition with the bourgeoisie of another nationality. Hence its desire to secure its “own,” its “home” market. The market is the first school in which the bourgeoisie learns its nationalism. (2)

Though all classes in a given nation are capable of embracing nationalism, Stalin argues that its historical basis lies in the bourgeoisie and its need for capital accumulation as a class. While other classes can appropriate and have transformed this concept, the demand for national self-determination begins as a bourgeois demand for exclusive access and control of its own national markets and resources.

European and American nationalism, for instance, arose from the break-up of feudal empires and the fledgling bourgeoisie’s struggle to establish itself as a class via primitive accumulation. American merchants, traders, shopkeepers, and speculators, denied full access to the readily available land and resources in North America by British mercantilism, led revolution of 1776 on the basis of American national unity. Though the American revolution of 1776 was waged in the interests of the fledgling bourgeoisie, the working masses rallied to the banner of American nationalism and led a successful struggle against British colonialism. Stalin notes that the “strength of the national movement is determined by the degree to which the wide strata of the nation, the proletariat and peasantry, participate in it.” (2)

Though the role of American nationalism in 1776 was historically progressive, the triumph of the American national movement was fueled by and resulted in the further subjugation of the African masses kidnapped and violently lashed into slave labor, along with the indigenous tribes ruthlessly slaughtered in the expansion of the American empire. Dialectically, American nationalism’s progressive features became the basis for the rise of the most oppressive imperialist power in the history of the world.

Without the subjugation of the African masses as a slave labor force, the Western bourgeoisie could never have established itself as an independent ruling class. Indeed, the same American nationalism that united the colonists against British mercantilism would unite the country in waging genocidal wars for land against indigenous people and Mexicans. After the series of successful European bourgeois revolutions, all ideologically fueled through nationalism, colonialism in Africa, Asia, South America, and the Pacific Islands became central to acquiring the cheap labor and resources necessary to generating extreme national wealth.

Because of the cheap labor and resources acquired through ruthless expansion, American capitalism transformed into imperialism, in which developed countries use force and comparative advantages in trade to violently extract resources and exploit the labor force of other colonies. Central to maintaining the colonial apparatus was the denial of equal rights and the cultivation of racist myths about colonized people, which materially manifested itself in slave labor, apartheid, and denial of access to the liberal democratic institutions established by the colonial bourgeoisie in imperialist countries.

Inevitably, the placement of capital in colonial countries allowed some small fraction of the colonized population to gain access to limited amounts of their own capital, albeit usually dependent on the colonial power. In other words, this small class of propertied yet colonized people constituted a bourgeoisie. Of this bourgeoisie, Stalin writes:

The bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation, repressed on every hand, is naturally stirred into movement. It appeals to its “native folk” and begins to shout about the “fatherland,” claiming that its own cause is the cause of the nation as a whole. It recruits itself an army from among its “countrymen” in the interests of… the “fatherland.” Nor do the “folk” always remain unresponsive to its appeals, they rally around its banner: the repression from above affects them too and provokes their discontent. (2)

The bourgeoisie of oppressed nations has the same basic features as the American and European bourgeoisie, in that both classes sought greater access to their own markets, resources, and labor. However, the conditions around the oppressed national bourgeoisie are qualitatively different than those around the Western bourgeoisie; they cannot seize control of their own national resources because of the fetters of colonialism.

Unquestionably the type of colonial oppression faced by the oppressed national bourgeoisie was different than that felt by the colonized proletariat and peasantry, who faced more brutal repression from the state and worse terms of labor. However, these colonized classes all had something to gain by overthrowing colonial and imperialist rule and achieving self-determination for their nation.

Nationalism becomes vital to the colonized bourgeoisie because it unites themselves and the colonized laboring masses in the struggle for national liberation. At the point where the laboring masses embrace nationalism, “the national movement begins.” (2)

National liberation struggles are not exclusively led by the nationalist bourgeoisie, and historically the bourgeoisie in colonial or semi-colonial nations is often too weak or too connected to the colonizing nation to exert itself independently as a class. Numerous examples of successful revolutionary proletarian national liberation movements exist, including the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). These successful communist movements, like the MPLA, also made use of nationalism to unite the country around the central task of expelling the colonizers. In essence, although nationalism is originally a bourgeois ideology, other revolutionary classes can appropriate it during the national liberation struggle phase.

Saddam Hussein, with an AK-47

Bourgeois nationalist states in the Third World

Because the nationalist bourgeoisie finds itself opposed to imperialism in the Third World, they can function as a tactical ally for the proletariat and peasantry in these same oppressed nations. Marxist-Leninists should never accept this alliance as permanent, however, and must carefully evaluate the place of the national bourgeoisie in relation to imperialism and the vast laboring masses.

Iraq provides one of the most potent examples of the fickle and unreliable nature of the nationalist bourgeoisie. The Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, for instance, was primarily bourgeois in its orientation and leadership, but it also attracted a mass following in the wake of the Iraq’s independence from British colonialism in 1958. (3)

Ba’ath was not committed to socialist revolution in Iraq, but they did preside over an aggressive nationalization program in 1972, which seized oil refineries from British and American companies and allowed them to diversify Iraq’s economy. Though these nationalizations were motivated by the access considerations of the national bourgeoisie, they also allowed the Ba’ath state to redirect revenues into public works projects that lifted nearly half the country out of poverty. In a 2006 profile piece on Saddam, PBS News writes of Ba’ath’s accomplishments:

As vice chairman, he oversaw the nationalization of the oil industry and advocated a national infrastructure campaign that built roads, schools and hospitals. The once illiterate Saddam, ordered a mandatory literacy program. Those who did not participate risked three years in jail, but hundreds of thousands learned to read. Iraq, at this time, created one of the best public-health systems in the Middle East — a feat that earned Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. (4)

True to form, Saddam and Ba’ath rose to power in direct response to British colonialism. Acting in the interests of the Iraqi national bourgeoisie, they ‘took back’ the resources monopolized by the West’s colonial subjugation and used the revenues to rapidly construct a modern Iraq, which required an educated populace, secular government, a functional road system, and social infrastructure like hospitals. One can question the sincerity of Ba’ath’s actions towards the masses, but one cannot dispute the profoundly positive effect these nationalist policies had on the lives of ordinary Iraqis.

However, the social accomplishments of bourgeois nationalist regimes should never obscure their reactionary character. With both Ba’ath and the Communist Party of Iraq (ICP) vying for supremacy after the 1958 revolution, hostile confrontations between the parties continued until 1963, when Ba’ath launched a coup d’etat against Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qasim. (5) During the coup, communists organized massive militant resistance to Ba’ath, and over the course of the three days in Baghdad, “5,000 Iraqi citizens were apparently killed, including 80 Ba’th Party activists and 340 Iraqi communist activists.” (6)

Following the consolidation of Ba’ath rule in Iraq, the ICP experienced two separate waves of repression: one in 1963 following the coup and the subsequent unrest, and the other in 1977, led by Saddam. (5) Historian Bob Feldman writes in a February 2006 piece on Iraq that “By March 1963, an estimated 10,000 Communist Party of Iraq members had been arrested by the Ba’th regime and many imprisoned Iraqi leftist activists were not treated gently.” (6) Quoting Said Aburish’s book, “A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite”, Feldman continues:

The number of people eliminated remains confused and estimates range from 700 to 30,000. Putting various statements by Iraqi exiles together, in all likelihood the figure was nearer five thousand…. There were many ordinary people who were eliminated because they continued to resist after the coup became an accomplished fact, but there were also senior army officers, lawyers, professors, teachers, doctors and others. (6)

The CPI was correct to resist the 1963 Ba’ath coup and oppose the consolidation of a bourgeois nationalist regime. Iraq’s independence in 1958 had shifted their primary adversary from British colonialism to the Iraqi bourgeoisie, seeing as no colonial entity to struggle against still existed. Saddam’s case reminds Marxist-Leninists that it’s strategic to enter into a popular front with bourgeois nationalists against imperialism, but after the national liberation struggle is complete, they constitute a vicious and dangerous foe.

Palestinian women wave PFLP flags

Nationalist governments support revolutionary people’s struggles in the Third World.

Failure to conform to imperialist foreign policy is the most common wedge issue between bourgeois nationalists and the West. Often driven by pan-national ideological unity, bourgeois nationalist countries objectively support revolutionary people’s struggles and national liberation movements abroad, placing them at odds with imperialism.

Finding common ground with the Shi’a-led Iraqi resistance to US occupation, Iran has provided weapons to Iraqi insurgents, as well as training for assembling their own weapons. (7) While many allegations about Iranian aid to the Iraqi resistance are exaggerated by Western capitalist media to ratchet up tensions, journalist Michael Perry describes Iran’s rationale in a February 2007 article:

But let’s go even further and say, for the sake of argument, that the Iraqi insurgents are receiving officially authorized aid from the Iranian state. It is true that having a neighboring nation in chaos does not generally benefit any country, but the Iranians have been under the gun from the U.S. for a very long time –decades in fact. The recent threats and provocations from the Bush administration make it clear that Iran is an imminent target. I’m quite sure the Iranians realize that the quagmire in Iraq is the primary impediment to an American invasion of Iran. Troubles for U.S. forces in Iraq may buy the Iranians more time. Could the Iranians be so blind to their own self-interests? (8)

At odds with Saddam’s secular Sunni government for decades, the Iranian bourgeoisie would relish the opportunity to have an oil-rich Shi’a-dominated Iraq to its west. More pressing, however, is the collective national fear of having another US-client state in the region. There’s a reason that Tehran, and not Qatar, the UAE, or Saudi Arabia, is actively subverting US occupation by materially supporting the Iraqi resistance. That reason, of course, is because the Iran’s ruling nationalist bourgeoisie has a material class interest in anti-imperialism.

The best evidence for the progressive quality of the Iranian nationalist bourgeoisie, embodied in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is the attempted color revolution in 2009 by the US-backed Mir-Hossein Mousavi. This so-called ‘Green revolution’ was financially supported by both the West and the wealthy neo-liberal bourgeoisie, represented by multi-millionaire former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. (9) In the 2005 Presidential elections, Ahmadinejad defeated Rafsanjani largely on the basis of the latter’s gaudy neo-liberal orientation. A 2005 article in GreenLeft by Doug Lorimer highlights the divergent class interests represented by Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani. While both accept the fundamental tenents of the Iranian capitalist state:

In the same TV interview [Ahmadinejad] claimed the country’s vast oil wealth was controlled by one powerful family — a reference to Rafsanjani, who is alleged to have enriched himself through his son’s management of the country’s nationalised oil industry. The Rafsanjanis also have investments worth US1 billion in pistachio farming, real estate, automobile manufacture and a private airline.

“The whole Iranian economy is set up to benefit the privileged few”, Ray Takeyh, a professor and director of studies at the US National Defense University’s Near East and South Asia Center in Washington, told the Bloomberg news agency last December. “Rafsanjani is the most adept, the most notorious and the most privileged.” (10)

Rafsanjani, and his running dog Mousavi, hoped to rise to power via a US-supported color revolution and open Iran to Western markets; in other words, they represent the comprador Iranian bourgeoisie. Despite the best efforts of the imperialist powers to oust Ahmadinejad–who by every objective measure legitimately won the 2009 election–the Iranian people resisted these attacks on their national sovereignty. (11) Even as he nears the end of his two terms as President, Ahmadinejad remains popular with the Iranian masses because of his consistent anti-imperialism on the world stage, along with the social programs he has championed at home despite Western sanctions.

Pivoting to another nationalist state, Syria has consistently functioned as the most progressive of the multitude of Middle Eastern countries by substantially supporting the major national liberation movements in the region. Trinity University professor of history David Lesch writes in his fantastic book, The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria that:

Syria does not deny claims of support for Hizbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, viewing that such operations constitute legitimate resistance and not terrorism; indeed, Damascus often views Israeli activities vis-a-vis the Palestinians and its actions in Lebanon as terrorism. (12)

Since the Syrian Ba’ath party took power in 1963, the state has always supported the Palestinian and Lebanese liberation struggles and sought to keep Israeli imperialism in-check. (13) Sharing the common trait of secularism, Syria allows the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the largest Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movement in Palestine, to operate comfortably out of Damascus and materially supports their struggle with supplies and resources. (14) Because of the Syrian bourgeoisie’s desire for regional secular pan-Arab unity–rooted in the Alawi faith of President Bashar al-Assad and others–and the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights, Assad’s government is objectively anti-imperialist.

Similarly, Saddam’s Ba’ath state in Iraq financially supported and championed the cause of Palestinian national liberation, which was played up by the West in the months leading up to the 2003 invasion. On March 13, 2003–just six days before the invasion–the BBC reported, “Saddam Hussein has paid out thousands of dollars to families of Palestinians killed in fighting with Israel. Relatives of at least one suicide attacker as well as other militants and civilians gathered in a hall in Gaza City to receive cheques.” (15) Later, the same article estimates that the Iraqi government had paid out nearly $35 million to Palestinian families since 2000.

In hindsight, the timing and purpose of this BBC article is obvious, but that Saddam’s support for ‘terrorist groups’ was one of the reasons for the 2003 invasion demonstrates the extreme degree to which his support for the Palestinians offended and scared the West. Startlingly few people remember that Israel invaded Syrian airspace and bombed a peaceful nuclear power plant in September 2007 for many of the same reasons. When a bourgeois state in the Third World becomes nationalist in its orientation, as opposed to comprador bourgeois states, it demands a response from the West.

Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia

Never confuse your primary and secondary contradictions!

Although a multitude of contradictions exist in class societies, at any given time, one of these contradictions is principal in comparison to the others. If a person goes for a walk, decides s/he wants a cigarette, and then gets bitten by a rattlesnake, the order of the day is to call a doctor and receive medical attention immediately for the venom. As much as that person might have wanted–or even needed–a cigarette, only a great fool would tell this person that s/he should prioritize smoking over seeking medical attention.

Primary and secondary contradictions seem like common sense, but a multitude of so-called ‘leftists’ and revolutionaries confuse them when analyzing imperialism. Ultimately, the approach that Marxist-Leninists ought to take to bourgeois nationalist governments is tied up in correctly identifying and acting on primary and secondary contradictions.

Though largely ignored in Marxist-Leninist writings, the experience of the Ethiopian revolution offers valuable insight as to how communists ought to struggle against bourgeois nationalist governments. Having played an instrumental role in repelling the Italian fascist occupation of Ethiopia, Emperor Haile Selassie I began as an archetype bourgeois nationalist. He encouraged pan-African unity, promoted decolonization, and began an aggressive process of modernizing Ethiopia.

That said, Selassie’s government became firmly aligned with the West after World War II and opened the country up to an influx of foreign capital. Presiding over and encouraging severely unequal land distribution, Selassie’s government was also responsible for a series of famines and foot shortages, the worst of which claimed an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 victims. (16) Ahmed Khan of the Communist Workers and Peasants Party in Pakistan writes this of Selassie’s government:

During the monarchical period, life expectancy was a mere 38 years and 90% of the people were illiterate. Only a tiny handful of feudal landowners and royal sycophants controlled the entire wealth of the country.

…

Severe drought and famine engulfed Ethiopia which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of peasants, and led to widespread hunger and food crises in the urban areas. (16)

Even bourgeois sources regard these famines as the product of Selassie’s destructive policies. A 1997 report by Human Rights Watch called “Rebellion and Famine in the North under Haile Selassie” indicted the nationalist government for its culpability in this famine, saying:

The Wollo famine was popularly blamed on drought, a backward and impoverishedsocial system, and the cover-up attempted by the imperial government. These factors were all-important — though it must be remembered that specific actions by the government, especiallyafter the Ras Gugsa and Weyane revolts, were instrumental in creating the absence of development. (17)

By 1974, Selassie’s bourgeois government lost all legitimacy in the eyes of the masses. Because of the widespread crises brought on by Selassie’s selective industrial development and close trade relations with the West, Ethiopian workers and peasants began to mobilize against the government. Khan writes, “The inability of the monarchy to deal with the crisis and the propensity of the feudalists to bleed the peasantry dry led to increasing hatred for the monarchy on part of the oppressed peasants, workers and a section of the emergent urban middle class.” (16)

Although no Marxist-Leninist vanguard party existed in Ethiopia at this time, a communist council of military officers known as the Derg organized alongside labor leaders in the urban centers and peasant communities in the countryside to produce the Ethiopian revolution of 1974. (18)

The revolutionary experience of the Ethiopian people in overthrowing Selassie’s government and establishing the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia–firmly committed to socialist construction–has tremendous lessons for Marxist-Leninists about their relation to bourgeois nationalists. Objectively, Selassie’s government was essential to the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggle waged against fascist Italy in 1935. The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) went so far as to launch a “Hands off Ethiopia” campaign in the same year, which included substantial demonstrations supporting Ethiopia’s right to self-determination (19).

However, classes do not exist in a vacuum. While one class may play a historically progressive role at one time, a change in the material conditions–like increased trade relations with the West following World War II–may render that same class reactionary. For as important as nationalism was to Ethiopia repelling fascist Italy in 1941, the same nationalist government’s reactionary policies reached a boiling point in 1974, resulting in a popular socialist revolution.

The lesson from Ethiopia is clear: Marxist-Leninists in nationalist states must organize with a keen awareness of primary and secondary contradictions. For a moment, let’s assume that an organization like the Derg existed in Ethiopia circa-1935. Said organization would commit a grave error in throwing in with the fascists in hopes of toppling an admittedly reactionary monarchy. First, the organization would undeniably alienate the Ethiopian masses, who despite their poverty and poor military training, flocked to defend their homeland, the only African state never colonized by the West, from fascist occupation. (20) Second, although Selassie’s bourgeois government was at-odds with the interests of Ethiopian workers and peasants, that contradiction receded into the background the moment that fascist Italy began poison gassing entire villages of Ethiopians.

When Mussolini’s forces invaded Ethiopia in 1935, there was only one organized military force capable of mounting a resistance: Selassie’s nationalist government. Unsuccessful at first, Ethiopian patriots of all classes, albeit predominantly workers and peasants, struggled onward to victory and liberation in 1941. That this liberation struggle took place across class lines on a nationalist basis is no small detail. It’s paramount that Marxist-Leninists, in light of Iraq, Libya, and increasing aggression towards Syria, comfortably identify anti-imperialism as the primary contradiction facing the international proletarian revolution today.

Proletarian internationalism is superior in every way to bourgeois nationalism, but so long as neo-colonialism and imperialism exist, communists must unite all who can be united in the anti-imperialist struggle. Simultaneously, though, communists must remember the other side of the dialectic: When bourgeois nationalists become complicit partners in Western imperialism and alienate themselves from the masses, communists must never hesitate to overthrow that state with extreme prejudice and on its ruins erect revolutionary socialism.

The irrelevance and obscurity of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) following the toppling of Saddam’s Ba’ath regime demonstrates the devastating effects of incorrectly identifying primary and secondary contradictions.

Saddam was by no means a consistent anti-imperialist throughout his reign. Though Ba’athist Iraq established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and China, it still retained casual relations with the West; relations that were strengthened following Saddam’s condemnation of Soviet intervention in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, as well as the Iranian Revolution in 1979. (21) Between the overthrow of the US-backed Shah, the establishment of a militant Islamic republic, and the Iranian hostage crisis, Iraq began to work closely with the West to curb Tehran’s influence in the Middle East. Though the Reagan Administration would notoriously fund the Iranians also, the US comfortably placed their initial bets behind Saddam in the devastating Iran-Iraq war of 1983-1988.

Even though the imperialists used Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war to sow chaos in the Middle East, the Ba’ath state remained largely at odds with Western interests because of its nationalist orientation. Refusing to privatize its oil industry and allow Western capital to fully penetrate its national markets, the West increasingly saw Saddam as a danger to imperialist interests in the Middle East. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait over territorial disputes, the subsequent Gulf War, and Saddam’s unabashed support for the Palestinian liberation struggle cemented Iraq’s status as a pariah state in the eyes of the West by the early 1990s.

In an effort to eliminate an unfriendly pro-Palestinian government perched atop massive oil reserves, the US and UK fabricated the now-infamous falsehood that Saddam’s government had weapons of mass destruction. While communists around the world uniformly condemned the imperialist invasion of Iraq, “the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) welcomed Saddam Hussein’s removal and is happy that the ousted president is to be put on trial.” (22) Exhausted and furious from decades of repression by Ba’ath, the ICP’s position is understandable on a purely visceral and emotional level. However, Marxist-Leninists must remain level-headed during periods of crisis and correctly identify primary and secondary contradictions; a task at which the ICP uniformally failed.

In the coming years, the ICP would come to participate in the puppet state erected by the West–most recently in the liberalizing ‘Political Reconciliation’ movement–and integrate themselves into this comprador government imposed from without. (23) Despite comprising the strongest opposition to the Ba’ath government during the 1960s, the ICP has descended into relative obscurity, having lost any credibility with the masses for their blunder. Instead, Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and other religious sects comprised the mass base of resistance after Saddam was captured, though their bourgeois and petty-bourgeois class character has led them to also participate in Maliki’s bogus government.

One would think that the international ‘left’ would have learned about correctly handling primary and secondary contradictions after witnessing the failure of the ICP to lead a mass revolutionary resistance to imperialist occupation. Instead, the same ‘leftists’ who witnessed the invasion of Iraq cheerled a racist, imperialist-backed ‘rebel movement’ in Libya, and many made the full leap into supporting NATO’s invasion to oust Qaddafi.

When a nation achieves self-determination, the secondary contradiction between the proletariat and the national bourgeoisie will ascend to the forefront as the new primary contradiction. Before that time, however, the primary contradiction facing the masses in oppressed nations is between imperialism and national liberation. In bourgeois nationalist states, this contradiction can and must draw in all who can be united to strike a blow against imperialism.

Countries want independence.

Nations want liberation.

People want revolution.

