CPI(ML)[Naxalbari] Press Release: The Conviction of Comrade Asit is a Brazen Violation of Justice

Thanks to the blog Workers Dreadnought for this. Also, be sure to check out the article below about Dr. Binayak Sen’s life sentence for sedition.

I just received terrible news. On the heels of Dr. Binayak Sen’s life sentence for sedition (which in his case was simply providing medical care to Naxal prisoners in jail, exposing the Indian government’s funding of anti-Naxal death squads which had been terrorizing the general population, and exposing the fabrication of ‘encounters’ between police and ‘Naxals’), a Raipur court has just found Com. Asit Sengupta guilty of two counts of sedition as well and has been given a 11-year sentence for the publication of Maoist magazines and books! What is Com. Asit Sengupta’s crime? He published books and magazines which were legally-recognized activities by the Indian government as they had been registered! What we are witnessing is the criminalization of dissent and the repeated violation of the freedom of speech for those who are on the side of the peasants, working-class and oppressed peoples in the civil war that the Indian government has started against its own people on behalf of the MNC’s. Com. Asit Sengupta was responsible for publishing ‘A World To Win’ magazine, the defunct theoretical magazine of the defunct RIM, amongst many other books like the first edition of Com. Hisila Yami’s “People’s War and Women’s Liberation in Nepal”. He has done nothing wrong but provide some of us a few books and magazines to read!

I have to say it – and this relates directly to the events of the last 2 weeks – I am sick and tired of some North American ‘leftists’ braying on and on about how unsafe it is to be a ‘revolutionary’ and how others need to appreciate their situation (as if it is any safer to be a revolutionary in the Philippines, Nepal, India, Turkey), whilst everyone around the world – whether it be POW’s of the people’s war in Nepal (now released) and India languish in prisons! Or how they complain about police brutality when ‘false’ encounters are being staged every day in India! Or how they refuse to take risks but then spend hours and hours reading over the very magazines and books that their Third World comrades are having to spend multi-year sentences to produce so that they can read them safely in their homes, smug about their ‘revolutionary’ politics and confident that they are part of some larger ‘revolutionary ‘ movement (which they then parasitically use to recruit new members). I am not saying that one should not create structures so that one cannot mitigate risks and that one should evaluate the risks of any given action – whether it be direct action or just publishing a pamphlet – before making a decision about a given project, however, it is no longer tenable to me that these people get to claim the title ‘comrade’ or ‘revolutionary’ for consistently and constantly not being willing to take risks to push the revolution ahead. And to all of those North American comrades who get to calmly state that they don’t believe a revolution will happen in their lifetimes and so their social democratic activities, which masquerade as revolutionary activities, are the only option – all I have to say is get out of the way and stop sullying the name of the revolution. There are real revolutionaries out there being jailed and dying for making the revolution.

Free Dr. Binayak Sen! Free Com. Asit Sengupta! Free all the POW’s!

John Graham Maintains His Innocence Despite a Guilty Verdict

From the Vancouver Media Co-Op.

On December 10 a South Dakota jury found John Graham guilty of felony murder in the death of American Indian Movement (AIM) member Anna Mae Aquash. John Graham, a Tuchone native originally from the Yukon, continues to maintain his innocence. Aquash was murdered in the 1970s in an execution-style killing in South Dakota. Graham has said that she was his friend and comrade.

In 2004, Arlo Looking Cloud was convicted of murder for aiding in the murder of Aquash. He received a life sentence with a chance of parole in 2013. Earlier this year, Richard Marshall was acquitted on the charge of supplying the gun that killed Aquash. Looking Cloud testified against both Marshall and Graham at trial. Thelma Rios plead guilty in November of this year to charges of aiding and abetting, for which she received five years of probation and no jail time.

At trial, the state alleged that John Graham took Aquash from Denver against her will and ultimately killed her in the hills of South Dakota. The government claimed the motive for the murder was that AIM believed Aquash to be an informant who had knowledge of sensitive information.

The jury acquitted Graham of premeditated murder: the first-degree charge. Nevertheless, the lesser charge of second degree felony murder* carries a sentence of life in prison.

Aquash was a Mi’kmaq from Nova Scotia and was well-known as a skilled organizer and warrior with AIM. In 1975, she said she had been targeted and threatened with death by the FBI. Her body was found on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in February 1976. The original autopsy report, made by an FBI-contracted coroner, stated her cause of death as “exposure” and made no record of the bloody bullet-wound in the back of her head. The FBI removed her hands for purposes of identification in Washington as they claimed the body was unidentifiable. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) buried Aquash as a Jane Doe.

Dr. Binayak Sen’s Statement to the Court

From the International Campaign Against War on the People in India website.