—-

(1) Gerald A. Perreira, “Libya Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective,” March 4, 2011, Dissent Voice, http://bit.ly/mQT4iz

(2) Josef Stalin, Marxism & the National Question, March-May 1913, http://bit.ly/cwOCSQ

(3) Said K. Aburish, “How Saddam Hussein Came to Power,” 2002, From Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge, Published in The Saddam Hussein Reader, pg. 41-42

(4) Jessica Moore, “Saddam Hussein’s Rise to Power,” 2003, PBS News, http://to.pbs.org/65tro

(5) Turi Munthe (Editor), The Saddam Hussein Reader, 2002, pg. xv-xviii

(6) Bob Feldman, “A People’s History of Iraq: 1950 to November 1963,” February 2, 2006, Toward Freedom, http://bit.ly/qwCar2

(7) CNN, “Iraqi insurgents being trained in Iran, US says,” April 11, 2007, http://bit.ly/nHra0S

(8) Michael Perry, “So what if Iran is Interfering in Iraq?,” February 21, 2007, AntiWar.com, http://bit.ly/ogwqxd

(9) Paul Craig Roberts, “Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated ‘Color Revolution’?,” June 20-21, 2009, CounterPunch, http://bit.ly/pmXj7w

(10) Doug Lorimer, “IRAN: A vote against neoliberalism,” July 6, 2005, Green Left, http://bit.ly/nYcOll

(11) Terror Free America, New America Foundation, “Ahmadinejad Front Runner in Upcoming Elections,” June 12, 2009, http://bit.ly/k8x0w

(12) David W. Lesch, The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria, 2005, pg. 102

(13) Reuters, “Syrian President Vows to Keep Supporting Hezbollah, Hamas,” August 2, 2007, http://bit.ly/qex219

(14) Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, “PFLP condemns attack on Syria,” November 3, 2008, Fight Back! News, http://bit.ly/qWDlmo

(15) BBC News, “Palestinians get Saddam funds,” March 13, 2008, http://bbc.in/9BWsXr

(16) Ahmed Khan, “Defend Comrade Mengistu! On the struggle of our Ethiopian brothers,” November 19, 2008, Red Diary, http://bit.ly/jbYhks

(17) Human Rights Watch, “3. Rebellion and Famine in the North Under Haile Selassie,” 1997, http://bit.ly/pzy53w

(18) Christopher Clapham, Transformation and Continuity in Revolutionary Ethiopia, 1988, Cambridge University Press.

(19) Robin D.G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, 1990, pg. 123.

(20) A.J. Barker, The Rape of Ethiopia, 1936, 1971.

(21) Said K. Aburish, “How Saddam Hussein Came to Power,” 2002, From Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge, Published in The Saddam Hussein Reader, pg. 44

(22) Shaheen Chughtai, “Iraqi communists celebrate change,” June 1, 2004, http://aje.me/qp5rVW

(23) Talal Alrubaie, “The Iraqi Communist Party and Hegel’s Owl of Minerva,” February 2, 2010, http://bit.ly/rqF6fr

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Expose Ryan Towne for the Racist Fascist That She Is

As some of you may know there is a young woman out there claiming to be a Marxist-Leninist of the Pro-Enver Hoxha tendency with a bombastic and abrasive attitude towards anything in contrast to her views. This young woman goes by the name of “Ryan Towne” and some of you may well be FB friends with her.

She has been expelled from Revleft and numerous FB Communist groups for racist and Islamophobic remarks. Ryan Towne is a pro-Rhodesian settlerist, Zionist Israel apologist psuedo-leftist, it is totally arrogant of her to claim her own individual ultra-leftist/reactionary views on Hezbollah, Israel, Zimbabwe etc. deserve more merit than the millions of Communists who spent years forging the lines we have today. If the collective has spent the time and effort to create a plan to solve a problem, it should be followed out and judged on its results. One should never have the arrogance to assume that their opinion is greater than that of the collective decision making of the people. This is a total objectivist/fascist position to assume one individual knows better than the decisions making power of all people affected by the decision. It assumes that the individuals actions have no effect on anyone else.

Ryan has also come out defending Nazism, “ethnic socialism” etc. on her blog, it was soon taken down after been exposed on the forum Revleft:

Many people talk of how communism is a “noble concept” but that it can’t work. We are told how people have suffered under communism – the intellectuals and artists who were allegedly targeted and killed in Mao’s cultural revolution for example, the tens of millions of Ukrainians murdered by Stalin, the aggressive expansionism, gulags, the ridiculous notions of lysenkoism and the idea of making everyone work for equal and very low wages, the extent of state control over every one’s lives. But communism, despite all this, is still a “noble concept” and that is because there is a nugget of pure gold at the centre of this ideology -and that is socialism – an ideal of treating people fairly.

Many of the positive things about communism as it has been practiced and realised in actuality are not known to the general public. For example, that a policy of full employment was accompanied by free housing. The poorest people in Russia had a happier and more secure existence under soviet rule than they do today when they can find themselves homeless, counting themselves lucky to work unreasonable hours for little pay for capitalists, and in a society where there is a lot of corruption, crime and sleaze, and the mafia is strong. If communism “did not work” it is nevertheless true that what it was replaced with is little better, and in a number of ways worse.

Communism does work as practiced today in various nations around the world. these now are all non-white nations, non-western nations. Because they reject the western capitalist way of life they are demonised. But the people living in these countries do benefit from communism – and the communism is special there in that it is no longer internationalist and has taken on a nationalist flavour. Even Soviet Russia had to resort to rousing feelings of nationalistic pride in ww2. So these communist regimes are nationalistic and also socialistic, and yet they are undoubtedly fascist as well in that the state requires that the people obey its laws and serve the state’s existence.

The communism practiced in various countries now is different in each one. To some extent capitalism has been allowed, including allowing western capitalists to relocate factories to China, for example, and exploit the Chinese people. not good. but the variant of communism they have in china still has benefits to the Chinese people in that it controls criminal activities far more effectively than would otherwise be the case and takes a strong stance against such things as drug dealing, prostitution and pornography.

These communist countries have to be heavily ruled by a totalitarian state (and are thus basically fascist ) because the people living in them lack the altruism that would be necessary for the state to ease off and allow a natural socialistic consensus to emerge. China is a vast and over populated nation, but there is a fairly high level of homogeneity, especially in localised areas. true socialism could work if the separate areas would work as autonomous regions.

National socialism as practiced in Germany in the 3rd Reich worked like a charm because there was a high level of homogeneity, a strong sense of nationhood, and simply because the northern European/Germanic temperament is ideally suited to socialist society. Even today’s anti-Nazi documentaries with emotive titles about “the rise of evil” and so on admit that national socialist Germany was a paradise – as long as you were not one of those being hauled away to a concentration camp.

National socialism is like communism with all the failings removed. It is strange indeed that it is thought of in any way as being the opposite of communism but that mistake can be explained by the fact that Germany fought a war against soviet Russia, and the soviets needed to give the impression that national socialism was nothing like their own variant of socialism. it was the soviets who first decided to label the Nazis as “fascists” in order to avoid the use of the term “socialism” to describe their enemy. Although Hitler allied with Mussolini and the Italian fascist regime, national socialist thinkers in the third Reich have always made it clear that national socialism is a rejection of fascism. National socialism is about putting the folk before the state while fascism is the opposite. Fascism in no way implies any kind of racial loyalty and in fact would only exploit racial or patriotic loyalty as far as it benefited the state to do so – always at times of war. At present the west is ruled by a fascism in which the ruling capitalists exploit the people and seek to prevent true socialism by bringing in millions of immigrants of various races, especially third worlders. This provides them with cheap labour, causes racial conflict to replace the class conflict that capitalists fear, and prevents the folk of a nation from maintaining their territory and identity.

Yes true communism, true socialism, depends upon human nature being altruistic, and looking around us at the world it seems that such a society would be impossible. But it is not. Altruism has been scientifically proven to be a genetic trait that is lost unless it is practiced very discriminating. Animals have evolved to be altruistic – but only towards others who are closely related to them. William Hamilton’s equation demonstrates the mathematical formula for this kin selection. Altruism and socialism are almost homonyms. Socialism requires altruism and this is why, when you bear in mind the facts regarding the necessity of close relation, the most potential for a socialist society exists amongst people who are of one ethnicity and one nation. The biggest mistake of communists is to forget this rule. there cannot be a global village that is socialist – in which every ethnicity and creed cooperates in a spirit of harmony and love. We can imagine such a world perhaps, but the reality is that it can never happen and that attempts to make this happen not only fail but in fact ruin the only real chance of socialism, which is ethnic based.

Those who favour capitalism like to point to the failings of communism and say that human nature is egoistic and selfish and that people never really work for the common good. Since the most successful capitalists and politicians today are clinically psychopaths, it is not possible for these people to empathise with altruistic urges anyway. These people could never feel loyalty to blood, only to their own bank accounts. It is horrific that such people have so much power over all our lives.

Capitalists suggest that people live only for shallow material reward and they have no conscience about exploiting workers. Proudhon’s famous phrase “property is theft” is most accurate when referring to the ill-gotten gains of capitalists. Capitalists point to the Darwinist fact that animals are genetically programmed to desire to prosper, reproduce and expand. They ignore the fact that this is achieved as a group – and thus socialistic – even if the animal is not gregarious. Success in nature is about spreading ones genes and these genes succeeding within a gene pool. The capitalists abuse and twist Darwinism and that is how the abomination which is called “social Darwinism” came into the language. To capitalists, “survival of the fittest”, is about selfish exploitation by an individual and about the individual getting as good a material existence for himself, even without having any offspring at all in many cases, as possible. When we have these people in our midst it is only bad for our gene pool and the anti-nature world view that capitalists spread is killing us and raping the planet. It is a big factor behind the plummeting birth rate in the west.

The capitalists have not only twisted Darwinism but they have twisted socialism too. Many associate socialism now with a policy of supporting the least deserving and most useless people in our society. Many associate socialism with being pro immigrant – when as i have explained immigration wrecks the basis of socialism and merely strengthens the position of capitalists. Not only those who dislike socialism have these misconceptions, but the multi-racialists who claim to be socialist or communist also have these ideas. Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin – none have ever advocated that third worlders should immigrate to the west and mix with whites. Trotsky made clear that he advocated black nationalism/separatism in the united states, even while the ku klux Klan at the time did not, preferring the capitalist/masonic stance that blacks be kept as slaves. (thankfully today’s KKK does appreciate the principle of ethno nationalism and has an ironically similar view to that of Trotsky in this regard).

Socialism is about contributing to society, while capitalism is about taking out of society – it is about making a private profit. when capitalists point to ways they feel they do contribute to society, from the “trickle down effect” to donations they make to third worlders, or creating jobs or adding to the economy, it is all cynical spiel with no grounds to justify it as being positive. All of these things result in pollution, unsustainable use of natural resources and surging populations in parts of the world where it is most harmful.

Capitalists have been behind all wars, including the last two world wars and the present “war on terror”. Selling arms is very lucrative, as is rebuilding destroyed infrastructure and of course war would have had to be declared on a national socialist state that had promised to hang bankers and capitalists and was printing its own currency.

Communism in the soviet states had a strange relationship with the western capitalists and that is why they did not see it as the same threat that national socialist Germany posed. as the Russian anarchist Mikhyl Bakunin pointed out :”i am sure that, on the one hand, the Rothschild’s appreciate the merits of Marx, and that on the other hand, Marx feels an instinctive inclination and a great respect for the Rothschild’s. this may seem strange. what could there be in common between communism and high finance? ho ho! the communism of Marx seeks a strong state centralization, and where this exists there must inevitably exist a state central bank, and where this exists, there the parasitic Jewish nation, which speculates upon the labor of the people, will always find the means for its existence…”

When it comes to a debate over which is the better, communism or capitalism, the argument always fails to realise the true biological basis for socialism and how it really could work to bring a utopia, if only the capitalist exploiters of the labour of the people would be stopped, and ethnic cohesion taken as the foundation for harmony and cooperation.

EXPEL THIS FASCIST DOG FROM YOUR FACEBOOK PAGES!

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Party of Labor of Iran (Toufan): The Criminal, Inhumane, Warmongering, and Illegal Sanctions on Iran

On Monday January 23, 2012, the foreign ministers of the imperialist European Union countries decided in Brussels to extend the economic sanctions on Iran by putting sanctions on Central Bank of Iran and by freezing the assets of the Iranian people in Europe. In order to inflict a heavy damage on the economy of Iran, they decided to place an embargo on the export of the Iranian oil to Europe.

To impose economic blockades on and to cause hunger in Iran are acts that are internationally illegal and are crimes against humanity. Imperialists want to impose their sinister, plundering, and domineering intentions on Iran and on their “axis of evils” by creating another Iraq and a second Gaza Strip. By punishing Iran, the imperialist countries want to teach a lesson to Non-Allied countries and to those who do not submit to their dictates.

In the past, the imperialists try to justify their crimes by passing illegal resolutions in the UN Security Council. But they imposed sanctions against Iran today without any UN authorization. The sanctions are plots by a gang of international plunderer against a UN-member state and are against the UN Charter. The US and EU sanctions against Iran lack any legal basis on the international arena. The US imposes on countries of the world the decisions made in the US Congress and pretends that the decisions are made by the international community. The illegal and bullying actions against Iran show the hegemonic and despotic nature of the US imperialism.

While the foreign minister of Russia, Sergei Lawrow, stated that the “unilateral actions are useless”, he added that there was no reason to make any decision in addition to collective decision by the UN Security Council. The deputy foreign minister of the racist government of Israel, Danny Ajalon, claimed in a press interview that “These sanctions have reduced the threat of war”. Coming out of the meeting that made warmongering and threatening decisions on Iran, Ms. Catherine Ashton who is in charge of the EU international relations and the foreign minister of Sweden Mr. Carl Bidlt claimed that the basis of their work was to appeal to diplomacy and negotiation!

The imperialist powers clearly lie when they claim that they recognize the legal and indisputable right of Iran to enrich uranium. The fact is that they have monopoly in producing nuclear energy. The recognition of Iran’s right to produce nuclear energy is to break the imperialist monopoly. In a deceptive psychological war, the major powers warn the world about Iran’s nuclear bomb, but they have not disclosed any document to show the existence of this bomb. German foreign minister Guido Weserwelle shamelessly said that “We cannot accept Iran developing nuclear weapons” and that “This is not a security problem for region only but it will disrupt the world security”. Wow! The non-existence Iranian nuclear bomb disrupts the security of the entire globe but many hundred known or secret warheads in the hands of American, British, French, and Israeli warmongers are nor dangerous for the world security! Apparently, there are good and bad atomic bombs! The arguments given by the representatives of the imperialist powers are fierce, threatening, and sickening.

The history of economic sanctions shows that the ordinary people of the countries on which the sanction were imposed suffered the most by the sanctions. In Iran, the inflation is rapidly rising, shortage of medicine and medical equipments is already felt, and particularly the patients with heart problems are under attack because the companies making the equipments are under the US sanctions and cannot export their products to Iran. This is not a concern for the imperialist powers. It is not important to the US President Obama and his Iranian allies if millions of people are slaughtered in the war. Also, the sanctions on Iran give an excuse to the authority of the Islamic Republic to increase the suppression of the anti-imperialist and democratic forces in Iran.

The imperialist powers think that if their sanctions cause widespread hunger in Iran, then the people will rise up and install a Western puppet regime. This is a miscalculation because the history of the Iran shows that Iranian people have always rejected submission to any forces allied to foreign imperialist powers. The Iranian masses have no feeling except disgust and hate towards sellout, spies, and for those who carry out terrorist operations in Iran.

The fact is that the imperialists’ actions against Iran are not for eliminating the Iranian nuclear bomb. Such a bomb does not exist. Iran holds a key geo-political position in the Middle East region and is the center of entangled world contradictions. To control Iran is to control an entire strategic region with enormous energy resources that the US desire to plunder for decades. Strait of Hormuz is a valve for export of oil to four corners of the globe. The US imperialists wish to have control over this oil valve. The presence of the US forces in the region is a danger for the world security and is a threat particularly to the security of the Middle East. The propaganda about Iranian atomic bomb, the bomb that does not exist, is justification for aggression on Iran and for domination of the region, and Islamic Republic’s capitulation to imperialists’ demands will not change the imperialists’ nature of following their domineering goals.

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) believes that the economic sanctions on Iran act against the masses and are inhumane. We take the imperialists, particularly the US imperialists, responsible for the suffering and misery these sanctions will cause. The sanctions on Iran are illegal, warmongering, and unjustifiable. Our Party strongly condemns the imperialist sanctions, embargoes, and threats against the Iranian masses. We believe that every progressive, human-loving, and patriotic Iranian must take stand against the sanctions and against the imperialist-Zionist warmongering threats, and must draw a sharp line to separate enemies from the people.

The regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran is a reactionary and Mafia-style capitalist regime. The regime of Iran has lost all its legitimacy, and the overwhelming majority of the Iranian masses are disgusted by the regime. The task of overthrowing this criminal regime is on the shoulders of the Iranian masses. The regime change by the imperialist invading forces will be for the purpose of colonizing the country and looting the resources of the nation. The imperialist powers have never supported and will never support the freedom-loving and democratic forces anywhere in the world. Their talks about freedom and human rights are nothing but smokescreens for their criminal actions, and Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan … are testimonies to this. Hypocrisy is written on their foreheads.

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan)

January 23, 2012.

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1986: The Iran-Contra Affair

Oliver North mugshot

Nicaraguan Contras being trained by U.S. troops at a Honduran base

Chomsky’s brief account of the US selling arms to Iran via Israel in order to fund far-right paramilitary contras in Nicaragua.

The major elements of the Iran/contra story were well known long before the 1986 exposures, apart from one fact: that the sale of arms to Iran via Israel and the illegal contra war run out of Colonel Oliver North’s White House office were connected.

The shipment of arms to Iran through Israel didn’t begin in 1985, when the congressional inquiry and the special prosecutor pick up the story. It began almost immediately after the fall of the Shah in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. By 1982, it was public knowledge that Israel was providing a large part of the arms for Iran – you could read it on the front page of the New York Times.

In February 1982, the main Israeli figures whose names later appeared in the Iran/contra hearings appeared on BBC television and described how they had helped organise an arms flow to the new Ayatollah Khomeini regime. In October 1982, the Israeli ambassador to the US stated publicly that Israel was sending arms to the Khomeini regime “with the cooperation of the United States… at almost the highest level.” The high Israeli officials involved also gave the reasons: to establish links with elements of the military in Iran who might overthrow the regime, restoring the arrangements that prevailed under the Shah — standard operating procedure.

As for the contra war, the basic facts of the illegal North-CIA operations were known by 1985 (over a year before the story broke, when a US supply plane was shot down and a US agent, Eugene Hasenfus, was captured). The media simply chose to look the other way.

So what finally generated the Iran/contra scandal? A moment came when it was just impossible to suppress it any longer. When Hasenfus was shot down in Nicaragua while flying arms to the contras for the CIA, and the Lebanese press reported that the US National Security Adviser was handing out Bibles and chocolate cakes in Teheran, the story just couldn’t be kept under wraps. After that, the connection between the two well-known stories emerged.

From What Uncle Sam Really Wants, by Noam Chomsky.

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Bolstering Contras Was A Top Priority

January 18, 1987

By GEORGE de LAMA, Chicago Tribune Correspondent
Michael Tackett of the Chicago Tribune contributed to this story.

WASHINGTON — Months before Congress cut off support for the Nicaraguan rebels in October 1984, President Reagan approved an ambitious campaign to encourage private American donors and foreign governments to finance the war against Managua`s Sandinista regime.

The goal: Keep the Contras, as the anti-Sandinista rebels are known, alive and viable as a fighting force until the president could persuade Congress to change its mind and restore U.S. military aid.

Reagan lent the full weight of his office to the private supply effort, casting aside a thin veil of secrecy over the administration`s two-year effort to assist the Contras. When Americans wrote to the White House asking how they could contribute to the Contra cause, the president sent out letters over his signature urging them to donate money to private relief groups aiding the rebels.

Reagan attended a fund-raising dinner for the Contras here in April 1985, gave speeches likening the Central American warriors to the U.S. founding fathers and volunteered at one point that “I`m a Contra, too.“

Support for the estimated 15,000 fighters became a top priority within the administration. The campaign, headed by an obscure Marine lieutenant colonel on the National Security Council staff, Oliver North, rose to the top drawer of White House concerns after Congress forbade the government from giving direct or indirect military assistance to the rebels.

Now the extraordinary White House effort to keep the Contras fighting has become the focal point of the worst crisis of Reagan`s presidency. North has been accused of secretly diverting to the rebels at least $10 million from the sale of arms to Iran. While calling North “a national hero,“ Reagan has said he neither knew about nor authorized the diversion of funds, and North was fired from the NSC.

Even before the alleged diversion, the supply effort North oversaw from the White House basement brought millions of dollars in donations from American conservatives, right-wing Latin American military officers, and such far-off potentates as the Sultan of Brunei and King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, according to administration officials and rebel leaders.

Classified U.S. intelligence reports disclose that at least $22 million was raised for the Contras from “private and foreign sources“ over the last year alone, according to well-placed administration officials. This includes the diversion of the proceeds from the arms sales, the sources said.

But this “privatization“ of the Contra war had its hidden costs, administration officials now acknowledge. It meant that officials at the highest levels of the U.S. government were doing business in the shadowy world of international arms dealers, mysterious fund raisers and assorted soldiers of fortune seeking a piece of the action in the name of Reagan`s cause.

Congressional investigators and federal agents working on the three inquiries about the White House role believe that if serious wrongdoing is found it will grow out of the deals in this private gun-running and fund- raising effort.

Much of the attention centers on the money pipeline overseen by North on behalf of the Contras. The handling of the money is shrouded in secrecy and bereft of clear accounting procedures. Nevertheless, it appears that millions of dollars in donations raised for the Contras apparently never reached the rebels. This includes the money diverted from the U.S. arms sales to Iran.

After weeks of closed hearings, Sen. David Durenberger, R-Minn., at the time the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, late last month had to acknowledge, “We still can`t tell whether one nickel of the money ever reached the Contras.“

Congressional and federal investigators are trying to determine whether the funds were diverted to other anti-communist guerrilla movements in Angola or Afghanistan, lost in misplaced airdrops to the Contras, handed out in kickbacks to military officers in Central America or simply skimmed off the top illegally by middlemen.

The Watergate-style investigative committees in both houses of Congress, an independent federal prosecutor and the Justice Department also will be closely examining allegations of criminal acts involving the Contras and their American backers.

Despite initial denials by the White House, it is clear the clandestine supply network set up for the Contras over the last two years was no secret to key administration officials. Even if North chose not to brief White House colleagues on his operations, well placed sources said, the supply effort was monitored, to varying degrees, by the CIA, select members of the NSC staff in Washington and U.S. diplomats and military personnel in Central America.

Aides to Vice President George Bush even acknowledged that his office was told as early as last August that some Contra backers may have been engaging in illegal activities. Although they admit that many administration officials were aware of the secret arms-supply network, Reagan aides insist that North was solely responsible for the diversion of Iran arms funds to the Nicaraguan rebels.

Whether North acted alone is a key question for the investigators.

It was in late 1982, when most Americans still had not heard of the Nicaraguan rebels, that North began to make regular trips to Honduras. There he met with U.S. Embassy and CIA officials and Contra leaders as they began to map out a strategy for overthrowing the Sandinista regime.

Over the next four years, North made at least half a dozen trips a year to the region. By 1984, when official U.S. support was cut, North had become the dominant outside figure in the Contra movement.

Former Contra spokesman Edgar Chamorro said that after the cutoff, North went to Honduras to reassure rebel leaders that the U.S. government would never abandon them. To meet this pledge, he said, North created a secret network of suppliers, arms dealers, middlemen, ex-CIA employees, and anti- Castro Cuban exiles that came to be known as “Ollie`s army.“

Displaying a penchant for secrecy and braggadocio, North repeatedly told associates that he regularly briefed Reagan on the Contra effort and was doing his bidding. In the Defense Department, CIA and the State Department, the notion that North carried the president`s blessing gave the 43-year-old Marine lieutenant colonel power well beyond his military rank.

White House officials vehemently dispute that Reagan had a private relationship with the colonel. They claim that Oval Office logs show North met with Reagan 19 times over the last two years, and never with fewer than five other people present. Moreover, these officials said Reagan explicitly instructed his staff to stay within the bounds of the law in their activities on behalf of the Contras.

But some of his former colleagues said North may nonetheless have believed he was doing what Reagan wanted.

For help in implementing the clandestine supply network, North turned to experienced hands in covert operations. Foremost among these experts was retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Secord, a onetime assistant secretary of defense and ex-chief of the U.S. military mission in Iran who had extensive contacts in the Middle East.

Secord stepped down from his Pentagon post after he was implicated in the federal criminal investigation of ex-CIA agent Edwin Wilson, who was convicted of illegally supplying arms and explosives to Libya. Secord was never charged in the case. Immediately after resigning, he went into the lucrative international-arms and security-consultant business with an Iranian businessman.

According to administration officials and congressional investigators, North and Secord first met in 1981, when they worked together to lobby Congress and arrange the details on a U.S. sale of AWAC surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia. Secord and his Iranian-born associate, Albert Hakim, controlled a security assistance company called Stanford Technologies Inc., with offices in Vienna, Va.; San Jose, Calif., and Geneva, Switzerland. Sources familiar with the investigation said the company played a key role in arranging arms shipments to Iran and in setting up a secret air-supply operation for the Contras.

Published reports said that Secord, through a corporation known as Lake Resources, had access to one of two secret Swiss bank accounts that received deposits from the sale of U.S. arms to Iran. North reportedly had access to the second account. It was from these accounts that money was to flow to the Contras, the sources said.

Although there is no evidence thus far that the cash or its equivalent in supplies ever reached the rebels, sources said Secord was apparently active in supplying the Contras through yet another financial corporation, General Services Fiduciare, with offices in Switzerland and the Bahamas.

Records also show that Secord ordered the purchase of four light planes from Maule Aircraft Co. of Moultrie, Ga., that later were sent to Central America. The planes were ordered by Secord for a Panamanian company and then shipped to Honduras, Maule company officials said. At least one of the planes wound up with the Contras. Federal investigators have seized records of the transaction.

While Secord was moving small, short-range planes to the rebels, he and North reportedly persuaded the Contras to use the services of Southern Air Transport Inc., a Miami-based cargo carrier owned by the CIA between 1960 and 1973. Congressional investigators see Southern Air as a key link between the shipments of arms to Iran, the NSC and the Contra supply effort. Well placed sources confirm it made deliveries of arms to Israel destined for Iran, and its other connections emerged through interviews with company officials.

William Langton, president of the airline, has confirmed that Southern Air advanced a loan to a Daytona Beach broker to purchase the C-123 cargo plane that was shot down in Nicaragua last Oct. 5. Eugene Hasenfus, a cargo handler on this ill-fated flight, has said he and two other Americans were dropping arms to the Contras on a supply mission that originated at the Ilopango air base in El Salvador. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison by a Nicaraguan court and then released last month.

Langton said the purchaser of the plane did not have sufficient money to pay for it at the time, and that the airline agreed to put up the funds. He would not disclose the identity of the purchaser. Southern Air also had a contract to service the plane and airline officials admit the carrier paid for Hasenfus`s commercial airline ticket to Central America.

An airline with a reputation for secrecy and efficiency in flying to the world`s trouble spots, Southern Air has increased its revenues dramatically in 1986, with much of its business coming from U.S. government contracts.

Southern Air flew five State Department-financed supply missions to the Contras in 1986, delivering “humanitarian“ assistance to the rebels. It also flew several other cargo loads into Honduras and El Salvador, and four secret missions on behalf of the White House NSC, according to airline spokesman William Kress.

But knowledgeable administration sources said the airline was used in a U.S. ruse to save the Contras the cost of moving some military supplies. Southern Air was engaged to fly nonlethal supplies to Central America for the State Department, a public contract let by State Department officials. Once in Central America at State Department expense, the planes were then sometimes used to ferry weapons from El Salvador to the Contras in Nicaragua before the aircraft returned to the United States.

“That way we picked up all the transit costs“ for flying from the United States to Central America, one administration official said. This left the Contras` backers responsible for the less expensive costs of flights within the region.

Coordinating the flights from his suburban Virginia office was Richard Gadd, an associate of Secord and friend of North, according to administration officials. Gadd was contracted by the State Department to deliver more than a dozen “humanitarian“ aid shipments to the Contras, the officials said.

Last summer, Gadd`s clandestine role as coordinator of Contra arms- resupply flights was taken over by retired Air Force Col. Robert Dutton, a business associate of Secord who played a role in arranging U.S. arms shipments to Iran. Gadd and Dutton have refused to comment on the air-supply scheme.

But Kress conceded it was possible that Southern Air pilots might fly a mission to an authorized location, filed on its official Department of Transportation logs, and pick up another revenue flight while at a remote location. “If they fly down there with a load of X, they may try to get some revenue flights,“ Kress said.

Because he could not be everywhere at once, North used a former Senate Republican aide and ex-State Department consultant, Robert Owen, to serve as his chief liaison with the Contras. Owen, a young Stanford University graduate, was North`s “eyes and ears“ in Central America, monitoring “whether the equipment was getting down there and distributed the way it should be“ and reporting Contra leaders` gripes back to the NSC, according to one knowledgeable source.

Owen reportedly had close ties to John Hull, an American rancher living in northern Costa Rica, who is under investigation for his alleged role in gun- smuggling to the Contras. Hull, who has bragged of working for the CIA, has acknowleged providing use of the private airstrip on his ranch to the Contras and their backers.

Another key figure linking the Contra aid network to the White House is a Cuban exile named Felix Rodgriguez, a veteran of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and former CIA employee. Rodgriguez was recommended for his job as adviser to the Salvadoran air force by Bush`s national security adviser, Donald Gregg, who knew the Cuban exile from their days together during the Vietnam war.

Known as Max Gomez — a symbolic nom de guerre immediately recognizable to Latin Americans; it is a play on Maximo Gomez, the famed Dominican-born general who led Cuba`s first war of independence against Spain — Rodriguez served as the Contras` liaison with the Salvadoran air force. From his post at San Salvador`s Ilopango air base, Rodriguez oversaw rebel air-supply missions, including Hasenfus`s final mission.

An associate of Rodriguez believed to have played a vital role in the supply effort was another Cuban exile who went by the cover name of Ramon Medina. Administration officials identified Medina as Luis Carriles Posada, a former CIA contract employee who was implicated in the 1976 bombing of a Cubana Airlines jetliner that exploded while on a flight from Barbados to Havana.

Posada mysteriously escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1984, and is officially an international fugitive. But he was often seen in El Salvador over the last year, and his real identity was common knowledge to other members of the Contra supply operation, informed sources said.

Gregg has publicly admitted introducing Rodriguez to Bush, and the vice president has met with him on three separate occasions. Bush said their conversations focused on the Salvadoran civil war and denied that they ever discussed aid to the Contras. Both Gregg and Bush have denied ever meeting Medina.

But Bush`s office confirmed that Gregg and Rodgriguez discussed the Cuban`s “concerns about“ the Contra supply effort in a meeting in Washington last August. According to one Bush aide, Rodriguez told Gregg of his suspicions that some of the money collected abroad for Contra aid “was being ripped off.“

Gregg considered the charges alarming enough to convene a meeting in his office of key administration officials, including two NSC staff members, the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Edwin Corr, and a CIA official. It is unclear what was decided at this meeting, if anything. The vice president`s office insists that Bush and Gregg had no role in “directing, coordinating or approving“ arms supplies to the Contras.

But two months later, Rodriguez hurriedly placed two calls to Col. Sam Watson, Gregg`s deputy, to report concerns that an old airplane that had taken off from El Salvador was late in returning and may have encountered trouble.

That was how aides to the vice president became the first U.S. officials to know that the cargo plane carrying Hasenfus and arms to the Contras had been shot down over Nicaragua. More than any other single event, the downing of the Hasenfus flight focused attention on the Contra supply effort and raised questions about the Reagan administration`s role in coordinating the secret network.

The plane`s wreckage, thoroughly searched by Sandinista troops, contained intriguing bits of evidence. An identification card issued by Southern Air Transport was found on the body of the dead pilot, William Cooper. Also unearthed was a Swiss banker`s business card with a handwritten number that appeared to represent a secret bank account.

Within hours of the crash, White House officials were asking the CIA whether Hasenfus or any other crew member of the ill-fated flight was working for U.S. intelligence. Agency officials responded that they were not. North, however, did not wait for an answer. Administration officials said he immediately flew to El Salvador, where he went to work ensuring that embarassing details of the operation did not leak. And he began to make arrangements for benefits to be sent to the families of the dead pilots.

Intelligence reports flowing from the CIA to the White House raise serious questions about whether Reagan or others actually knew about the diversion of money to buy arms for the Contras. These detailed reports showed a substantial increase in deliveries of arms last summer, particularly along the so-called “southern front“ near Nicaragua`s border with Costa Rica, despite the unaccounted millions of dollars, the officials said. Hasenfus`s plane was shot down in this region.

In addition, El Salvador`s national telephone company released records that showed numerous calls were placed earlier this year to North`s NSC office in Washington from the safehouse in San Salvador used by Hasenfus, Cooper and their colleagues. Calls also were placed to a CIA agent in Costa Rica and to Secord`s offices in Virginia, the records showed. The Salvadoran telephone company, ANTEL, is controlled by military intelligence officers in that nation, informed sources said.

“If the Salvadorans knew all about it, with their intelligence services, then you can bet the CIA and the NSA had to know about it, too,“ one administration official said. “If they didn`t know, then they were just incompetent.“

Source

Iran-Contra and the Religious Right

Oliver North worshipped in a charismatic Episcopal Church in Virginia called Church of the Apostles. It turn out to be one of those Shepherding churches, a cult movement within the charismatic movement. North’s pastor was Rev. Brian Cox, a National Coordinator of Sharing of Ministries Abroad (SOMA), a right-wing political orgainization in guise of of an active missionary work in South America. Their agenda was to fight communism in South America.

In 1976, Jesus freaks from Gospel Outreach of California came to Guatemala after its earthquake. They did not waste time aiding earthquake victims, they were trying to convert Catholics to Pentecostals. One early convert was Rios Montt,who became leader of Gospel Outreach Verbo Church. He smuggled Bibles into Nicaruagua after Sandisitas took over the country.

Christian Emergency Relief Teams (CERT) started in Carlsbad, California in 1974 to aid Honduras hurricane victims, but after Sandistas took over Nicaruagua, they switched to aiding the contras. They have even accompanied contras to battle. Templo Biblico in San Jose, California was a front for Full Gospel Businessman International and World Vision. It became a CIA conduit to contras in Costa Rico.

Glendale, California based Transworld Mission (TWM), headed by John Olson .When Somoza was head of Nicaragua, Olson produced rabid anti-communist radio broadcasts in US, supporting Somoza. He became friends with Oliver North.

When Oliver North became an officer, he joined Officers’ Christian fellowship, founded by Ret. Army Major Gen. Clay T. Buckingham on 170 US bases. it was a shepherding organization.

1979-83-NCPAC Financial Director Carl “Spitz” Channel formed a coalition of religious right wing organizations to raise funds for contras. Lutheran pastor Rchard Nieuhaus influenced IRD in 1981 to supporting contras.

In 1982- Charles Moser, Secretary-Treasuru of Free Congress and Education Foundation, formed a committee to support the contras. This committee had Enrique Ruedo of Free Congress, Dan Tefferman of Freedom Leadership Foundation, Reed Irvine of AIM, and Lynn Francis Bouchery of Council for Inter-American Security. Jimmy Hasan, Director of Campus Crusade in Nicaragua 1982-85, was working for the contras.

By 1984, the most prominent private donor to contras was CBN. Capt. Robert Warren, retired Navy counterinsurgency specialist, was head of Operation Blessing. He was also formerly of Operation Phoenix, the CIA assassination group in Vietnam. North, Secord, and Poindexter were also in Operation Phoenix. They had ties to John Singlaub, head of World Anti-communist League (WACL) and a former member of NSC. He was a coordinator for private aid to the contras. North went around US trying to get aid for contras and build domestic propaganda for the contras. CBN contributed $3 million to Nicaraguan Patriotic Association. Its president was Juan Sacasa, Houston representative for the contras. Harry Aderholt, the Air Force officer who pioneered Operation Phoenix, headed the Air Commandos Association( the Air Force Green Berets) and was supplying the Salvadoran Army against its rebels. Aderholt, with Warren and Operation Blessing opened a clinic in Nebay region in Guatemala that turned out to be a de facto concentration camp for the Indians.

Dr. Alton Ochsner,Jr. convinced Moral Majority to the contras cause. They started “Family Forum” in San Francisco, an organization to support contras. They formed Friends of America (FOA) in 1984. Ochsner became head of Carribean Commission, a contra support group. He introduced Jenkins to Council for National Policy, which was supporting the contras. Ochsner father was a well-known white supremicist. FOA supplies were flown by the National Guard of Mississippi and Louisana at taxpayers’ expense and illegal activity.

In Sept.,1985, Robertson asked Reagan on the 700 Club, who was the person going to Tehran to talk about hostages. Reagan admitted sending someone to Tehran to trade hostages for arms. That “someone” was Oliver North. He was accompanied by Robert Marrow, an CIA agent allegedly on the plot to kill JFK, and was part of Operation Phoenix and in Operation Blessing. Jimmy Hasan was arrested by Sandistas after an IRD meeting on Oct. 31, 1985. He fled and appeared on the 700 Club. He recieved money from North’s NSC safe. North introduced Derstine to Calero and Bermudez in a secret map room. Rev. Derstine was a televangelist. Calero and Bermudez are contra leaders. FOA leaders generate public support and coordinate private aid from US church groups for contras, though that was illegal at the time.Woody Jenkins went around claiming Sandistas were dictators.

In 1986, FOA used Kelly Air Force Base and airlifted at taxpayers’ expense 100,00 pounds of supplies to Honduras for the contras. The planes were accompanied by National Guards of Mississippi and Louisana. FOA also supplied SETCO, an CIA airline for the contras. Operation Blessing supplied gas and drove vehicles for the contras. CERT accompanied contras to their battles.

David Cousas and Oliver North spoke at National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) to get support for the contras. 1985-John Olson was Oliver North’s guest at the White House for a briefing on the contra war. Olson was there on behalf of NRB. NRB became staunch advocate of direct US military intervention against Nicaragua. Before the Hausenfus crash, Robertson knew about the contras were being supplied by Israel and South Africa. This was before the press found out. AFC Richard Viguerie lobbied for the contras in Congress and claimed North was innocent. Singlaub and Micharl Clifford (Robertson’s CBN staff member) were among AFC members. North was keynote speaker for Bev LeHayes’ Concerned Women of America (CWA), urging them to aid the contras. Barbara Abbey, CWA,co-sponsored a fund-raiser for contra leader Calero. CWA sponsored a contra refugee camp in Costa Rico. CWA got money from Pepsico, Levi, Avon,Amex, Subaru, Sun Co., United Bank of Colorado, and Government Employees Insurance.

Jose Gonzales Souza started Semilla (“Seed”) at the Chesepeake, Va, office of Pat Robertson’s National Perspective Institute. Souza was a graduate of Robertson’s Regent University and lead its Hispanic Studies.CBN gave him money to start Semilla to train and organize Christian leaders in the Western Hemisphere, especially in Latin America.S emilla got $1,714.34 from Spitz Channell’s National Endowment for Preservation of Liberty (NEPL), part of Oliver North’s multifaceted procontra propaganda project.

Robert Reilly, Reagan’s liason to the Catholics, denounced liberation theology. He worked with former Maryknoll worker Geraldine O’Leary Macras (who worked for Costa Rican contras). He also worked with Humberto Belli, former editor of La Prensa. Humberto Belli started Puebla Instiute in Michigan in co-operation with Sword of Spirit (Catholic charismatic group) and Ciudad de Dios (“City of God”), the Hispanic version of Sword of Spirit. Belli claimed there was religious persecution in Nicaragua. CIA paid Belli to do a film called Nicaragua Christians under Fire. Belli was advisor to pro-contra Archbishop Bravo. He had Bravo doing mass for contras in Miami. Archbishop Bravo had ties with W.R. Grace Corporation. He also got funds from North. Robert Pickus and George Weigel formed National Endowment for Democracy (NED), spending millions of taxpayers’ money funding Nicaragua’s opposition press. Weigel served as advisor for USIA. Pickus formed World without War Council (WWWC), which promoted US tour of Belli and contra leader Arturo Cruz.

1987- Bev Lehaye met Violetta Chamarro, editor of La Prensa, pledging support for the contras. Rev Geoff Donnan of Carribean Christian Ministries organized anti-Sandistas clergy in Nicaragua using private Christian schools there. Donnan worked under sponsorship of Paul lindstrom, a John Birch organizer.

1986- Donnan declared liberation theology as Satanic. He planned to publish a “Christian ” history of Nicaragua, written by Belli. Contra leader Joseph Douglas joined CERT. A few days before Swaggert resigned, he went to Nicaragua and saw the children victims of contra attacks. He withdrew his support of the contras and criticized them for their inhumanity. Suddenly, Marvin Gorman came up with pictures of Swaggert with a prostitute. Meanwhile, the contras smuggled illegal drugs into the US.

Politics make strange bedfellows. This proves it! In 1961, after a military coup of a democratic government in South Korea that brought Park to power, KCIA decided to organize and utilize a church called Unification Church, as a political tool of the right wing military government. They wanted to export this church to the US. They asked Rev. Bill Bright to help organize it and chose a leader of it. Bill Bright choose Rev. Sun Myung Moon to head it. Moon had been a friend of Bright for a long time. Numerious Moonies served as aids to various Congresspersons since then.

In 1977, Richard Viguerie got a contract for “Children’s Relief Fund”, sponsored by the Moonies’ Korean Culture and Freedom Foundation. Less than 6.3% of the donations went to the needy, the rest went to Viguerie’s pockets and the Moonies. The biggest chunk went to Viguerie.

In 1986, Moonies paid Viguerie to handle the distribution of their magazine Insight.

In 1975,Christian Freedom Foundation founded by Bill Bright, Richard Viguerie, Richard Devos, Arthur DeMoss, Rep. John Conlan, Ed McAteer. The money came from Moonies.

In 1983, American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV) began with Tim LaHaye, Falwell, Robertson, Bakker, Robison, Humbard, and Swaggert. The money that started it came from the Moonies. It was right after Gary Jarmin, ex-Moonie, introduced Tim LaHaye to Col. Bo Pak, Rev. Moon’s right hand man.

1984-Rev. Moon was arrested for his illegal business activities. Moonies formed Coalition for Religious Freedom (CRF), a front for defense of Rev. Moon. LaHaye, Falwell< Ben Armstrong, Robison, Humbard, James Kennedy, and Swaggert were on the executive board. Paul Crouch and Hal Lindsey joined in 1986.

Ron Goodwin, a top Falwell aid left the Moral Majority to work on Insight in 1985.

1987-Col. Pak paid 10.06 million dollars for Vigueries’ offices. Christian Voice was in Moonies pay and headed by Gary Jarmin. Pres. Robert Grant and the Christian Voice joined the Moonies to form American Freedom Coalition.

1988-Grant made ties with Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. It was a group made up of Who’s Who of WWII Nazis.

Coaliton on Revival (COR) was founded by Dennis Peacocke, a Bob Mumford disciple, and Jay Grimstead, an ex-Moonie. The money came from Moonies.

Mumford promoted dominion theology (Reconstructionism). Gary North of COR was a member of the John Birch Society.

The neo-Nazi church Identity’s rock group Legacy had entertained COR’s meetings and parties.

!985-While “Father” Dowling was passing off as a Catholic priest, he spoke at Grace Luthern Chruch in El Cerrito, CA. Its pastor, Ralph Moelling, was a member of the Moonies’ CAUSA. Dowling served as national advisory board on CAUSA, which was paying Dowling’s travel expenses. Dowling frequently met Pat Buchanan at the White House and Bretton Sciaroni, a confident of John Singlaub. Dowling kept close ties with Linda Guell, director of Western Goals, which was involved in North’s contra fundraising. It was also a John Birch front.

1987-Christian Emergency Relief Teams(CERT) recieved a large amount of money from the Moonies.

1986-Moonies received money from South Africa, $45million, in exchange for South Africa’s interest in Washington Times, the Moonie paper.

1982-James Whelan, editor of Moonie-owned Sacramento Union, went to the Washington Times. Back in 1961, he was part of a secret UPI team in Miami that covered the failed US invasion of Cuba. He was PR man for ITT, when it helped CIA overthrow Allende and set up Pinochet. Whelan resigned the Washington Times in 1984, and worked briefly for CBN.

Reed Irvine wrote for Moonie-owned papers. Richard Zone was also with Christian Voice. Grant had ties with Anita Bryant, an anti-gay crusade. Tim LaHaye, Bob Billings, and Cal Thomas, an ex-Moonie, was with the Christian Voice. Billings and Thomas was also with Moral Majority.

Shepherding

In 1965,in South Korea, Paul Yonggi Cho started a sysytem called Shepherding. He was inspired by the organizational methods of Rev. Moon. He wrote the book Successful Home Cell Groups in 1981, based on his ideas of shepherding.

1970-Argentina. An Assembly of God pastor, Rev. Juan Carlos Ortiz, established a new church, Body of Christ. It had a highly structured authority from small cells led by a “shepherd”, who was in turn led by another shepherd and so on in a pyramid form of command. It was from reading about what Cho was doing.

1972- Rev. Bob Mumford visited Ortiz’s church and was impressed. He brought Shepherding to America. He was a Bible teacher in Ft. Lauderdale,Florida.. Mumford,with four other associates, moved to Mobile, Alabama, directing the Christian Growth Ministries. They saw in the Charimatic Movement too much chaos. Shepherding would bring discipline.

Most leaders of the Shepherding Movement required their members to disclose intimate details of their lives and submit to the Shepherd (no female was allowed to be a Shepherd).The shepherd directed all facets of their followers’ lives.

Pat Robertson denounced the Shepherding Movement, but he invited Don Basham, one of the Shepherd leaders, to the 700 Club in 1987.

They have a magazine called New Wine. Cult Awareness Network declared they are a cult.

Mumford promoted dominion theology or Reconstrutionism, which was trying to get theocracy in America.Rev. Peacocke was one of Mumford’s disciples and his Coalition on Revival (COR) promoted Reconstructionism.

Robertson and the New World Order

A few years back, Robertson wrote a book called New World Order, his take on the Conpiracy Theory. He said that secret organizations are working together to make a one world government. This government will try to eliminate Christianity. He mentioned the illuminati, the Bavarian group started in 1776 by Adam Weishuapt and was disbanded in 1787. Robertson is one of those who believed Illuminati never disbanded, but behind the scenes of worldly events.

He said the Warburgs, Rockefellers, and Morgans created te Federal reserve Board and the IRS. They were out to change the Constitution. House, an employee of Rothchilds, started Council for Foreign Relations and talked Wilson into participating in WWI. House helped formed League of Nations. Adolf Hitler was trained by occult groups, so said Pat Robertson. The British Labour Party socialized Britain after WWII. Sweden became socialized. Robertson said that Ford Foundation wants US to merge with the USSR.

CFR infiltrated our government and the Federal Reserve Board. Also the Foundations (Ford,Rockefeller, Carnegie,etc.), our banks, our universities, and our newspapers.Marxism is its goal.Helped Communism to take control of Russia, China, East Europe, Central America, and Africa. Some are motivatied by Satan, so claimed Robertson.CIA under CFR control.

Then, Robertson turned to Trilateral Commission, formed to link Japan, US, and Europe.Robertson mentioned International Finance ( a buzz word for Jews) as backing US Communist Party.

Robertson said Communism was brainchild of German Jewish Intellectuals.

Robertson talked about Great Seal of US. He said the eye above the Pyramid is Eye of Osiris ( actually its Eye of Horus). A select few was planning to to replace Christian order, said Pat Robertson.

Robertson talked about roots of Communism were in the Illuminati. They staged the French Revolution. He mentioned Moses Hess, a radical Jewish rabbi, who influenced Engels. Robertson said Hess was an Illuminatus. He went on and mentioned Nesta Webster. who is a favorite author of John Birch Society and a member of British Fascist Society.

Robertson claimed Solidarity was a front for the Communist Party.

John Ruskin and his pupil, Cecil Rhodes. With Rothchild funding, Cecil Rhodes founded DeBeers. He created Rhodes Scholarship. Rhodes created British Roundtable.

Robertson mentioned Club of Rome as one of those groups working for one world government. He mentioned John Dewey teaching ethics different from JudeoChristian. New Age movement is a front for this One World conspiracy. He claimed the first Masonic legislator was Buddha. Illuminati borrowed from Jewish Cabala.

Rockefeller funded Planned Parenthood’s start. Robertson claimed that Muslems, Hindus, and Buddhists would undermine US.

Robertson claimed Lincoln was killed because he did not US government to loan from banks. Robertson said European Bankers(Jews) and money lords of US had Booth kill Lincoln. Booth was in employ of European bankers.

Robertson stole so much from John Birch literature and Nesta Webster works, its a wonder he wasn’t sued for plagerism. Robertson claimed occult came from Babylon and Egypt. Other times he said the occult came from China and India. He can’t seem to make up his mind. Historian Will Durant debunks the idea that Illuminati was connected to French Revolution. Many historians since then also debunk that idea. Robertson liked the old idea that only property owners could vote. That was a rule to prevent blacks and other minorities from voting, also keeping the poor from voting.

Well, in Robertson’s view, the Protocols of Learned Elders of Zion was real, that old Anti-Semitic forgery. I find this book both racist and contradictory. He is close to Mussolini here, with some borrowed ideas from Adolf Hitler, who was a believer in the Protocols, too.

Source

VI Congress of Emek Partisi

From En Marcha
# 1562 January 5 to 13, 2012

Resolution

We support the peoples who have rebelled for their rights and their freedom; we condemn the imperialist conspiracies against Syria and Iran.

Throughout 2011, the Arab peoples of North Africa and the Near East have risen one after another. They do not want to be victims of the consequences of the hegemony of monopoly capitalism nor to be subjected to poverty and unemployment, and they rejected the repression of the autocratic dictatorships that safeguarded such hegemony. The despotic regimes that have lasted for 30 to 40 years have been the main reason for the disorganization of the oppressed masses and have served as an obstacle to their attaining consciousness. The peoples who have risen up have achieved some victories but they have not been able to reap important fruits of this struggle, such as for example to achieve their own political power. Therefore, these reactionary bourgeois forces supported by Western imperialism have maintained or have tried to maintain their hegemony through the strengthening of their pillars with new collaborators, seeing that their hegemony was in difficulty.

The Arab peoples, who have risen up, have realized their potential and have tasted certain victories, which is why their struggles have still not been repressed in any country except for Libya. Despite their low level of consciousness and organization, the peoples are carrying forward their uprisings with an effort to try to overcome their weakness, and they insist on opposing the attacks by reactionary forces that have been organized especially by elements of political Islam, which has become more moderate and pro-American in almost all those countries.

We understand that the communist parties and organizations that are signing this document, gathered at the Sixth Congress of the Party of Labor of Turkey, express our pride and solidarity with the struggles of the masses of the people, not only in the Arab countries of North Africa and the Near East, but also in Europe, from Spain to Greece, and in Latin America, from Venezuela to Ecuador, for their social and popular rights and freedoms; as well we proclaim our support for the just struggle of the Palestinian people against the Zionist imperialism of Israel.

However, we are aware of the fact that our main weakness is the inadequate level of consciousness and organization of the peoples of the world, with a view to any process of struggle. The imperialists and their collaborators take advantage of this weakness in their efforts to renovate the weakened bases of their hegemony and to repress those struggles through ideological penetration and infiltration in those struggles of the peoples that imperialism claims to support, manipulating these struggles towards their own interests and eliminating the popular features of these struggles.

Western imperialism, which maintains hegemony in its hands and tries to strengthen its position in relation to the ascending imperialist powers, not only aims to reinforce its hegemony in the countries under its influence through the repression of the popular struggles, but also tries to establish its hegemony by extending its influence on the peoples and their struggles and using them as a tool in countries such as Syria and Iran, which have not yet been subjugated.

We do not support the regimes of either Assad or Khamenei. However, we stress the fact that the imperialist powers are intervening with the support of the reactionary forces in the region such as Turkey and the Saudis, in the name of support for the so-called “opposition” in Syria and Iran under the pretext of the struggle for “democracy” and “repression of the dictators”; these policies have nothing to do with the right of self-determination of the peoples or the democratic and social aspirations of peoples. We are opposed to imperialist interventions – economic as well as political and military – for whatever reason, whether they are called by their obliging collaborators or not, and we condemn such policies that only lead to war, bloodshed and suffering.

We call on the peoples of the world, especially the peoples of Syria and Iran, to be alert to the interventions and imperialist tricks such as those that have taken place in Libya, to show solidarity with the struggles of the peoples of the region and to support the fight against imperialism and its reactionary forces.

Ankara, December 2011

Communist Party of Albania
Communist Party of Benin
Party of Labor of Belgium
New Party of Cyprus
Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador
Communist Party of Spain (ML)
Organization for the Reconstruction of the Communist Party of Greece
Communist Party of the Workers of Tunisia
Emek Partisi of Turkey

Source

PCMLE: Iran in the crosshairs of the U.S.

En Marcha, January 10, 2012

In the current world situation, U.S. imperialism is by all means of aggravating the conflict with the Islamic Republic of Iran, under the pretext of avoiding the use of enriched uranium nuclear military purposes.

The U.S. tactical retreat, once lowered his flag of Iraq, popular military pressure, claims to be settled by a military adventure in Central Asia that allows it to extend its hegemony against Iran in the Persian Gulf. Geographical position favored for centuries and abuse of pirates raids and since the mid-twentieth century, major geopolitical point for transporting 40% of global oil production.

The focus of these new imperialist tensions has to do with actions of Israel, U.S. and NATO military installation Iranian long-range ballistic missiles and criminal attacks on the lives of Iranian nuclear scientists, the operation of the Iranian military defense, which in December shot down a U.S. spy plane that took off from Afghanistan imperialist possible approval at the request of Obama, new economic sanctions against Iran, the imminent adoption by Congress of a new Act defense spending, including economic sanctions on U.S. financial institutions to conduct transactions with Iran.

Iran’s response greater and blocking the threat to navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, at the end of military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran test-ground missiles, land-sea and sea -sea in a naval demonstration of the potential and the ability to affect navigation through the strait. Important measure of pressure on the U.S. and its allies intended to counter the application of U.S. sanctions and the European Union.

Given the possible closure of the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. imperialism responds with the transfer of the Fifth Fleet to the Persian Gulf to prevent it. It is assumed that in the course of the conflict the Russian Federation and the Republic of China was put on the side of Iran to protect their interests against the geopolitical consequences of a possible U.S. greater control in the area.

Source

Joint Statement on the situation in the Middle East

January 16, 2012

Support the people who have risen up for their rights and their freedom! We condemn the imperialist conspiracies against Syria and Iran!

During 2011 the Arab people in North Africa and the Middle East stood up, one after the other. They did not want to be exposed to the consequences of monopolistic capitalist hegemony, as unemployment and poverty. They said no to oppression from the autocratic dictatorships that have watched this hegemony. But the 30-40 year-old despot regimes has been the main cause of the disorganization of the oppressed masses and has also prevented them from developing their awareness. The people who stood up have won some victories, but could not reap the real fruits of their struggle, to be able to form their own political power. At the same time, these bourgeois reactionary forces, supported by Western imperialists, preserved or try to preserve its hegemony by strengthening the power base with its new partners, although this hegemony has encountered certain difficulties.

The Arab people who stood up realizing their potential and tasted victory, and their struggle has not yet been turned down in any country, except in Libya. Despite the low consciousness and organization continues their people revolt and tries to overcome their weaknesses. They insist on resisting the reactionary forces that have reorganized themselves, especially through the advent of political Islam, which has been moderate and pro-American in almost every country.

“We oppose all imperialist interventions, whatever pretext”

We, the undersigned revolutionary communist and working parties that meet the Turkish Labor Party 6 Congress, expressing our pride and solidarity with the peoples’ mass struggles, not only in the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East, but also in Europe, from Spain to Greece, and in Latin America, from Venezuela to Ecuador, who are fighting for their national and social rights and freedoms, and we declare our support for the Palestinian people’s just struggle against imperialism and Israeli Zionism.

However, we are also aware of the fact that our biggest weakness is the inadequate consciousness and organization level of the world’s people, whether to rebel or other fields. And the imperialists and their collaborators exploit this weakness in attempts to renew the decaying basis of its hegemony and suppress the fighting by infiltrating the ranks of the people they claim to support, by manipulating these games in their own interest and remove them from their popular content.

The western imperialists, who have world domination in their hands and trying to strengthen its positions in competition with the rising imperialist powers, has not only aims to strengthen its domination in the countries that traditionally have been under their influence by suppressing the people’s struggles but they are also trying to establish its hegemony by influencing people and their struggles and use them as lifting rods in countries like Syria and Iran, as they have not been able to force the knee.

We support either Assad or Khamenei regime. But we also underlines the fact that when Western imperialists intervene with support from the reactionary forces in the region, the Turkish and Saudi reactionary forces, under the pretext of “democracy” and “dictator’s repression” has such a policy has nothing to do with people’s right to self or with people’s social and democratic aspirations.

We oppose all imperialist interventions – economic, political and military – whatever pretext, whether they are invited by the cooperative lackeys or not, and we condemn such a policy, which only brings war, blood and tears.

We ask all people of the world, and particularly the peoples of Syria and Iran, to be on guard against the imperialist interventions and traps in the style of the Libyan example, to show solidarity with the struggles of the peoples of the region and to continue the struggle against imperialism and the reactionary forces .

Ankara, 20.12.2011

Albania’s communist party
Benin Communist Party
Belgium’s Labour
Cyprus’ new communist party
Ecuador’s Marxist-Leninist Communist Party
Spanish Communist Party (Marxist-Leninists)
Organization for the reconstruction of Greece’s Communist Party (Anasintaxi)
Tunisian Communist Workers’ Party (PCOT)
Turkey’s Workers’ Party (Emek Partisi)

Source

Turkey: Sixth Congress of the Labour Party (EMEP) Resolution

We support people who have rebelled for their rights and freedoms, condemn the imperialist conspiracies against Syria and Iran.

During 2011, the Arab peoples of North Africa and the Middle East have raised a after another. They did not want to be reported to the consequences of the hegemony of monopoly capitalism, nor voted on unemployment and poverty, and have rejected the repression of autocratic dictatorships that preserved this hegemony. The regimes despotic that lasted for 30 or 40 years have been the main reason for disorganization of the oppressed masses and have served as obstacles to the realization. The people who have raised have won some victories, but failed to collect the real fruits of their struggle, such as risucire to conquer their own political power. Therefore, the bourgeois reactionary forces backed by Western imperialism have maintained or are trying to maintain their hegemony, which has been questioned, strengthening their bases with new workers.

The Arab peoples that have been raised, have realized their potential and have tasted some victories, their struggles have not yet been crushed in any part, except Libya. Despite the low level of consciousness and organization, people have brought continue their uprising with an effort that aims to overcome the weaknesses, and continue to against the attacks of the reactionary forces that have reorganized especially through of political support, which has become a force moderate and pro-U.S. based in almost all countries.

We, the communist and workers parties and organizations have signed this document, meeting in VI Congress of the Workers’ Party of Turkey, we express our pride and solidarity with the mass struggles of the peoples, not only of the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East, but also of Europe, from Greece to Spain, Latin America, Venezuela and Ecuador, for the rights and social freedoms and national, as we proclaim our support for the Palestinian people’s just struggle against imperialism and Zionism in Israel.

Nevertheless, we are aware of the fact that our main weakness is the inadequate level of consciousness and organization of the peoples of the world, both during the uprisings in other processes. The imperialists and their accomplices take advantage of this weakness in their efforts to restore the decaying bases of their sovereignty and punish these struggles by ideological penetration and infiltration into the ranks of the people who claim to want to support, exploiting the struggle for their interests and by eliminating popular features.

The Western imperialism, which keeps the global hegemony in his hands and tries to strengthen its position in competition with the imperialist powers on the rise, not only aims to strengthen its hegemony in countries traditionally under its influence of suppressing popular struggles, but also attempts to establish its hegemony influencing people and their struggles, using them as levers to countries like Syria and Iran, which have not yet been subdued.

We do not support schemes and Assad | Ahmadinejad. However, we stress the fact that when the imperialist powers involved with the support of the reactionary forces of region such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, in the name dell’apoggio the so-called “opposition” Syria and Iran under the pretext of fighting for “democracy” and “suppression of dictators, “these policies have nothing to do with rights to self-determination and their democratic aspirations and social. We oppose all actions imperialist – both economic and political and military – whatever their reason, they are desired by their accommodating staff or not, and condemn these policies only bring war, bloodshed and suffering.

We appeal to the peoples of the world, especially the peoples of Syria and Iran, to be in guard against the traps and imperialist interventions like those that occurred in Libya, show solidarity with the struggles of the peoples of the region and to support the fight against imperialism and the reactionary forces.

Ankara, December 2011

Communist Party of Albania
Communist Party of Benin
Workers’ Party of Belgium
New Cyprus Party
Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador
Spanish Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)
Movement for the Reorganization of the Communist Party of Greece (1918-55)
Communist Party of Workers of Tunisia
Turkish Labour Party

Source

Enver Hoxha: The Theory and Practice of Revolution

I.

In his brilliant works about imperialism V. I. Lenin arrived at the conclusion that imperialism is a perishing and dying capitalism, the last stadium of capitalism and the eve of the social revolution of the proletariat. In the analysis of the specific characteristics of imperialism he wrote:

“… all this makes the state of development of capitalism which has been reached up to now into the era of the proletarian socialist revolution, … This era has begun” and “Part of this agenda of the present epoch is the multilateral immediate preparation of the proletariat for the conquest of political power in order to effect those economic and political measures which form the core of the socialist revolution.” (Lenin, Collected Works, volume 24, p. 420, German edition)

In defining the present epoch Lenin based himself on class criteria. He emphasised that it is important to consider

which class stands in the centre of this or that epoch and defines its essential content, the main direction of its development, the most important characteristics of the historic situation in the specific epoch, etc.” (Lenin, Collected Works, volume 21, p. 134, German edition)

Defining the fundamental content of the new historic epoch as the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, Lenin remained consistently loyal to the teachings of Marx about the historic mission of the proletariat as the new social force which will carry out the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist society of oppression and exploitation and build the new society, the classless communist society.

“The Communist Manifesto” by Marx and Engels and their appeal: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” was published in order to announce that the basic contradiction of human society was now the basic contradiction between labour and capital and that the proletariat was chosen to solve this contradiction through revolution. By his analysis of imperialism Lenin showed that the contradictions of the capitalist society had sharpened to the utmost and that the world had entered the epoch of the proletarian revolution and the triumph of socialism.

The Great Socialist October Revolution confirmed this brilliant conclusion by Marx and Lenin in practice. Even after Lenin’s death the communist world movement resolutely adhered to his teachings about the present epoch, it adhered to his revolutionary strategy. The triumph of the socialist revolution in several further countries proved that the Leninist thesis of the present epoch as epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism mirrors the basic laws of the development of today’s human society. The downfall of the colonial system, the achievement of political independence by the overwhelming majority of the countries of Asia, Africa and more are a further affirmation of the Leninist theory of the our epoch and the revolution. The fact that the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and the revolution were betrayed in the Soviet Union and a number of former socialist countries does not alter the Leninist thesis on the character of the present epoch in the least, because this is nothing but a turn and twist on the way to the inevitable victory of socialism over capitalism on the global scale.

The Albanian Party of Labour has always consistently upheld these Marxist-Leninist conclusions. Comrade Enver Hoxha said:

“On a daily base the main features of our epoch are sharpened and appear more and more clearly as the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism, the struggle of two opposed social systems, as the epoch of the proletarian and national liberation revolutions, the downfall of imperialism and the liquidation of the colonial system, as the epoch of the triumph of socialism and communism on a global scale.” (Enver Hoxha, Report to the 5th Party Congress of the PLA)

The Marxist-Leninists always based the definition of the present epoch and the revolutionary strategy on the analysis of the great social contradictions which characterise this epoch. Which contradictions are these?

After the triumph of the socialist revolution in Russia, Lenin and Stalin were speaking about four contradictions:

- the contradiction between the two opposed systems — the socialist and the capitalist system

- the contradiction between capital and labour in the capitalist countries

- the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and nations on the one hand and imperialism on the other hand

- the contradiction between the imperialist powers

Exactly these contradictions build the objective foundation of the development of today’s revolutionary movement, which in their collectivity form the great process of the world revolution in our epoch. The complete current situation world wide proves that since Lenin’s times the contradictions have neither been moderated nor disappeared but on the contrary, haven been further sharpened and have come to the surface like never before. Therefore the knowledge and acknowledgement of these contradictions is the basis for defining a correct revolutionary strategy. The denial of these contradictions, concealing them, ignoring one or another of these contradictions, distorting their true meaning — like the revisionists and the various opportunists do — leads to confusion and disorder within the revolutionary movement and serves as foundation to construct and preach a distorted, pseudo-revolutionary strategy and tactic.

II.

Today there is much talk about the division of the world into the so-called “First”, “Second” and “Third World”, about a “non-aligned” world, about a world of “developing countires”, “of the South and the North” etc. Each advocate of these divisions portrays his “theory” as the most correct strategy which allegedly match the real circumstances and the current international situation. But it is like Comrade Enver Hoxha emphasised at the 7th Party Congress:

“… all of these terms which refer to the different political powers working in the world today conceal — and don’t reveal — the class character of these political powers, the basic contradictions of our epoch, the predominant key problem on the national and international scale today, the grim struggle which is waged between the bourgeois-revisionist world on the one hand and socialism, the world proletariat and its natural allies on the other hand.” (E. Hoxha, Report to the 7th Party Congress of the PLA)

If Marxist-Leninists speak about the world and the different countries and name them, they judge based on the principle of dialectical and historical materialism. They judge above all according to the existing socio-economic order in the different countries, according to the proletarian class criterion.

Exactly from this point of view V. I. Lenin wrote in the year 1921, so when only one socialist country, Soviet Russia, was existing in the world:

“Today (there are) two worlds in the world: the old — capitalism which has come to a dead end and will never back down and the new growing world which is yet very weak but which will become strong and big because it is invincible.”(Lenin, Collected Works, volume 33, p. 132, German edition)

J. V. Stalin also stressed in his famous scripture “Two Camps” already in 1919:

“The world has definitely and irrevocably split into two camps: the camp of imperialism and the camp of socialism… The struggle between these two camps constitutes the hub of present-day affairs, determines the whole substance of the present home and foreign policies of the leaders of the old and the new worlds.” (Stalin, Collected Works, volume 4, p. 205, German edition)

Our Party holds the opinion that we must talk about the socialist world today, too, like Lenin and Stalin did, that the Leninist criterion is always true, like Leninism itself is alive and true. The argument of the theoreticians of the “Three Worlds”, the “non-aligned world” etc., who eliminated the existence of socialism in their schemata by referring to the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and in some other former socialist countries, to the dissolution of the socialist camp, is completely unfounded. This stands in absolute contrast to the Leninist teachings and the class criterion.

The revisionist betrayal, the return of the Soviet Union and a number of former socialist countries to capitalism, the spreading of modern revisionism widely in the international communist and workers’ movement and the splitting of this movement were a heavy blow to the cause of revolution and socialism. But this by no means implies that socialism was liquidated as a system and that the criterion of the division of the world into two opposing systems must be changed, that the contradiction between capitalism and socialism no longer exists today. Socialism exists and proceeds in the genuine socialist countries which are loyal to Marxism-Leninism, like the Socialist People’s Republic of Albania is. The socialist system which opposes itself to the capitalist system, exists objectively just like the contradiction and the struggle for life and death between it and capitalism exists.

By ignoring socialism as a social system, the so-called “Theory of Three Worlds” ignores the greatest historic victory of the international proletariat, ignores the fundamental contradiction of the time, the contradiction between socialism and capitalism. It is clear that such a theory, which ignores socialism, is anti-Leninist, it leads to the weakening of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the countries where socialism is being built, while calling on the world proletariat not to fight, not to rise in socialist revolution. And this is not surprising: the renunciation of the proletarian class criteria in the evaluation of the situation leads to conclusions which are contrary to the interests of the revolution and the proletariat.

As the great and consistent Marxist he was, Lenin frequently analysed the capitalist world and the balance of power within it in his works. He did this, however, in the service of the revolution, in order to determine the tasks which lay ahead of the proletariat, the tasks of the communist parties, the tasks of the first socialist state the proletarian towards the world revolution and in order to show who were the really allies of the revolution and who were its enemies.

Lenin gives us an excellent example in this regard in his theses and reports at the II Congress of the Communist International in the year 1920:

“Now we have to ‘prove’ by the practice of the revolutionary parties”, emphasises Lenin, “that they have enough consciousness, organisation, contact with the exploited masses, determination and the ability to exploit this crisis for a successful, for a victorious revolution. We came together at this congress of the Communist International mainly in order to prepare such evidence.”(Lenin, Collected Works, volume 31, p. 215, German edition)

The so-called “Theory of the Three World”, however, does not pose a single task for the revolution; on the contrary, it “forgets” to do so. In the schemata of the “Three Worlds” the basic contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie does not exist. What is also striking about this division of the world is the non-class view of what it calls “Third World”, the disregarding of classes and class struggle, the global treatment of countries which this theory counts to this world, the regimes which rule there and the different political powers which exist there. This way the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and the reactionary and pro-imperialist powers in their countries.

It is common knowledge that a fierce struggle of the freedom-loving peoples for freedom, independence and national sovereignty is led against the old and new colonialism in the countries exploited by imperialism, the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. This is a just revolutionary and liberation struggle which enjoys the unreserved support of the Marxist-Leninists, the genuine socialist countries, the world proletariat and all progressive forces.

This struggle is and inevitably has to be directed against multiple enemies:

 - against the imperialist exploiters, first and foremost against the two superpowers as the greatest exploiters and world police, the most dangerous enemies of all peoples of the world

- against the national reactionary bourgeoisie which is connected by thousands of strings with the foreign imperialism, with this or that superpower, with the international monopolies and which is the enemy of freedom and national independence

- against the strong remains of feudalism upon which the foreign imperialists base themselves on and which allies itself with the reactionary bourgeoisie against the people’s revolution

- against the reactionary and fascist regimes, the agents and defenders of the rule of these three enemies

Therefore it is absurd to claim one only had to struggle against external enemies without at the same time fighting and challenging the inner enemies, the allies and accomplices of imperialism, all those factors which hinder this struggle. Until now there was never a liberation struggle, there was never a national-democratic and anti-imperialist revolution which did not have inner enemies, reactionaries and traitors, bought and anti-national elements. One cannot — like the so-called theory of the “Three Worlds” does — equal all strata of the bourgeoisie without any exception, including the comprador bourgeoisie, with anti-imperialist forces, with the foundation and the factors which further the struggle against imperialism.

To follow this theory means to distract the revolutionary movement from the right way, to desert the revolution halfway, to separate it from the proletarian revolutions in the other countries, to the drive the struggle of the peoples and the proletariat of these countries into an anti-Marxist and revisionist way.

Marxism-Leninism teaches that the national question always has to be examined subject to the question of the revolution. From this point of view the Marxist-Leninists support each movement which is actually aimed against imperialism and serves the common cause of the proletarian world revolution.

“We as communists”, emphasises Lenin, “(have to and will) only support the bourgeois liberation movements in the colonial countries when these movements are really revolutionary, when their representatives do not prevent us from educating and organising the peasantry and the broad masses of the exploited in the revolutionary spirit. But if these conditions are not given then the communists in these countries have to fight the reformist bourgeoisie to which the heroes of the Second International belong. (Lenin, Collected Works, volume 31, p. 230, German edition)

The preachers of the thesis of the “Third World” label even more as liberation movement, as the “main force in the struggle against imperialism”, even the horse-trade of the King of Saudi-Arabia or of the Shah of Iran with the petroleum monopolies of the USA, their weapon transactions in the amount of billions and billions of dollars with the Pentagon. According to this logic the oil sheiks, who let the money from their oil flow into Wall Street and the banks of the USA, are fighters against imperialism and advocates of the people’s struggle against the imperialist rule. So this means that the US-imperialists, who sell their weapons to the reactionary and oppressive regimes of these sheiks, give these weapons the “patriotic” forces who struggle to drive the imperialists away from the “golden sands” of Arabia and Persia.

The facts prove that today, too, the anti-imperialist and democratic liberating revolution can only be consistent and brought to an end if it is lead by the proletariat with its party at the spearhead in alliance with the broad masses and the peasantry and the other anti-imperialist and patriotic forces.

Already in 1905 Lenin demonstrated in his book “Two Tactics” in detail that under the conditions of imperialism the characteristic of the bourgeois-democratic revolution consist in the fact that the force which is most interested in furthering the revolution is not the bourgeoisie, which is inconsistent and tends to ally itself with the feudal reactionary forces against the revolutionary impetus of the masses, but the proletariat which views the bourgeois-democratic revolution as an interim stage of the transition to the socialist revolution. The same applies for the current national liberation movements. J. V. Stalin emphasised that after the October Revolution

“The era of liberating revolutions in the colonies, the era of the awakening of the proletariat in those countries, the era of its hegemony, has begun.” (Stalin, Collected Works, volume 10, p. 212, German edition)

These Leninist teachings achieve a special value and a special meaning under the current given conditions. Today the two tendencies which Lenin pointed out have deepened and operate with great force in the world:

- one the one hand the tendency of the capitalist monopolies which break the national borders and internationalise the economic and political life

- on the other hand the tendency of the different countries to the intensify the struggle for national independence

This way, in regard to the first tendency, the connections of the national bourgeoisie with the foreign imperialist capital are not only maintained in many countries liberated from the yoke of colonialism but further increased and extended by a multitude of neo-colonialist forms like the multinational companies, the different economic and financial integrations, etc., etc. This bourgeoisie, which holds the key position in the economic and political life of the country and grows steadily, is a pro-imperialist power and an enemy of the revolutionary and liberation movement. With regard to the other tendency, namely the increase of the national independence towards imperialism in the former colonial countries, it is above all connected to the growth of the proletariat in these countries. This means that more favourable conditions arise for the extensive and consistent realisation of the anti-imperialist and democratic revolution, for its leadership by the the proletariat and thus its transition to a higher phase, to the struggle for socialism.

The Marxist-Leninists do not confuse the burning efforts and wishes of the peoples and the proletariat of the countries of the so-called “Third World” for liberation, revolution and socialism with the aims and the policies of the comprador and oppressive bourgeoisie of these countries. They know that there are sound progressive currents in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, within the peoples, who will further their revolutionary struggle determined until victory. But speaking about the so-called “Third World” as main force against imperialism and as main force of the revolution – like the followers of the theory of the “Three Worlds” do without making any difference between the genuine anti-imperialist and revolutionary forces and the ruling pro-imperialist, reactionary and fascist forces in a number of developing countries — means to openly abandon the teachings of Marxism-Leninism and to preach typical opportunistic views which cause confusion and disorder among the revolutionary forces. Basically the peoples of these countries, according to the “Theory of the Three Worlds”, are not allowed to fight, let’s say, the bloodthirsty fascist dictatorships of Geisel in Brazil and Pinochet in Chile, Suharto in Indonesia, the Shah of Iran and the King of Jordania, etc., because they all belong to the “revolutionary driving force, which turns the wheel of world history”. On the contrary, according to this theory the peoples and revolutionaries had to ally with the reactionary forces and regimes in the “Third World” and support them, in other words, abandon the revolution.

US-imperialism, the other capitalist states and Soviet social-imperialism have bound the ruling classes of the countries of the so-called “Third World” to themselves with thousands of strings. Of course these classes, which are dependant on the foreign monopolies and want to prolong their reign over the broad mass of their people, try to create the impression that they have formed a democratic block of independent states with the aim to put pressure upon US-imperialism and the Soviet social-imperialists and thus allegedly prevent interference in the interior affairs of their states.

Lenin pointed out towards the communist parties the necessity “to constantly expose and denounce every fraud the imperialist powers systematically commit by allegedly creating politically independent states, which are in fact dependent on them economical, financially and in questions of military to the broadest mass of working people of all countries, but especially of the backward countries.” (Lenin, Collected Works, volume 31, p. 138, German edition) . The Party of Labour of Albania loyally adheres to these immortal teachings of Lenin. “In the evaluation of the policies of the different governments and states” Comrade Enver Hoxha emphasised at the 7th Party Congress of the PLA, “the Marxists also base themselves on the standpoint of class, on the attitude which these governments and these countries display towards imperialism and socialism, towards their own people and the reaction.

Based on these teachings the revolutionary movement and the proletariat build their strategy and tactic, find their true allies in the struggle against imperialism, the bourgeoisie and the reaction and unite with them. The term “Third World”, “non-aligned world” or “developing countries” create the illusion among the broad masses who fight for national and social liberation that a hideout was discovered which protects us from the threat of the superpowers. They conceal the reactionary state of most of these countries which are in this or that way politically, ideologically or economical identical, bound to the superpowers as well as to their former colonial metropolises and are dependant on both.” (E. Hoxha, Report to the 7th Party Congress of the PLA)

The modern theories about the so-called “Third World”, the so-called “non-aligned world”, etc. aim at damming the revolution and defending capitalism which is not to be hindered while exercising its hegemony but is to practice a few more acceptable forms of ruling the peoples. The so-called “Third World” and the “non-aligned world” are as like as two peas in a pot, irrespective of their different names; they let themselves be guided by the same policy and ideology, one group entwines itself with the other so that it is difficult to spot which countries belong to the “Third World” and what differs them from the “non-aligned” and which states belong to the “non-aligned” and what differs them from the states of the “Third World”. There are efforts to create yet another group, namely of the so-called “developing countries”, where the countries of the “Third World” as well as the “non-aligned” are lumped together. The authors of this theory conceal the class contradictions as well, preach the given status quo in order not to hurt imperialism, social-imperialism and the other imperialist powers by any means, provided they hand out alms for the construction of the economy of the “developing countries”. According to them the superpowers have to make some “sacrifices”, to cough up something for the hungry so that they can somehow manage to live and don’t get rebellious. That way, they claim, a compromise will be found, a “new international order” will be created in which everyone, rich or poor, exploiter or exploited will live “without war”, “without armament”, “in harmony”, “in class peace”, in coexistence á la Khrushchev. Exactly because these three “inventions” have the same content and the same aims we can notice that there is full harmony among the “leaderships” [English in the original text] of the “non-aligned countries”, the “Third World” and the “World of the developing countries”. Together they deceive the masses, the proletariat and the peoples by their theories and sermons in order to lead them away from revolutionary struggle.

The theory of the “Three Worlds” does not only disregard the contradiction between the two opposite social systems — socialism and capitalism — as well as the great contradiction between wage labour and capital but also does not analyse the other great contradiction, namely the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and world imperialism which they reduce solely to the contradiction to the two superpowers, indeed even mainly to one of them. This “theory” totally ignores the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and nations on the one hand and the other imperialist powers. And not only this, the followers of the theory of the “Three Worlds” call for an alliance of the “Third World” with these imperialist countries and with US-imperialism against Soviet social-imperialism.

One of the arguments which is given in order to justify the division of the world into three worlds consists of the claim that today the imperialist camp, which existed after World War II and in which American imperialism ruled, has allegedly collapsed and as a result of the uneven development of the different imperialisms ceased to exist. The supporters of this theory claim that today one could no more speak of a single imperialist world, because first of all the Western imperialist powers allegedly rose against the American ruler and secondly an always increasing fierce rivalry between the two imperialist superpowers, USA and Soviet Union, exists.

Since the stage of imperialism the inter-imperialist contradictions exist as a result of the uneven development of the different capitalist countries, they exist, deepen continuously and depending on the circumstances and conditions inter-imperialist alliances, blocks and groups form and dissolve again — this is the ABC of Marxism-Leninism. Lenin proved in detail that this typical characteristic of imperialism, which gives testimony of imperialism as the last stage of capitalism, approaching decay more and more every day, is an objective law. But does this mean that the imperialist world as social system has ceased to exist as result of these contradictions and is divided into several worlds, that the socio-economic nature of this or that imperialism has changed? By no means. The current factors do not give evidence about a collapse of the imperialist world but about one single imperialist world system which is characterised by the existence of the two great imperialist blocks today: one the one hand the Western imperialist block with US-imperialism at its head with its inter-imperialist instruments like organisms as NATO, EEC, etc., and on the other hand the block of the East under the leadership of Soviet social-imperialism with the Warsaw Pact and Comecon as its instruments of expansionist, hegemonic and war policies.

In the schema of the “Three World” imperialist, capitalist and revisionist countries belong to the so-called “Second World”, countries which do not feature significant differences in regard to the social order of the two superpowers and are also not different to various countries classified as belonging to the “Third World”. Indeed, the countries of this “world” show certain contradictions to both superpowers but these are contradictions of inter-imperialist character like the contradictions between the two superpowers are, too. In the first instance they are contradictions between such imperialisms like the West German, Japanese, British, French, Canadian, etc. and one or the other superpower as well as between themselves in regard to markets, spheres of influence, regions for capital export and the exploitation of the wealth of others.

Of course these contradictions weaken the imperialist world system and are in the interest of the struggle of the proletariat and the peoples. But it is anti-Marxist to equal the contradictions between the different imperialist powers and both superpowers with the struggle of the working masses and the peoples against imperialism and for its destruction.

It can happen by no means that the countries of the so-called “Second World”, in other words, the ruling monopolist bourgeoisie there, become allies of the oppressed peoples and nations in the struggle against the two superpowers and world imperialism. History after World War II shows clearly that these countries supported and still support the aggressive policies and actions of US-imperialism like in Korea and in Vietnam, in the Middle East and in Africa, etc. They are ardent defenders of neo-colonialism and the old order of inequality in international economic relations. The allies of Soviet social-imperialism in the “Second World” participated together with it in the occupation of Czechoslovakia and are eager advocates of its expansionist policy in the different regions of the earth. The countries of the so-called “Second World” are the economic and military main support of the aggressive and expansionist alliances of the two superpowers.

The supporters of the theory of the three worlds claim that it gives great possibilities for exploitation of inter-imperialist contradictions. The contradictions in the rows of the enemy have to be exploited, but in which way and to what aim? Generally they always have to be exploited for the sake of the revolution, the sake of the peoples and their freedom, for the sake of socialism. Generally the exploitation of the contradictions between the enemies have to lead to the growth and the intensification of the revolutionary and liberation movement and not to its weakening and its downturn, they have to lead to an always more and more active mobilisation of the revolutionary powers in the struggle against the enemies, especially against their main enemies without letting even a single illusion about their character emerge among the peoples.

To make the inter-imperialist contradictions absolute, to underestimate the basic contradiction, namely the contradiction between the revolution and the counter-revolution, to make only the exploitation of contradictions within the camp of the enemy the centre of the strategy while forgetting the most important point — the strengthening of the revolutionary spirit and the development of the revolutionary movement of the working class and the peoples -, to leave the preparation for the revolution aside, all this is in absolute contrasts to the teachings of Marxism-Leninism. It is anti-Marxist to preach unity with the allegedly weaker imperialism for the struggle against the stronger one under the pretext of exploiting contradictions, to side with the national bourgeoisie in order to resist the bourgeoisie of another country. Lenin stressed that the tactic of the exploiting of contradictions between the enemies should be used to raise and not to reduce the general level of proletarian class consciousness, the revolutionary spirit, the confidence of the masses in struggle and victory.

The Party of Labour of Albania has consistently adhered to these immortal teachings and always consistently adheres to them.

“In these moments of the great crisis of imperialism and modern revisionism”, Comrade Enver Hoxha said, “we have to exploit the great contradiction between the enemies correctly for our sake, for the sake of the socialist states and the peoples rising for the revolution, have to unmask the enemies constantly and must not be content with the so-called concessions and cooperations the imperialists and revisionists make perforce until they have left the danger behind them to take revenge afterwards. Therefore we have to keep the iron steadily in the fire and forge it constantly.” (E. Hoxha, Report to the 7th Party Congress of the PLA)

By portraying the so-called “Second World”, to which most capitalist and neo-colonialist countries belong and which presents the main pillar of the two superpowers, as ally of the “Third World” in the alleged struggle against US-imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism the anti-revolutionary and pseudo-imperialist character of the theory of the “Three Worlds” becomes evident.

It is an anti-revolutionary “theory” because class truce is preached to the European, Japanese, Canadian and other proletariat which has to struggle against the ruling monopoly of the bourgeoisie and exploitative order in the countries of the “Second World”, and also the collaboration with the bourgeoisie, meaning an abandonment of the revolution because allegedly this is in the interests of the defence of national independence and of the struggle especially against Soviet social-imperialism.

Furthermore it is a pseudo-anti-imperialist theory because it justifies and supports the neo-colonialist and exploitative policies of the imperialist powers of the “Second World” and calls upon the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America not to resist this policy, allegedly for the sake of the struggle against the superpowers. This way, the anti-imperialist struggle of the peoples of the so-called “Third World” as well as of the so-called “Second World” is actually weakened and sabotaged.

III.

A revolutionary strategy is one which puts central emphasis on the revolution.

“The strategy and tactics of Leninism”, Stalin wrote, “constitute the science of leading the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.” (Stalin, Foundations of Leninism)

The Leninist strategy sees the proletarian world revolution as one single process, consisting of several great revolutionary currents of our epoch where the international proletariat is centred.

This revolutionary process takes place continuously in countries which are treading the way of genuine socialism as irreconcilable and fierce struggle between the two ways — the socialist and the capitalist way — for the achievement of the complete and final victory of the first over the second, in order to avert the danger of retrogression by counter-revolutionary violence and imperialist aggression or by the bourgeois-revisionist peaceful degeneration once and for all. The revolutionaries and peoples of the whole world follow the this struggle with lively interest and view it as a vital issue for the sake of the revolution and of socialism on a global scale. They give the socialist countries their whole support and backing against every assault of imperialism at these countries because in the socialist countries they see a strong basis and a mighty centre of the revolution, they see the practical realisation of the ideals for which they fight themselves. Lenin’s ideas about the necessity and primary importance of help and support from the part of the international proletariat for the country in which the socialist revolution was victorious are immortal. However, this requires at all times that it is a truly socialist country which applies the revolutionary teachings of Marxism-Leninism with utmost strictness and which consistently holds on to proletarian internationalism. In the case that it transforms into a capitalist country and only keep a fake “socialist” mask it must not be supported.

The revolutionaries and peoples know that the success and the struggle of the socialist countries hit and weaken imperialism, the bourgeoisie and the international reaction, that they are an immediate help and aid for the revolutionary liberation struggle of the working class and the peoples.

Lenin and Stalin always saw it as a revolutionary duty of the proletariat of a socialist country not only to make every possible effort to develop socialism in their own country but to wholeheartedly support the revolutionary liberation movement in other countries.

“Lenin”, J. V. Stalin wrote, “never regarded the Republic of Soviets as an end in itself. He always looked on it as an essential link for strengthening the revolutionary movement in the countries of the West and the East, an essential link for facilitating the victory of the working people of the whole world over capitalism. Lenin knew that this was the only right conception, both from the international standpoint and from the standpoint of preserving the Republic of Soviets itself.” (Stalin, On the Death of Lenin)

Exactly because of this a genuine socialist country cannot integrate itself into such groupings as the so-called “Third World” or the so-called “non-aligned countries” where all class boundaries are blurred and which solely serve the goal of diverting the peoples from the path of struggle against imperialism and from the revolution.

True and reliable allies of the socialist countries can only be the revolutionary, freedom-loving and progressive forces, the revolutionary movement of the working class and the anti-imperialist movement of oppressed peoples and nations. To preach the division into “Three Worlds”, to ignore the fundamental contradictions of our epoch, to call for an alliance of the proletariat with the monopoly bourgeoisie and of the oppressed peoples with the imperialist powers of the so-called “Second World” is neither for the betterment of the international proletariat nor of the peoples or the socialist countries, it is anti-Leninist. J. V. Stalin stressed:

“I cannot imagine that there will ever be a case when the interests of our Soviet Republic demand deviations to the right from our brother parties… I cannot imagine that the interests of our republic, which is the basis of the revolutionary proletarian movement of the whole world, would ever demand not a maximum of revolutionary verve and political activity of the Western workers but a decrease of this activity, hindering the revolutionary impetus.” (Stalin, Collected Works, volume 8, p. 97, German edition)

In the metropolises of capitalism the process of the proletarian world revolution gets more and more concrete today in the always increasing class struggles of the proletariat and the other working and progressive strata against bourgeois exploitation and oppression, against the attempts of the bourgeoisie to shift the burden of the current crisis of the capitalist world system on to the shoulders of the working class, against the revival of fascism in this or that form, etc. Among the working class, with the proletariat at its head, the conviction becomes accepted and will become more accepted each day that the only way out off the crises and other evils of capitalism, the bourgeois exploitation, the fascist violence and the imperialist wars is the socialist revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Live and the facts prove that neither the bourgeoisie nor their declared or disguised lackeys, from the social democrats to the modern revisionists, are able to hold up the surging wave of the revolutionary struggle of the masses.

“The present struggle of the world proletariat”, Comrade Enver Hoxha stressed at the 7th Party Congress of the PLA, “proves again the basic thesis of Marxism-Leninism that working class and its revolutionary struggle in the bourgeois and revisionist world can suppressed neither by violence nor by demagogy.”

The objective conditions for the revolution in the developed capitalist nations become more positive with every day. Today in these countries the proletarian revolution is a problem whose solution has to be faced. The Marxist-Leninist parties, which have taken up the banner of the revolution that the revisionists have betrayed and dropped, have rightfully readied themselves for the task and started seriously on the work of preparing the proletariat and its allies for the future revolutionary battles aimed at the downfall of bourgeois order. This revolutionary struggle which attacks the capitalist and imperialist world order in its strongholds has the full support of the true socialist countries as well as the revolutionary and peace-loving peoples on the whole world and must necessarily have them. Today, however, the modern revisionists, the advocates of the theory of the “Three Worlds” and the theoreticians of “non-alignment”, are making an effort by keeping silent about the revolution and its preparations and by upholding the status quo of the capitalist social order.

By trying to divert the attention of the proletariat from the revolution, the authors of the theory of the “Three Worlds” preach that nowadays the question of the defence of national independence opposing the danger of aggression from the part of the superpowers, especially from Soviet social-imperialism which they consider to be as arch-enemy, has taken precedence. The question of defining who — at a given time — is considered to be the arch-enemy on an international scale is of great importance for the revolutionary movement. Our party which takes into consideration the course of events and class analysis of the current situation, underlines that US-imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, both them superpowers, are today “the biggest and the main enemies of the peoples” and as such “present the same kind of danger” (E. Hoxha, Report to the 7th Party Congress of the PLA).

Soviet social-imperialism is a brutal, aggressive and expansionist imperialism which practices an exceedingly colonialist and neo-colonialist policy which is based on the power of capital and weapons. This new imperialism is struggling as a rival of US-imperialism in order to conquer strategic positions and to extend its clutches to all regions and continents. It excels as a fire extinguisher of the revolution and oppressor of the liberation struggle of the peoples. This does not mean in the least that the other enemy of the peoples of the whole world, namely US-imperialism, is less dangerous, although the supporters of the theory of the “Three Worlds” say so. By disfiguring the truth and betraying the peoples they claim that American imperialism is no longer a warmonger, that it is allegedly weakened, that it is in decline and that it has turned into a frightened mouse — or in other words that US-imperialism is gradually becoming more peaceful. This goes so far that they justify even the American military presence in different countries like Germany, Belgium, Italy or Japan and label it as a factor of military defence. Such views are extremely dangerous to the freedom of the peoples and for the fates of the revolution. Such theses fuel illusions about the aggressive, hegemonistic and expansionist nature of US-imperialism as well as Soviet imperialism.

The proletariat and the proletarian revolution face the task of overthrowing each single imperialism and especially both imperialist superpowers. Because of its nature each imperialism is always a furious enemy of the proletarian revolution and therefore the classification of imperialisms in more or less dangerous kinds is false from the strategic viewpoint of world revolution. Practice has confirmed that both superpowers are to the same degree and at the same level the arch-enemy of socialism, the liberty and independence of the nations, it is the main force for the defence of the oppressive and exploitative systems, the immediate danger which threatens to pitch humanity into a third world war. The denial of the great truth, the underestimation of the danger of one or another superpower, or worse, the appeal to ally with one superpower against the other bears disastrous consequences and great dangers for the future of the revolution and the freedom of the peoples.

Of course it happens and can happen that one or another country is oppressed and threatened by one of the superpowers directly but this never ever means that the other superpower poses no danger for just this country and even less that the other superpower has become an enemy of this country. The principle “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” cannot be applied if it is a matter of the two imperialist superpowers: the USA and the Soviet Union. These two superpowers are fighting with all means against the revolution and against socialism, they undertake all possible efforts to sabotage the revolution and socialism and suffocate both in blood. The two superpowers are fighting in order to expand their rule and exploitation to different peoples and countries. Experience shows that they attack brutally first in the one region and next in another in order to reach for the peoples with their bloodstained claws and that they furiously form up for attack so that they can oust each other. As soon as the people of one country succeeds at shaking off the rule of the one superpower, the other immediately approaches. The Middle East and Africa fully confirm this.

The other great current of the world revolution in our epoch is the national liberation struggle of the peoples which is directed against imperialism, neo-colonialism and the colonial remains. The Marxist-Leninists and the world proletariat are solidly united with the national liberation struggles of the oppressed peoples and lend it all their support because they consider these struggles to be a very important and irreplaceable factor in the development of the revolutionary world process. The Party of Labour of Albania was and always is on the side of the peoples who struggle for freedom and national independence:

“We are in favour of the unity of the world proletariat and all upright anti-imperialist and progressive forces which thwart the aggressive plans of the imperialist and social-imperialist warmongers.”

The Party of Labour of Albania and the Albanian people who consistently adhere to this line… will… also in the future not spare any effort and will fight together with the other anti-imperialist and anti-social-imperialist peoples, together with all Marxist-Leninist parties, all revolutionaries and the world proletariat, with all progressive humans for the failure of the plans and manoeuvres of the enemies and for the triumph of the case of freedom and safety of the peoples.

Our country will always be on the side of all the peoples whose freedom and independence are threatened and whose rights are injured.” (E. Hoxha, Report to the 7th Party Congress of the PLA)

 Comrade Enver Hoxha expressed this unshakable conviction in the name of the party and the Albanian state in the speech at the people’s assembly for the enactment of our new constitution:

“Most peoples of the earth”, he explained, “are making great efforts and they insistently resist the colonial laws and the neo-colonial reign, the old and new rules, practices, conventions and one-sided treaties which have been put up by the bourgeoisie in order to keep up the exploitation of the peoples, the detested differences and discriminations in the international relations… the progressive peoples and the democratic states which cannot accept this state and struggle to achieve national sovereignty over their resources, which struggle to strengthen the political and economic independence and to achieve equality in the international relations have the full solidarity and support of the Albanian people and the Albanian state.”

Since the time of Lenin, the Marxist-Leninists have always considered the national liberation struggle of the peoples and nations oppressed by imperialism as a strong ally and great reserve of the world revolution of the proletariat.

In the countries which have achieved political independence completely or partially, the revolution is in different stages of development and it does not face the same tasks. Among them are countries which are directly facing the proletarian revolution while in many others the tasks of the anti-imperialist, national-democratic Revolution are in order. But the revolution is in any case an ally and a reserve of the proletarian world revolution as long as it is also directed against the international bourgeoisie and imperialism.

But does this means that such country has to stop at the national-democratic phase and that the revolutionaries must not speak about the socialist revolution, must not prepare it out of fear of skipping stages and leaving them out and because somebody might call them “Blanquists”?! Lenin already spoke about the necessity of the transformation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution at a time when the bourgeois-democratic revolution was still only budding in these countries. Marx and Engels, while criticising Blanquism, have called neither the revolution in 1848 nor the Paris Commune premature. Marxism-Leninism in no way mistakes the petty bourgeois impatience which leads to skipping stages with the necessity to perpetuate the revolution consistently.

Lenin stresses that the revolution in the dependent and colonial countries has to be promoted. Since the time of Lenin great changes have taken place in these countries which haven been foreseen by him in a brilliant way and in which the Leninist thesis of the revolutionary world process finds its answer. The realisation of the proletarian revolution is an universal law and the main trend of our epoch. Both must and will necessarily permeate all countries without exception, among them Indonesia and Chile, Brazil and Zaire, etc., regardless of the question by which stages the proletarian revolution will be accomplished. Disregarding this aim, preaching the preservation of the status quo and theorising about the “necessity not to skip any stages”, forgetting the fight against Suharto and Pinochet, Geisel and Mobutu means being neither for the national liberation struggle nor for the national-democratic revolution.

The proletarian revolution must and will permeate Europe, too. Whoever forgets this perspective, whoever doesn’t prepare for this aim but preaches instead that the revolution has shifted to Africa or Asia and that the European proletariat has to ally itself with its “reasonable and well-meaning” bourgeoisie under the pretext of defending national independence, is someone who takes an anti-Leninist stance and who is not in favour of the defence of the mother country and for the nation’s freedom. Whoever “forgets” that both the Warsaw Treaty and the NATO have to be fought, and that both the Comecon and the EEC have to be rejected, is someone who allies himself with them and becomes their slave.

In the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” Marx and Engels wrote: “A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre.”

This statement by Marx and Engels is topical today, too. Both the temporary defeat which the revolution suffered because of the revisionist betrayal and the economic potential and the military oppressive power which imperialism and social-imperialism use to oppose the revolutionary movement and the ideas of communism have not been able and will never be able either to change the course of history and thus to bring the great power of Marxism-Leninism to its knees.

Marxism-Leninism is the revolutionary ideology which has penetrated deeply into the consciousness of the proletariat and which has an ever increasing influence on the broad masses of the peoples seeking liberation. The influence of this theory is so strong that even the bourgeois ideologists have always been forced to reckon with it, and they have never ceased trying to find ways and means to disfigure Marxism-Leninism and to undermine the revolution.

The current anti-Leninist theories of the “Three Worlds”, the “non-alignment”, etc., also aim at undermining the revolution, to fight back the struggle against imperialism, especially the American one, to divide the Marxist-Leninist movement and the unity of the proletariat propagated by Marx and Lenin, to create a number of groups of anti-Marxist elements so that fight against the true Marxist-Leninist parties which are loyally stick to Marxism-Leninism and to the revolution.

All efforts to analyse the situation in an allegedly new manner which is different from that of Lenin and Stalin and to change the revolutionary strategy which has always been upheld by the Marxist-Leninist movement lead astray, making one take the anti-Marxist path and turning one’s back on the struggle against imperialism and revisionism. The loyalty towards Marxism-Leninism, towards the revolutionary strategy of the Marxist-Leninist communist movement, and the fight against all opportunist deviations which the modern revisionists of different colour propagate as well as the revolutionary mobilisation of the working class and the peoples against the bourgeoisie and imperialism as well as the serious preparation for the revolution are the only true way, indeed the only way towards victory.

Source

Forty years of African Liberation Day! Time to build the Party to complete the struggle

Published Dec 2, 2011

When the first African Liberation Day (ALD) demonstration was held in 1972, the U.S. front of the African liberation movement was reeling from deathblows being delivered by the U.S. government in a counteroffensive that had littered the international landscape with the bodies of murdered black freedom fighters around the world.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others were rounded up at gunpoint and herded into concentration camp jails and prisons in the U.S.

This was the U.S. response to the changing world that was reducing the list of hosts that U.S. and European parasitic capitalism relied on for its existence.

Since the bloody carnage of the second imperialist world war between the U.S. and European powers to re-divide the world, the struggles of the peoples beaten down by imperial white power had escalated to an alarming degree.

The independence of India, which occurred in 1947, was followed by the success of the Chinese revolution in 1949.

Peoples of all countries were demanding freedom from white power.

And although the 1950s saw the temporary success of imperialism in overturning progressive governments in Iran and Guatemala, and defeating the revolutionary resistance movement of the Kenyan Land and Freedom Army, the Mau Mau resistance in Kenya and the successful 1959 Cuban revolution set off a chain of events in South America, Africa and elsewhere that presaged a bleak future for imperialism.

The struggle of African people in the U.S. had seen the ebbs and flows being experienced by freedom movements worldwide.

The second imperialist world war gave impetus to mass movements that were first characterized as democratic or civil rights struggles, eventually shedding their pacifist and reformist skins to raise the true anti-colonial demand for power, Black Power!

It was bloody.

Mobutu Sese Seko and other neo-colonial leaders were installed by the West to undermine proletarian revolution and African liberation

Patrice Lumumba was overthrown and murdered in the Congo in 1961, and Kwame Nkrumah was deposed in Ghana by U.S. imperialism in 1966. In the U.S. Malcolm X was murdered by U.S. agents in 1965.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Fred Hampton both were assassinated in 1968, and in Bolivia, Che Guevara was murdered by CIA-led mercenaries in 1967.

Nevertheless, the 1960s held out the promise of a liberated future for African people worldwide.

Algeria won its independence in 1962 and in Ethiopia, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), a distorted, diversionary response to Kwame Nkrumah’s call for a united continental African state was created in 1963.

It was on May 25, at the founding of the OAU, that it was resolved to make that date African Liberation Day.

Despite that historic declaration, however, liberation struggles of African people remained unresolved in Africa and elsewhere.

At the time of the OAU founding, the struggle within the U.S. was shaking the ideological and political fabric of the country to its core.

Liberation movements were blazing in Rhodesia, southwest Africa, Guinea Bissau, South Africa, Mozambique and Angola. These struggles continued to illuminate our possibilities, even after we had suffered some of our most serious setbacks.

On May 27, 1972, the first ALD mobilizations took to the streets as a direct response to the call of the liberation struggles being waged on the continent of Africa.

It was while organizing for this momentous event that the African People’s Socialist Party was founded, through unification of three mainly Florida-based organizations that came together to participate in the May 27 ALD mobilization.

African People’s Socialist Party Chairman, Omali Yeshitela, was a founding and participating member of the ALD’s coordinating committee, which organized the initial ALD mobilization.

African Liberation Day 2012 occurs on the 40th anniversary of the first ALD mobilization.

It is also the 40th anniversary of the founding of the African People’s Socialist Party.
These are two of the reasons for its historic significance; however, there are other reasons.

Our movement for the liberation and unification of Africa and African people has suffered many setbacks since the heady days of the founding of the OAU and the presumed victories of the 1960s.

The first 1972 ALD mobilization obscured the defeat that had been dealt to the organized African resistance in the U.S. and some other places.

The imperialists succeeded in installing neocolonial puppets in power throughout the world to preside over the looting that keeps a parasitic imperialist world system alive at the expense of the resources, dignity and sovereignty of Africans and others.

Even today the U.S. and NATO, almost the entire organized white world, are wreaking bloody havoc to install a neocolonial government in Libya in North Africa.

But the tables have surely turned, and the future of our people looks brighter than ever, as a desperate imperialism fights for its very life.

White power is on the ropes and nothing it can do will save it.

Not even the ploy of attempting to hide its face behind the black mask of an African president in the U.S., headquarters of worldwide imperialist white power.

Today, a haggard, gun-wielding imperialism staggers through its shrinking domain, weakened by its loss of extorted colonial sustenance and increasingly isolated in a world being changed by the growth of free and rebellious peoples who are declaring that the days of colonial slavery are over.

Today, because of its growing losses, the imperialist world economy is severely broken.

Imperialist “economists,” blinded by characteristic arrogance and unable to admit imperial white reliance–that is to say, dependence–on the resources of the oppressed, cannot correctly diagnose the problem as the resistance of the people.

The imperialists are facing a crisis, the likes of which they have never experienced.

The assumption that this is a typical cyclical capitalist crisis that can be resolved by shifting the burden of the crisis onto the backs of the colonial peoples is a form of whistling in the graveyard.

Precisely, the struggles of the colonial peoples are responsible for the crisis and, hence, the inability of the imperialists to turn to this solution of the past.

And while it is possible the U.S. and its allies will succeed in replacing the current government of Libya with pliant, neocolonial quislings, the crisis of neocolonialism is a part of the overall crisis of imperialism.

Indeed, the existence of Barack Hussein Obama in the U.S. White House is the greatest evidence of the general unreliability of neocolonialism around the world that the U.S. would have to deploy an imperial neocolonialism.

Today, facing the 40th anniversary of the first African Liberation Day mobilization, we do so under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party, which has accumulated 40 years of experience and achieved the ideological clarity, political maturity and organizational breadth to lead us to victory, to the liberation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.

Victory is Imminent!
Forward to ALD!
One Africa! One Nation!

Source

Statement of The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) about the USA’s Plans on the Middle East

Stop the War!
No Sanctions, No Bombs Against Iran!
March 17, 2007

The US has, directly after its occupation of Iraq, been building up several military bases close to the Iranian border.

The US has made repeated demands on the Iranian government to accommodate to US policies concerning the “new American order”.

Replacement of the regimes in Iraq, North Korea and Iran is, and has been, part of the Bush doctrine. Right now, as the US has failed in Iraq, its war-mongering against Iran is on the increase. The US has now dispatched two aircraft carriers to the Gulf of Persia and placed 50 warships just off the Iranian coast. The US accuses Iran of possessing nuclear arms or of aiming at producing them. This is the hysterical US propaganda against Iran, in spite of the fact that all inspectors have declared that Iran has got no nuclear arms; those statements, however, doesn’t suffice for G.W. Bush.

According to what the US dictates, independent nations have no right to develop peaceful nuclear power for civil use. The US dictate does not concern Israel, which is a nuclear power in the Middle East. Nor does it apply to Pakistan, or India, et al. What is being said,is that the Tehran regime must obey the US on the Palestine/Israel conflict; must not oppose US policies in the Persian Gulf on matters concerning oil; must accommodate entirely to the IMF and the World Bank, etc. In short, Iran must unconditionally align itself with the US in the rivalry of the latter with the EU, Japan, and China. Can this be realized without any military intervention? Yes, that alternative might be possible. The capitalist clergy regime in Tehran has the character of selling out to the US for the sake of power. All factions within the Tehran regime have shown marked tendencies of compromise with the US. Examples of this are that the Islamic regime, during bombardments of Iraq and Afghanistan, has been collaborating with “the alliance Britain-US” and, according to its own statement, “the US wouldn’t succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan without help from Iran”.

Iran was one of the first states to recognize the stooge regime in Baghdad. The Tehran regime has from the very beginning been acting against the resistance movement in Iraq, and has been close to the US line, while yet being accused of responsibility for the US failure in Iraq.

An invasion of Iran is, given the situation of huge US problems in Iraq and internationally, unlikely to occur. Nevertheless, the war-mongering is dangerously similar to the war-mongering that preceded the invasion of Iraq. If it is not possible, in the end, to change the Iranian regime in favour of US desires, it might finally lead to a military action against Iran. The US doesn’t care about the form or medieval character of the Iranian regime. History has shown that the US may collaborate with any kind of Satan to realize its aims and goals. Decisive to the Bush administration is that Iran chooses a pro-US line like Kuwait, Bahrain, Turkey, Qatar et al. The possible intrusion of US imperialism into Iran is of the same nature as its intrusion into Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and other countries, and must be condemned. The US has its imperialist political, economical and strategic interests, and no thinking person should believe that US meddling into Iranian affairs has anything to do with democracy, freedom or justice. That is nothing but sheer imperialist propaganda. The people of Iran can, by its own might, overthrow the reactionary theocratic regime and build a free and democratic society without the “aid” of imperialism. Iranians are never going to forget the 1953 event, when Prime Minister Mosadegh was overthrown by a joint US-British action following his nationalization of the oil industry. The Shah was reinstated, oppression and terror became everyday features, and the democracy movement was drowned in blood. One should not be blinded by the terror regime in Iran to forget about the colonial and barbaric aims of US imperialism.

US Out of Iraq Immediately and Unconditionally!
No Sanctions, No Bombs Against Iran!

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan)

Source

US Ambassador Echoes Cecil Rhodes

By Stephen Gowans
September 24, 2011 – http://gowans.wordpress.com

When in 1916 Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin expounded what historian V.G. Kiernan would later call virtually the only serious theory of imperialism, despite its shortcomings (1), Lenin cited Cecil Rhodes as among the “leading British bourgeois politicians (who) fully appreciated the connection between what might be called the purely economic and the political-social roots of modern imperialism.” (2)

Rhodes, founder of the diamond company De Beers and of the eponymous Rhodesia, had made the following remarks, which Lenin quoted at length in his Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

I was in the East End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for ‘bread,’ ‘bread,’ ‘bread,’ and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism … My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced by them in factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists. (3)

Skip ahead 95 years. Here’s US ambassador to Libya, Gene A. Cretz:

We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources, but even in Qaddafi’s time they were starting from A to Z in terms of building infrastructure and other things. If we can get American companies here on a fairly big scale, which we will try to do everything we can to do that, then this will redound to improve the situation in the United States with respect to our own jobs. (4)

New York Times’ reporter David D. Kirkpatrick noted that “Libya’s provisional government has already said it is eager to welcome Western businesses (and)…would even give its Western backers some ‘priority’ in access to Libyan business.” (5)

A bread and butter question. Also a profit-making one.

What Ahmadinejad really said at the UN

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s address to the 66th UN General Assembly meeting provided the Iranian president with the usual occasion to make the usual points and the Western media the usual occasion to misrepresent them.

Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon wrote that Ahmadinejad “sought to stoke controversy by again questioning the Holocaust,” (6) reminding readers that Ahmadinejad had once called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”, a distortion that will live on in history through its mere retelling. (What the Iranian president really said was that Israel would dissolve as the Soviet Union had.)

I read the transcript of Ahmadinejad’s address, but found no questioning of the Nazi-engineered holocaust.

Here are his remarks on Zionism and the Holocaust.

They view Zionism as a sacred notion and ideology. Any question of its very foundation and history is condemned by them as an unforgivable sin.

…

Who imposed, through deceits and hypocrisy, the Zionism and over sixty years of war, homelessness, terror and mass murder on the Palestinian people and countries of the region?

…

If some European countries still use the Holocaust, after six decades, as the excuse to pay fine or ransom to the Zionists, should it not be an obligation upon the slave masters or colonial powers to pay reparations to the affected nations?

…

By using their imperialistic media network which is under the influence of colonialism they threaten anyone who questions the Holocaust and the September 11 events with sanctions and military action. (7)

It would have been more accurate for Solomon to have written that Ahmadinejad sought to stoke controversy by again questioning the legitimacy of Zionism and the manipulative use of the Nazi-perpetrated holocaust to justify it.

But these themes are unmentionable in the Western corporate media.

It is common practice to capitalize the Nazi-engineered effort to exterminate the Jews as the ‘Holocaust’, as if there had never been any other holocaust—or any at rate, any other worth mentioning. Even the transcript of Ahmadinjad’s address refers to ‘the Holocaust’ rather than ‘a holocaust.’

The Justice Process

It seems that the only argument US president Barak Obama could muster for why Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas shouldn’t seek recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN is that the ‘peace process’ would be derailed.

Let’s lay aside the obvious difficulty of Barak the Bomber caring about peace, and that the ‘peace process’ has been off the rails for some time. His objection missed the point. Recognition of a Palestinian state isn’t a question of the peace process but of the justice process, and hardly a very satisfying one at that. What justice is there in Palestinians settling for one fifth of their country? Which is what, in any practical sense, UN recognition of the Palestinian territories as a state would amount to.

But it’s better than the status quo and a starting point.

For Zionists, the peace process is a little more appealing, but is the opposite of the justice process. It means getting Palestinians to settle for even less than one-fifth of their country, and to acknowledge the theft of it as legitimate.

An aside: Over 30 countries do not recognize Israel, among them Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran and Syria.

Rational Ignoramuses?

Do those who promote what Keynes called the fallacy of thrift (or fallacy of austerity, to give it a contemporary spin) really believe what they preach: that cutting pensions, laying off public servants, raising taxes on the poor, and closing government programs, is the way to avert a deeper economic crisis for the bulk of us?

Do they even care about the bulk of us?

Or is austerity simply a way of bailing out bankers and bondholders by bleeding the rest of us dry?

British prime minister David Cameron, on a trip to Canada to compare notes with fellow deficit-hawk Stephen Harper, the Canadian PM, remarked that “Highly indebted households and governments simply cannot spend their way out of a debt crisis. The more they spend, the more debts will rise and the fundamental problem will grow.” (8)

This was reported with tacit nods of approval in Canada’s corporate press, as if Cameron’s utterings were incontrovertible, rather than the ravings of an economic illiterate (in the view of economists), or the words of a political con artist (in the view of class struggle literates.)

Highly indebted governments simply cannot cut their way out of an economic crisis. The more they cut, the more aggregate demand weakens and the worse it gets. Greece’s continued slide into economic ruin underscores the point. The United States’ inability to drag itself out of the depths of the Great Depression, until arms orders brought the economy back to life, strikes an historical cautionary note.

But recessions are not without benefits for corporate plutocrats. It’s easier to cut wages, salaries and benefits during downturns, and to enjoy bigger profits as a result. Small competitors can be driven out of business. Unions can be weakened. And governments have an excuse to slash social programs that have pushed the balance of power a little too far in labor’s direction. Indeed, all manner of sacrifices can be extracted from most of us if we’re persuaded that debt is the cause of the problem and that belt-tightening is the physic that will cure it.

My bet is that Cameron and his fellow water carriers for moneyed interests are no dummies — but they’re hoping the rest of us are.

Knowing Who Your Friends Are

Here is the widely reviled (by Western governments) Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, at the 66th session of the UN General Assembly.

After over twenty thousand NATO bombing sorties that targeted Libyan towns, including Tripoli, there is now unbelievable and most disgraceful scramble by some NATO countries for Libyan oil, indicating thereby that the real motive for their aggression against Libya was to control and own its abundant fuel resources. What a shame!

…

Yesterday, it was Iraq and Bush and Blair were the liars and aggressors as they made unfounded allegations of possessions of weapons of mass destruction. This time it is the NATO countries the liars and aggressors as they make similarly unfounded allegations of destruction of civilian lives by Gaddafi.

…

We in Africa are also duly concerned about the activities of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which seems to exist only for alleged offenders of the developing world, the majority of them Africans. The leaders of the powerful Western States guilty of international crime, like Bush and Blair, are routinely given the blind eye. Such selective justice has eroded the credibility of the ICC on the African continent.

…

My country fully supports the right of the gallant people of Palestine to statehood and membership of this U.N. Organisation. The U.N. must become credible by welcoming into its bosom all those whose right to attain sovereign independence and freedom from occupation and colonialism is legitimate. (9)

It’s clear why he’s reviled by imperialists, but also by leftists?

If the Movement for Democratic Change’s Morgan Tsvangirai, favorite of the West, ever becomes president, expect a very different kind of address at future General Assembly meetings.

NOTES:

1. V.G. Kiernan, Marxism and imperialism, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1974.

2. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, International Publishers, New York. 1939. p 78.

3. Ibid. p 79.

4. David D. Kirkpatrick, “U.S. reopens its embassy in Libya”, The New York Times, September 22, 2011.

5. Ibid.

6. Jay Solomon, “Iran adds Palestine statehood wrinkle”, The Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2011.

7. www.president.ir/en/?ArtID=30573

8. Campbell Clark, “Cameron, Harper preach restraint in teeth of global ‘debt crisis’”, The Globe and Mail, September 22, 2011

9. http://nehandaradio.com/2011/09/24/full-text-of-robert-mugabe-speech-at-un-assembly/

Source

Communist Party of Mexico Marxist-Leninist (PCM-ML): Iran& the new source of imperialist war

These days it meets the security council of the United Nations Organization (UNO), consists of China, the United States, Russia, France, Britain plus Germany, who is a permanent member of this organization. Among the topics to be discussed is that of Iran, who asked to stop uranium enrichment, arguing that this is used to produce nuclear weapons.

At that, following the threat from the United States to make a military incursion “preventive”, now they call it a military invasion against Iran is preparing, under the pretext of stopping the threat, because it is speculated that the alleged weapons produced in Iran go into the hands of terrorists.

Four years after the invasion of Iraq, which has sunk further into poverty as a result of the imperialist invasion of the Americans and their European allies, where hundreds of civilians have been killed and thousands fleeing to other countries in the Middle East for no be victims of the war, now plans to do the same with Iran, the argument, the fight against terrorism. To “protect democracy and world peace”, are used to war.

Since Bush has not quite been able to convince the Americans to make a military attack on Iran, which tries to do at all costs, he can not ignore the fact that Iranian territory are large reserves of natural gas and oil plus it is committed to its tendency to monopolize nuclear power, set representing a large booty, especially for a country like the United States, which depends on the hydrocarbon reserves of other countries.

Because of this, Yankee imperialism makes use of all tools available, why resort to the UN, who has always been subordinated to the interests of imperialism and has not played more than a puppet role in conflicts between countries, always safeguarding the interests of the financial oligarchy.

The UN, on the one hand criticizes Iran, Lebanon and Syria are making weapons, countries that certainly have not aligned to the American policy, so they are considered part of the “axis of evil” and hotbeds of terrorist groups , but at the same time, it is unable to criticize the military-industrial complex the world’s largest, and the use of weapons of mass destruction that have used the Yankees and their allies in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the fact that progress in Israel As military technology.

Another argument against Iran is supplying weapons to Iraqi insurgents, the Afghans, the Taliban and Al Qaeda, in addition to being accused of meddling in internal affairs of Iraq and Afghanistan, which threatens peace in the region, the fact is that for years, who has interfered in internal affairs of other countries and has been Yankee imperialism. One example was the assistance they provided the government and the American army to the Afghans against the Soviets, the nod to the Iraqi invasion of Iran during the Bush administration, these, just to name a few, and that Yankee imperialism has been characterized by meddling in internal affairs of several African and Latin American countries.

One way to pressure the Iranian government to stop enriching uranium, is the threat of an economic embargo already living higher than the cancellation of credit to Iranian companies. To put pressure on other countries to line up in favor of imperialism and their clearance to a higher pressure and economic sanctions prepared to countries whose companies to maintain investment with Iran.

It would be rare for U.S. imperialism and its allies use the political conflicts in Iran, which look like they did in Iraq and Afghanistan to help opponents of the current government to unleash major internal conflicts which may allow a ‘pre-emptive raid ” or “humanitarian aid” in the way of the facts would mean the presence of peacekeepers from the UN, better known as blue helmets, as already happens in other countries in the Middle East and the Middle East.

Faced with accusations of American imperialism and the members of the Security Council of the UN, arguing that Iran defends right to use uranium to make electricity, which did not use the uranium for nuclear weapons production, arguing that it are taken as valid before the judges, since Iran does not submit fully to the designs of imperialism, although it is not an anti-imperialist and democratic country.

The threat Iran becomes dormant when one considers that the geographic region in which it is, is surrounded by countries and places where troops or peacekeepers Yankees such as Afghanistan, Iraq, the Persian Gulf and Turkey . For powerful countries with nuclear weapons, as is the case of Pakistan and countries in the region are staunch allies of American imperialism, as in the case of Israel.

Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan): Hail the Glorious Struggles of the Iranian Working Class!

The Iranian working class has pushed its struggles to a higher level in the past few years. There have been several united strikes by the workers in different sectors of industry. The most recent strike took place in the city of Mahshahr and continued for three weeks. Six thousand five hundred workers of Petrochemical Complex in Mahshahr went on a united strike. Among their demands were the elimination of intermediary contractors between the workers and the Complex, the elimination of signing temporary and individual contracts with workers, and its replacement with signing official and direct and collective contracts with the Company.

The regime of the Islamic Republic used every effort to suppress and break the strike. The security forces of the regime arrested three representatives of the strikers, but the workers marched forward. The employers offered false promises, but no one listened to them. This section of the Iranian working class was on strike in April of this year for the same demands. The employers officially agreed in April that the demands would be met within three months. But the Petrochemical Complex violated the agreement and continued signing temporary and individual contracts with the workers. This time, the workers of Mahshar Petrochemical Complex went on strike, stronger and more prepared. They formed “Strike Committee” and “Strike Fund” to better organise their united strike. They issued several statements and reported their activities to the media. One such press release read:

“We have come to the conclusion that without forming organisation and having coordination we will not achieve any gains. Even if the strike achieves some gains, the gains would not be maintainable without the formation of workers’ organisation. Therefore, we established the Strike Committee as the first step, and we are seeking domestic and international solidarity. We must mention that the Committee has already set a ‘Strike Fund’ to support the workers on strike.”

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) hails the glorious struggles of Mahshahr workers. We sent our greetings to the striking workers.

The regime of the Islamic Republic has created harsh economic conditions for the workers and labourers of Iran. There have been many strikes and protests by different sectors of the work force demanding the payment of delayed wages, wage increases, better working conditions, freedom to form independent trade unions, etc. Many worker-activists have been imprisoned and tortured for their attempts to form syndicates. In industry, signing temporary contracts with intermediaries is a policy adopted by employers and supported by the regime of the Islamic Republic to further exploit the workers. This policy stems from neo-liberal policies of World Trade Organization and is dictated to the member parties. This is a common problem for the workers in different sectors of industry.

The workers of Iran, with permanent and formal contracts or with temporary and intermediary contracts, are reaching the conclusion that they have a common interest in eliminating the problem.

Another general demand of the workers is the formation of independent trade unions. The formation of any independent trade syndicate is a nightmare for the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The regime knows that the unity of workers is a mortal threat to its existence. This is why the regime has tried to suffocate any movement towards the formation of trade unions. In spite of this suppression, the persistence and tireless efforts of the activists have resulted in the establishment of unions in some sections of the labour force, and there are strong desires and attempts to form syndicates in other sections.

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) strongly encourages all workers to express solidarity with the struggles of their comrades in any sector of the work force. The demands of one sector of the working class are common demands of all workers and labourers. The gains achieved by one sector of the working class are gains for all workers. The final victory for the working class will be manifest in its unity under the banner of the Party. This is the only path for the working class to emancipate itself from the slavery of capitalism.

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan), International Relations

October 13, 2011
WWW.Toufan.org
Toufan@toufan.org

Source

Communist Ghadar Party of India: On the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan by US imperialism

Anti-Imperialist forces resolve to throw imperialists out of Asia

Anti-imperialist forces organized a public meeting in New Delhi on October 9, 2011. The meeting was initiated by the Lok Raj Sangathan(LRS) and the Jamaat e Islami Hind(JIH). Below we give a report on this event from a correspondent of Mazdoor Ekta Lehar. It was organised to chart out a course of action for the anti-imperialist antiwar forces of our country.

All anti-imperialist forces in India must unite as one to throw the US imperialists and their allies out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and all over the world. We must develop a powerful anti-imperialist, antiwar movement in defense of the rights of peoples and nations, and of peace and security.

Our brothers and sisters by blood, the people of Afghanistan, are victims of the US led NATO occupation forces. Over 1.3 million people killed as a result of the NATO strikes. Over 5 million Afghans have died as a result of the invasion and occupation. Over three million people are in refugee camps in Iran, Pakistan as well as within Afghanistan.

We have ancient and positive relations with the Afghan people. They have helped us in our moment of need. We can never forget that it was the then ruler of Afghanistan who allowed the Hindostani Ghadar Party to set up in Kabul, the first free Hindostani government during the First World War. The heroic resistance struggles of Afghans to all occupiers — British, Russian, and now American, are folklore. We are proud that Indian soldiers of the British Army faced firing squads for refusing to fight the Afghani people during colonial rule.

We demand that the government of India should reverse its anti-Afghan, anti-Indian, pro-imperialist policy. We demand that it defends the rights of all peoples and nations to determine their own economic and political systems, free from foreign imperialist pressure.

We denounce the decision of the Manmohan Singh government to send the Indian Army to Afghanistan to “train” the puppet Afghan army, set up by the US imperialists, to attack the Afghan people’s anti-imperialist national liberation struggle. We consider this as an excuse to intervene in Afghanistan against our own brothers and sisters.

We believe that the fountainhead of terrorism worldwide is US imperialism.

The revolutionary struggle of the people of Afghanistan, against the occupation forces cannot be called terrorism. We support revolutionary liberation struggles.

The killing of innocent people in bomb blasts in Pakistan, India, and other countries – in trains and buses, masjids and mandirs, courts and market places – is terrorism. We condemn terrorism. We condemn the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US.

This was the content of every speech in the meeting.

The President of LRS, Shri Raghavan spoke of how over the last ten years, the US imperialists and their allies have sought to overturn all established norms regarding the independence and sovereignty of nations and the right of each nation and its people to pursue the economic and political system of its choice. “Regime change” and installing their lackeys in power, through brutal military intervention, has become the way of advancing imperialist interests in whichever country that does not submit to the dictate of the US imperialists.

Md. Salim Engineer, Secretary, JIH, cited several facts to support his argument that the US state itself was the organiser of the terror attack on the US on September 11, 2001. This was used as justification for the aggression on Afghanistan. He highlighted the danger of allying with the US imperialists. He called on all to stand up in defence of the sovereign right of the Afghan people to decide their own future.

Prakash Rao elaborated on the main features of the present Anglo-American strategy for world domination. Aimed at establishing their imperialist control over the rich oil reserves of Central and West Asia, and check mating all potential rivals, this strategy includes wars of aggression and military intervention in the name of “regime change” for alleged “humanitarian” reasons, coupled with savage attack on the Muslim people all over the world, in the name of “war on terrorism”, and heightened state terrorism.

Tracing the development of events in the region beginning with the Iranian revolution and the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet social imperialists in the late seventies. He conclusively established that today US imperialism is the fountainhead of terrorism.

He pointed out that the people of the Islamic faith all over the world are specifically under attack because they have refused to submit to the Anglo-American prescriptions on what form of governance and way of life they choose for themselves.

Elaborating on why Pakistan is being targeted by the US imperialists at this time and what this means for us Indians, he pointed to the mass opposition in Pakistan to the US policy. The people of Pakistan do not want to assist the US imperialists in Afghanistan. Pakistan is also the gateway to China and India and Anglo-American strategy in this region is to block China, India, Russia and Iran.

Prakash Rao condemned the decision of the Manmohan Singh Government to send its army into Afghanistan to train the puppet afghan government’s army to fight the people of Afghanistan . He called on the people of our country to stand with Afghani and Pakistani peoples in these troubled times and to build the unity all the anti-imperialist forces to throw out the Anglo-American imperialists out of Asia.

Dr. Rakesh Rafeeq condemned the growing US imperialist interference in the affairs of India and called for a broad anti-imperialist movement against the designs of US imperialism in this region.

He pointed out that both in Afghanistan and Iraq, Indian state has been collaborating with the US imperialists from the beginning of the occupations and even earlier. India collaborated with the soviet imperialists during their occupation, he pointed out. The infrastructure being built in Afghanistan by the Indian state is to assist the occupation forces. They are not building schools and hospitals for the people.

Those who addressed the meeting included Md. Ahmed, Prof. Ananthnarayan, P.C.Hamzah, Com. Pratap Syamal, Prof. Bharat Seth, Md. Amin Bhat of the Jammu and Kashmir Peace Foundation, Prof. Sheomangal Siddhantkar, Intezar Nayeem. A moving Urdu poem was sung on the theme of the occupation of Iraq.

Manipuri student activists, Malem and Rojesh, denounced the imperialist policy of the Indian state towards the various nations and nationalities and the use of force to deny the peoples their national aspirations. They called for all anti-imperialist forces in our country to oppose the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA).

Resolutions were unanimously adopted on demanding immediate expulsion of all foreign troops from Afghanistan, condemning the US led war on terror as the biggest threat to peace and well-being of peoples, in solidarity with the people of Pakistan, against the building of close ties between the US and India and for unity with all peace loving and democratic forces to build a strong anti-imperialist movement.

PCOF: Polemic on the Gulf War

Polemic from La Forge, January 1-15, 1992

“Polemic.” A lively general debate between different or contradictory ideas and positions.

Polemics serve to make dynamic the exchange of points of view, to submit them to close criticism, to advance correct ideas. It requires the taking seriously of the points of view which it is proposed to criticize, and excludes all anathema, distortion or simplification. This is our ambition in today beginning this column in our paper. It will deal particularly with political and ideological questions… concerning the positions of the parties and organizations which consider themselves Marxist-Leninist. These differences are known by all those who have access to the publications of the parties, that is to say, they are widely known publicly (especially by the bourgeoisie!). They coexist without a real public polemic having been engaged in by the Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations, with the goal of clarifying, deepening and finally arriving at correct formulations. We have assessed that this situation is all the more harmful because today it is more than ever necessary to revive Marxism-Leninism, to go over the criteria with the fine-toothed comb of experience and to submit them to the fire of practice and of the actual development of the class struggle on a national and international level.

For a long time it has been the custom within what is called the international communist movement (a notion that, in itself, deserves a full analysis) of “not displaying our differences an front of the class enemy.” The result: the class enemy knows perfectly well these differences while the parties prohibit public polemics among themselves. This attitude has contributed to a certain sclerosis of Marxism-Leninism, of which one can today measure the dangers and the damage. It has also been able to create a certain extra distance between the parties which consider themselves Marxist-Leninist and all those who are interested in Marxism-Leninism, for whom Marxism-Leninism is a reference, but who, for different reasons, are not members of a Marxist-Leninist party.

We begin this column with an article about the differences that appeared concerning the Gulf war.

Polemic Concerning the Gulf War

The “new world order” is being built with fire and blood. The war in the Gulf has been a macabre illustration. The “war itself” was nothing other than a slaughter, with aerial bombardments of towns, of Iraqi soldiers buried alive by U.S. bulldozers. The Iraqi population is the principle victim of the blockade that the great powers are continuing to carry out against this country which has been destroyed economically.

This war has led to the taking of different positions among the forces and parties that consider themselves Marxist-Leninist. These differences are essentially about the attitude to adopt towards the regime of Saddam Hussein.

The first one advocates support to this regime against the imperialist coalition. [Translator's note: the text here has a bad typo, saying "the anti-imperialist coalition."] It stems from the idea that the policies and actions of S. Hussein weaken the world imperialist system by damaging the interests of the great imperialist powers, particularly those of American imperialism. It is the reaction of these imperialist powers themselves that, according to the partisans of support for S. Hussein, furnish proof of the correctness of their position. This support is presented as a tactic comparable to that of the CPSU during the time of Lenin and Stalin, when the Bolsheviks supported Sultan Kabous of Afghanistan against the imperialist powers of that time, particularly England.

We have defended a different position, taking as our target the imperialist coalition and working to develop a popular opposition to this reactionary war, without creating illusions about the regime of S. Hussein and therefore without calling for supporting him.

The existence of these differences has, among other consequences, made it practically impossible to carry out a coordinated action of the Marxist-Leninist forces. But if we return to this question today, it is because this problem will inevitably arise again. In effect, the “new order” of world imperialism is characterized by a profound disruption of the relationship of forces, of alliances and of zones of influence among the imperialist powers.

The breaking up of the USSR, the deepening of the crisis in the world capitalist imperialist system which is functioning at present along one model (symbolized by the notion of a “market economy”) is sharpening the contradictions among the different imperialist countries, between the imperialist countries and the less developed capitalist countries. The end to the bi-polarization of USA-USSR is disrupting the zones of influence and is creating “voids”. These provide opportunities for the imperialist states to redraw or consolidate their zones of influence, and for capitalist countries with a certain economic and military development to cut out a regional zone of influence. This is necessarily done against the interests of other states, particularly against those of the imperialist powers, but still within the framework of the imperialist system. This is the case, among others, of Turkey, India, Brazil, China… This is what S. Hussein dreamed of realizing in annexing the petroleum riches of Kuwait, which would have increased his economic and military power within this strategic region of the planet (major petroleum deposits and main known petroleum reserves). He could believe that the imperialists would let him do it. The USSR and France had over-armed him during eight years of the reactionary war with Iran, and the USA had given proof of a great understanding in this regard (see insert).

That his calculations failed and that he served up on a silver platter a pretext for the imperialists to intervene and break his back, does not change the problem at all as to knowing what interests S. Hussein was pursuing in annexing Kuwait.

To this question we answer: that of a bourgeois who aspires to a bigger piece of the pie, of a bourgeois who wants to have a greater share within the framework of the world imperialist system.

Iraq is a link in the imperialist chain, a country largely dependent on the imperialist great powers, particularly in the domain of the supply of arms, but also in the economic plane (imports of agricultural products, construction of means of communications…). The Iraqi bourgeoisie aspires, as does every bourgeoisie, to develop itself and to exercise its domination, at first regionally. The instrument of its politics is a militarist and police state and the only party in power: the Baath party. As so many other regimes in Africa and the Middle East, it has kept a socialistic speech, basing itself on a real economic development, a social politics particularly in the realm of the struggle against illiteracy and on the secular character of the state. Compared to the reactionary, obscurantist and corrupt regimes in the region, it could have passed all the more easily as a “progressive” regime which had the support of the USSR. But its class nature is openly manifested in two areas:

- The policy of brutal repression against the opposition of the left. In 1978, S. Hussein distanced himself from the USSR in order to draw closer to the emirs of the Gulf with the hope of playing the role of gendarme in the region in place of Egypt (discredited by its policy of conciliation with regard to Israel). So it eliminated the militants of the Iraqi CP. The prisons are full of opponents, particularly those who opposed the Iran-Iraq war. The Kurdish population has been the victim of many military operations, including, in 1988, the use of poison gas.

- The policy of military aggression against Iran, ordered and sustained by the imperialist powers who wanted to liquidate the anti-imperialist struggle of the Iranian masses. At that moment in 1980, the struggle in Iran between the anti-imperialist forces and the reactionary mullahs had not yet been settled. S. Hussein played the role of the military arm of imperialism. That war plunged the Iraqi people into misery, and served to squelch every form of internal struggle.

Among the reasons which S. Hussein had to invade Kuwait, there is clear evidence of the desire to divert the anger of the Iraqi population weary after eight years of war, of deprivations and of the absence of democracy. The popular surge on which S. Hussein counted did not take place, far from it. The imperialists by means of their barbaric war, the economic blockade and all their interference after the military phase (particularly in Kurdistan), have in the final analysis contributed to maintaining the regime of S. Hussein, preventing a democratic, progressive and anti-imperialist alternative from being formed.

We know well that imperialism utilizes the question of human rights to try to justify their reactionary policies of domination and destruction, although its spokespeople are the last to be able to give lessons in democracy. But should that lead the revolutionaries, the communists to refrain from denouncing the violation of bourgeois democratic rights by the Iraqi regime, under the pretext that it is today in the gun-sights of the imperialist powers? This would mean abandoning to imperialism and reaction the terrain of democratic liberties with all that follows, such as falsifications and manipulations. This would bring grist to the mill of all the anti-communists, who have not ceased to claim that communism is the antithesis of democracy and who have been able to draw from numerous examples from the image given by the revisionist countries.

The argument according to which the support for S. Hussein is a purely tactical question, relies on a confusion full of consequences. In effect, in the elaboration of its tactics, a communist party takes account of its forces, of its capacities and the means to put them into operation. Concretely, in the era of Lenin and Stalin, the CPSU and the USSR had a considerable weight in all fields, which permitted them very bold tactics in relation to the governments of dependent countries. Now, the least that can be said is that, for a long time we have not had that!

In other words, what weight, what pressure could the Marxist-Leninist movement — much less the Marxist-Leninist parties taken individually — exercise so that their support to S. Hussein could lead to a reinforcement of the interests of the peoples, of the revolutionary and anti-imperialist movement? Frankly, this support could not be anything but “lost money.” And very logically, those who supported S. Hussein would feel and present his failure as a failure for the workers and popular movement, reinforcing again a little more the idea that it is very difficult to fight, and even more so to overturn imperialism.

It would be dangerous if tomorrow, either there or in another region of the world, another Saddam Hussein would engage his people in the same bloody adventure and the forces who consider themselves Marxist-Leninist would come to his aid.

The Iran-Iraq War

Iran and Iraq bought about $65 billion dollars worth of arms between 1981 and 1988. This war caused 1,250,000 casualties. 41 countries supplied the arms, of which 21 supplied them to both countries at the same time.

Among the public suppliers of arms are the great French arms manufacturers: Dassault-Breguet, Aerospatiale (missiles, Matra-Manurhin (shells), Thompson (electronic equipment)…

From April 28 to May 5, 1989 a big fair was held in Baghdad in which 200 exhibitors participated. Besides the suppliers of heavy and sophisticated equipment one notes the presence of manufacturers coming from medium-developed countries, such as Avibras (Brazil), which concluded a deal for missiles and launch-missiles (SS-60s) of a million dollars, and the Chilean company Cardoen.

MBB, the large German consortium, was also very much present, notably in the area of missiles and the production of poison gas.

The array of products sold ran from troop transport trucks (Iveco-Magirus, Daimler-Benz…) to ground-to-air missiles “Roland” (MBB-Euromissile) to Alphajet helicopters (Dornier-Dassault), not to mention engineering for the enrichment of uranium, the production of munitions and trucks (more than 100 companies involved). The financing and the guarantees were assured on the German side, by Deutche Bank and Hermes.

As to the USA, if it did not officially supply arms to Iraq, it largely supported the war effort. During this period Iraq was crossed off the “black list” of terrorist states, which permitted the farmers in the Mid-West to sell large quantities of wheat and other agricultural products.

At the end of the war, the Iraqi debt reached $70 billion, leading to the greater and greater reluctance of the suppliers to deliver the new arms insistently demanded by S. Hussein.

The Suppliers of Arms to Iraq (between 1970 and 1989) in millions of $s in percent (1985 value)

USSR 19,237 61%

France 5,538 18%

China 1,664 5% (1)

Brazil 1,121 4% (1)

Egypt 1,108 4%

Czechoslovakia 703 2%

other 2,166 6%

Total 31,537

Source: SIPRI (Sweden) 1990

(1) These two countries are known to have greatly increased their sales of arms on an international level between 1982 and ’87. Brazil went from $670 million for the period 1976-81 to 2.6 billion (for the period 1982-87). As to China, it went, in the same periods, from $1.25 billion to $7.8 billion. As a point of comparison, North Korea, Israel and South Korea each exported between $2.1 and $2.4 billions in arms.

Besides these figures it is necessary as well to take into account the type of arms sold. The large suppliers often sold expensive and sophisticated weapons (planes, heavy tanks, electronic material…), the middle level suppliers are more specialized in the area of light arms (automatic machine-guns, anti-guerrilla arms…) used in particular to maintain internal order and to fight against resistance movements.

How could the Iraqi regime pay for all these arms, and for what were they used. Because the debts had accumulated, the regime paid its suppliers. This was done very evidently to the detriment of the Iraqi masses, at the price of a terrible training of the population by the army, the different police forces and the Baath party, the only party in power. Among the “chief events” of the regime of S. Hussein, we note the liquidation of the members of the Communist Party of Iraq, following a reversal of international alliances (S. Hussein distanced himself from the USSR to reconcile himself with the emirs of the Gulf). Let us also recall the gassing of the Kurdish population in March, 1988, in the region of Halabjeh.

Toufan: The worker-activists must be released immediately and unconditionally from the prisons of the Islamic Republic of Iran!

To: The International Conference of the Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations, labour-activists, progressive organisations, and freedom loving people of the world

Dear comrades,

The criminal regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran has recently intensified the repression of the labourers and worker-activists. In the past few months, many labour-activists have been detained, imprisoned, and tortured by the security forces of the Islamic Republic.

Shahrokh Zamani, a house-painter and decorator has been in detention since June 7, 2011. He was arrested while traveling from the city of Tabriz to the Capital Tehran by a public bus. Shahrokh was involved in establishing the independent trade union “Painters’ Syndicate” and he is a member of the “Committee to Form Independent Worker Syndicates”. Shahrokh Zamani was kept in solitary confinement for more than a month. He went on hunger strike for a week to protest his detention and mistreatment. The regime of the Islamic Republic has transferred him to Tabriz prison. No official warrant for the arrest of Shahrokh was issued and no charges are filed against him.

The capitalist regime of the Islamic Republic is fearful of the formation of independent worker-organisations and of the unity of the workers with other sections of the society. The Islamic regime sees its end by the united and nation-wide strikes and protests of the labourers and is trying to suffocate any attempt to build independent and democratic workers’ organisations. Following this policy, the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran has harassed, tortured and imprisoned Mansour Ossalou, Ali Nejati, Ebrahim Madadi, Torabian, and other prominent trade union activists for several years. Shahrokh Zamani, together with his comrades, Mohammad Jarrahi and Seyed (both are labour activists), and two university students Nima Pourhemmat and Sassan Vahhabi are the latest known victims of this criminal policy.

Our Party believes that repression of the workers and toilers by the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran also serves the interests of imperialism and the world reaction. We strongly condemn the repressive actions of the Iranian regime.

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) supports the just struggles of the labour-activists for a better working condition and we praise their attempts to form independent trade unions. We call on all fraternal Parties and the Marxist-Leninist Organisations, all worker-activists, and all progressive minded individuals of the world to express solidarity with the struggles of the Iranian worker-activists. The people of the world should be outraged over the imprisonment and treatment of the Iranian masses and labour activists and to demand the regime of Islamic Republic to free all political prisoners immediately and unconditionally. Only the intensification of the just struggle of the Iranian labourers and of the genuine international support for masses can force the Islamic regime to retreat and to stop the repression of the Iranian people.

Release Shahrokh Zamani and other worker-activists immediately and unconditionally!

Long live the struggles of the Iranian working class!

Down with the capitalist regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran!

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan)
July 16, 2011

http://www.Toufan.org
Toufan@toufan.org

America’s Laziest Fascist

May 20, 2004 | Michael Savage doesn’t get out much. The hardcore conservative radio host of “The Savage Nation” has always been a relatively reclusive figure. He doesn’t do book tours or publicity stunts. He’s not exactly approachable either: He claims to carry a gun with him at all times, and he doesn’t like nosy journalists asking for interviews.

Not that he’s the shy, retiring type. Lately, as the Iraq torture scandal has dominated the headlines, he has taken to calling Arabs “non-humans” and has called for the U.S. to kill “thousands” of Iraqi prisoners and nuke a random Arab capital. Deciding whether to pay attention to Savage has always been tricky, though. It’s never clear whether he really believes what he says in his tirades or if they are simply ploys for public outcry. His is currently the third-most-popular radio program in the nation. Nonetheless, it may be hard for Savage to sit by and watch the FCC’s crackdown against fellow jock Howard Stern effectively lift Stern’s profile even higher into the stratosphere. But Savage’s outbursts are often so unhinged, so vicious, that ignoring them seems irresponsible, especially when so many Americans apparently are nodding in agreement. So when I learned that Savage would be making his first public appearance in three years Saturday night, it seemed worth checking out, if only to see who was paying attention to him and why.

“Savage Uncensored,” as the event was called, marked the end of what’s been a crummy year for the once-hot Savage. Last March, MSNBC gave him a weekly program only to cancel it after four months when he labeled a caller a “sodomite” and told him to “get AIDS and die.” Then the San Francisco radio station that gave him his first big break dumped him and rubbed salt into the wound with billboards that depicted Savage morphing into Sean Hannity, beneath the slogan “Out With the Old, In with the New.” When a couple of anti-Savage Web sites started a boycott of his advertisers, his syndicator, Talk Radio Network, tried to revoke their domain names. When that failed, it tried to sue them for $1 million. That failed too.

Savage’s star may have faded, but it’s still too early to write him off, with “The Savage Nation” pulling in 6 million listeners a week. His latest screed against fifth columnists such as liberals, gays and atheists, “The Enemy Within,” debuted at No. 8 on the New York Times nonfiction list. But when it comes to the true measure of a talker’s cachet — buzz — Savage has slipped several notches in the past year. The anti-Savage sites are now dormant, their owners apparently satisfied that he would never make it back on TV. Fans and foes who once duked it out in Internet chat rooms appear to have moved on. These days, it seems the only people paying attention to Savage are diehard fans and perhaps a few incorrigible rubber-necking journalists.

Savage was scheduled to appear at the Concord Pavilion, an outdoor amphitheater in the suburban hills east of San Francisco. As a Metallica cover band called Creeping Death wailed, 5,000 or so people filed in to see him in the flesh. A quick look around made the demographics of the Savage Nation quickly apparent: Ninety percent were men and a good 95 percent were white. During the next three-and-a-half hours, there would be clear affirmation that they like gay jokes, Arab bashing and mass displays of patriotism. They will offer to share their freedom fries with a complete stranger. And when that stranger fails to boo liberals, holler the phrase “under God” during the Pledge of Allegiance or show sufficient enthusiasm for torturing Iraqis, they are polite enough not to drag him out to the parking lot and pummel him.

The crowd at Concord had paid as much as $100 for an evening of rhetorical red meat for the right-wing faithful. At first, we weren’t disappointed. But by the end of the night, I wasn’t the only one checking my watch.

Savage’s son, Russ Weiner, kicked off the show. With his spiky, dyed-orange hair and calculated scruffiness, he was reminiscent of Dr. Evil’s son Scott from the Austin Powers movies. The resemblance was confirmed when Weiner proclaimed, “I’m proud to be the son of Savage!” The 30-something Weiner is the founder of RockStar, an energy drink that he developed with his dad, drawing on Savage’s previous career as a Marin County herbalist and ethnobotanist named Michael Weiner. RockStar’s herbal liver-cleansing formula is supposed to enable drinkers to “party like a rock star,” which presumably means drinking and doping. Generous free samples had been passed out to the crowd on the way in. It lived up to its hype: The antifreeze-colored, cough-syrup-flavored beverage can only be enjoyed if you’re taking drugs.

But while Weiner has cashed in on other people’s bad behavior, he made it clear that he’s a family-values kind of guy. “Who’s heterosexual and proud?” he asked, prompting manly cheers. “If you’re not, hopefully you will be soon!” Before handing the stage over to the man he called “our leader,” he advised the audience how to handle his hot-tempered dad: “Let him know you love him!”

Love — or an acceptably heterosexual version of it — filled the air as Savage drove onto the stage in a classic red Cadillac convertible. He warmed up the audience by riffing on the day’s news, joking that “Shiite” should be spelled with one “I” and calling Muqtada al-Sadr “a fat bastard in a burka.” Dressed in a calfskin jacket, slouch hat and blue jeans, Savage was at ease, swearing freely and peppering his speech with “Hey, mans” that evoked his days as a North Beach beatnik wannabe. Whatever was in his coffee cup was certainly helping. When it ran dry, he called out, “I need a drink!” and a young woman sauntered over and poured champagne into the mug.

Like everyone else these days, Savage was fixated on Iraq and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. He managed to combine the two dominant conservative takes: The first being Rush Limbaugh’s insistence that what happened in Abu Ghraib was a harmless prank; the other being Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe’s assertion that the prisoners got what they deserved.

“These are tough interrogations?” Savage asked. “My father put me through tougher interrogations when I was 16!” He portrayed now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison guard Lynndie England as a poster girl for the war on terrorism — an embodiment of the idea that kicking Muslim ass can be fun. “Let’s hear it for Laurie [sic] England!” he cheered. “The leash chick! Hey man, she had a great time over there!” He couldn’t understand why liberals were so outraged. After all, he said, the acts of sexual humiliation and degradation that took place in Abu Ghraib were no more perverted than typical homosexual behavior. Try to follow his tortured logic: Savage was saying he didn’t mind the Abu Ghraib abuses because they were good clean fun, like gay sex, which he openly abhors.

Savage moved on to another of his favorite topics: bombing the bejeezus out of Iraq. Just a few days before the Uncensored event, he’d been ranting on the radio about dropping fiery death on civilians throughout Iraq and the Middle East. “I don’t give a damn if they hide behind their women’s skirts,” he foamed. “Wipe the women out with them! Because it’s our women who got killed on 9/11! And it’s our women who are gonna get killed tomorrow unless we get rid of the bugs who are destroying us!” Tonight, Savage continued to elaborate on this disturbing vision of how to win the war in Iraq. He said he fantasized of being woken up by the sound of B-1 and B-52 bombers flying over his house on their way to the Middle East. Imagining bombers overhead at 4 a.m., he gushed about these nocturnal missions, “It’s better than an orgasm — it is an orgasm!”

Savage continued the psychological striptease, peeling off more layers of mainstream conservatism to expose his raging right-wing id. Though he has long billed himself as the original “compassionate conservative,” his brand of conservatism does not share George W. Bush’s pretense of caring about Muslim hearts and minds, much less lives. It appears that for Savage, the war in Iraq has nothing to do with spreading democracy or respecting human rights. It is about asserting American power by any means necessary, and screw what anyone else thinks. Predictably, and sadly, this notion went over well with the audience. When Savage blurted out, “Does anyone in this crowd give a shit about the Iraqis?” he was answered with a deafening “NO!”

But if the first half of the event showcased Savage’s ability to stir the faithful, the second half was an object lesson in how a performer can take his audience — and his talent — for granted. Basically, he bombed. He spent nearly 20 minutes sitting in a stuffed chair in front of a television set, free-associating as he channel surfed. Seeing footage of Jordan’s King Abdullah, he screamed, “Kiss my ass! Shut the hell up!” To a soccer match in Spanish, he quipped, “Reminds me of my gardener.” It was about as entertaining as watching a middle-aged man yelling at his living room TV. Savage eventually realized things weren’t going well. “You don’t like this shit,” he said. “It’s a bad act.“

Some fans — mostly older people and parents with small children — started to leave. If this were radio, they would probably already have changed stations. Most of the audience stuck around as Savage went into freefall, flailing wildly for something to catch his fans’ attention. He read from the Bible, played with his new puppy, moaned about his “mother issues” and asked for more booze. The evening’s low point came when he played the audiotape of Nicholas Berg’s beheading over the P.A. system. Berg’s pitiful, frenzied screaming filled the amphitheater. Having not heard or seen the gruesome tape before, I covered my ears in shock. I was not alone. If Savage was trying to incite the audience, it didn’t work. Playing the tape only revealed his desperation for a reaction, any reaction.

“What made you come out on this night?” he asked. “You see the vultures circling this great nation. We feel the vultures flying over the Concord Pavilion.” And perhaps they could smell Savage dying on the stage below.

In a last-ditch attempt to rouse the listless crowd, Savage tried to root out some closet liberals. “Is there any asshole here who hates me, who’s gonna try and rush the stage?” he asked. It was a long way between the cheap seats and the stage, but I was getting tired and bored. Rushing the stage might have prolonged the evening by a few more minutes, so I stayed put. Hurrying off stage, Savage promised, “Wait till you see the close.”

Luckily, the finale lasted all of 15 seconds. From the wings, Savage, obviously thinking he was off-mic, barked, “Play the Arab music!” A Middle Eastern tune blared as his red Cadillac lurched onto the stage. Savage was perched on the back seat, dressed in white robes and sunglasses, looking like a costume-party sheik. As the car disappeared off stage, he waved to the crowd, “Goodbye, infidels! I’ll see you in hell!” And with that, “Savage Uncensored” slouched to its perplexing though somehow fitting conclusion.

The house lights came on, revealing a few thousand blinking and bewildered fans — Savage had just resoundingly bombed on his home turf. “That’s it?” wondered one woman behind me, with real disappointment in her voice. “He said he was going to do Dr. UnSavage,” she said, referring to one of the jock’s longtime on-air characters. A couple of young guys shook their heads. “He misread his audience,” one said. His friend added, “He got into the champagne too much.” Maybe some RockStar would have helped.

His poor performance was not entirely surprising. Unlike his compatriots Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Dr. Laura, Savage often comes off as a remarkably amateurish and lazy showman. None of his colleagues — no matter how big their egos — would dare adlib their way through a two-hour live performance.

Savage’s unprofessionalism makes it easy for liberals to dismiss him as a crank. But that’s an easy way to overlook his ever-more xenophobic, homophobic and authoritarian political message. Ultimately, his invective may be what keeps his listeners coming back for more. Savage says what many mainstream conservatives can’t or won’t. As frustration with the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq adventure and the war on terror grows, his message holds appeal for those who believe nothing but desperate measures will work against an increasingly hostile world. And so, Savage will keep calling for Iraqi prisoners to be sodomized with dynamite. If he’s lucky, such antics may score him a public showdown with the FCC. Or perhaps he will finally rant his way into oblivion. Considering the recent developments in Iraq, even if Savage waits another three years to emerge from his veil of heavily armed privacy, there may be no shortage of fodder for his bizarre stage spectacle and the audience it attracts.

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Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan): Hail May 1st!

The Working Class Will Bring About the Spring of Humanity!

One hundred and twenty-two years ago, the workers of the world decided to celebrate May 1st as “Working Class Day.” This decision was made in 1889 at the Congress of the Socialists of the World in Paris, France. On May 1st, when nature wakes up from her winter sleep, when the mountain and forest become freshly green, when the meadows and wheat fields sprout, and the sun bestows more warmth, when the exuberance of freshness is felt in the air, when nature becomes once again alive and finds its happiness, the socialist workers in Paris declared loudly on this day that the working class will bring about “The Spring of Humanity,” that the working class will break the chains of the capitalist yoke, and that the working class has the mission to build a new world on the foundations of freedom and socialism.

May 1st, the day of unity and solidarity of labourers, is drawing near at a time when the regime of the Islamic Republic continues its attacks on the rights of workers and toilers, on the growing worker-movement, on the demands for bread and jobs and freedom, and on the job security for the working people. The Islamic regime finds itself weak in the face of the democratic movement of the Iranian people.

The capitalist regime of the Islamic Republic, under the cover of the “Plan to Appropriate the Subsidies to Low Income Families,” has started to cut all subsidies to the basic necessities of life. The Plan was encouraged by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This policy will result in more economic poverty, higher inflation, and a deeper class gap. In the rule of the Islamic republic, the working class has no hope for better living conditions. The Supreme Council of Labour, which is the de facto representative of the government and employers, has set the monthly minimum wage for the workers as 330,300 Touman (equivalent to $300 US dollars). This minimum wage is about 20 percent above the level of the absolute poverty line in Iran.

The Council has also approved an annual of 9 percent wage increase, far less than the rate of inflation. This year, the dinner tables of the workers are emptier than they were last year. Taking into account rapidly rising inflation and the runaway cost of the basic necessities, the monthly minimum wage for Iranian workers should have been set at 1,500,000 Touman (equivalent to $1,500 US dollars.)

This year, we welcome the arrival of May 1st in a situation that the young workermovement in Iran, inspired by the spring of revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, challenges the regime of the Islamic Republic at every turn. It is this spirit of resistance that has caused fear and panic for the Iranian regime and has threatened the future of the Islamic Republic. The revolutionary movements in Tunisia and Egypt, with the banner of bread and freedom and dignity, have launched major offenses on the unpopular, corrupt, and despotic regimes and are the sources of inspiration in the entire Middle East. Fearful of this inspiration, the dark regime of the Islamic Republic has intensified the repression of the worker-activists and the prominent members of the independent trade unions.

Despite this reactionary repression, the struggles of the Iranian workers against privatisation and collective layoffs, for payment of delayed wages, for higher wages and the right to form independent trade unions, and for the elimination of the government Plan on subsidies have increased. The worker-strikes in factories such as Khodro Machinery, Iran Petro-Chemical Plants, Iran Communication Company and in many other places indicate that the regime’s attempts to silence workers by the use of repression have been in vain.

May 1st is coming up at a time when the imperialists have invaded Libya in order to stop the deepening and spreading revolution of Arab people. The major imperialist powers have waged a criminal war on Libya under the pretext of “safeguarding” the Libyan people. They have used the reactionary decision of the UN Security Council to colonise Libya and to gain direct control of oil production and the other resources of the country. It is important that on May 1st, the working class of all countries loudly condemn the invasion of Libya and demand an end to and the bombardment and destruction of that tiny country.

It is the internationalist duty of the communists and revolutionaries of all lands to demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Saudi army from Bahrain and the complete withdrawal of the imperialist occupying forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, to defend the Palestinian people in the face of Zionist aggression, and to emphasise the widespread boycott of the terrorist regime of Israel.

We send congratulations to the heroic workers of Iran and of the world on the occasion of May 1st, our “Working Class Day.” The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan) is certain that it is only through unity and organisation and the political leadership of the party of the working class and only through a socialist revolution guided by Leninism that the victory of the camp of labour over the camp of capital is possible.

Hail May 1st, the Working Class Day!

Long live the revolution of Arab People against Imperialism and Reaction!

Down with the Regime of the Islamic Republic!

Long live Socialism, the Banner of Human Salvation!

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan)

http://www.toufan.org

Toufan@Toufan.org