I am a trained medical doctor with a specialization in child health. I completed my MBBS from the Christian Medical College, Vellore in 1972, and completed studies leading to the award of the degree of MD (Paediatrics) of the Madras University, from the same institution in 1976. After this, I joined the faculty of the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and worked there for two years, before leaving to join a field based health programme at the Friends Rural Centre, Rasulia in Hoshangabad, MP. During the two years I worked there, I worked intensively in the diagnosis and treatment of Tuberculosis and understood many of the social and economic causes of disease. I was also strongly influenced by the work of Marjorie Sykes, the biographer of Mahatma Gandhi, who lived at the Rasulia centre at that time.

I came to Chhattisgarh in 1981 and worked upto 1987 at Dalli Rajhara (district Durg), where, along with the late Shri Shankar Guha Niyogi and the workers of the Chhattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangh, I helped to establish the Shaheed Hospital, that continues to practice low cost and rational medicine for the adivasis and working people of the surrounding areas upto the present. After leaving Dalli Rajhara, I worked to develop a health programme among the Adivasi population in and around village Bagrumnala, which today is in Dhamtari district.

Mao’s Birthday Celebrated

Fight Back! News Service is circulating the following article from the New China News Agency on the celebrations marking the 117th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth.

CHINESE MARK 117TH ANNIVERSARY OF CHAIRMAN MAO’S BIRTH

CHANGSHA, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) — People across China marked the 117th anniversary of the birth of late leader Mao Zedong on Sunday with various activities in his hometown in central Hunan Province as well as in other parts of the nation.

In Mao’s birthplace, Shaoshan village, villagers and visitors arrived in the early morning to observe a local tradition in celebration of Mao’s birthday — eating a bowl of noodles.

“Today is Chairman Mao’s 117th anniversary and many tourists came from afar on this special day just to have a bowl of ‘long-life noodles’ to show their respect towards the chairman,” said village official Mao Yushi.

Noodles are a traditional Chinese food to celebrate birthdays, as people believe long noodles stand for longevity.

The villagers and tourists then came to Mao Zedong Square where they paid tribute to the “Great Helmsman” by leaving behind bouquets at Mao’s bronze statue and singing the famous tune “The East is Red”, a song in tribute of Mao.

Meanwhile, nearly 10,000 citizens in Shaoshan – known as one of China’s “red tourism” sites – marked the date with a 5,000-meter foot race that started from Mao’s former residence and ended at the square in front of the Shaoshan Railway Station.

Meditations on James Yaki Sayles’ Meditations

Another great book review of an important work from M-L-M Mayhem, this time examining the late James Yaki Sayles Meditations on Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings. Check out the review from M-L-M Mayhem of J. Sakai’s Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat here. Also, if you haven’t already checked out M-L-M Mayhem, be sure to do so for some excellent writings from a Canadian Maoist perspective. In a similar vein I would also suggest Workers Dreadnought.

I used to be surprised when people told me that, although they owned a copy of Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, all they had ever bothered to read was the preface by Jean-Paul Sartre.  They would often was eloquent about how wonderful this preface was, how impressed they were by Sartre’s insights, and yet they would never bother to read the actual book.  This used to be one of my pet peeves: if the preface is so great, was my standard reply, then why don’t you read what it’s meant to introduce?  The response was usually something like “I intend to” or “I’ll get around to it soon.”  But the book would be returned to their shelves, Fanon never read because he was already described in their minds by Sartre––why read a text that has been adequately summarized by a European authority?

It is not that I have a problem with Sartre’s preface––in fact I think it’s a very good preface––but I would prefer if people went straight to Fanon, and then maybe read the preface as an afterword.  That Sartre’s introduction becomes the beginning and end of Fanon’s thought is troubling especially since Sartre is demanding that the reader take Fanon seriously.

The new English translation of Wretched is even worse because, before the Sartre preface, we have yet another authority to map out the way we should approach Fanon’s thinking: Homi Bhabha  And though Bhabha is not European in origin, he is theoretically less revolutionary than Sartre.  Whereas Sartre understood the immediacy of Fanon’s thought, Bhabha turns it into an identity game and empties most of its revolutionary content.  (It also doesn’t help that the newest translation is worse, in many ways, then the previous English translation.)  So now there are two authorities to tell us how to read Fanon, the newest addition possibly more damaging to our understanding of a thinker whose theory is still vital and not merely, as Bhabha wants us to think, a prefiguration of the post-colonial.

Support ‘Wounded Knee Medals of Dishonor’ Petition

The slaughter of between 150 and 300 Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee happened 120 years ago today. Many of those killed were fleeing the massacre and were chased and killed like animals by the imperialist forces of the United States of Amerika.

Many of the soldiers who survived (some 31 were killed, mostly by friendly fire) were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their supposed heroism in the butchering of mostly unarmed people in the service of colonial expansion. We can never forget the people who died that day, and we can honour them in part by keeping alive our true history, and by removing the Medal of Honor from those pigs. The following post details the efforts to do just that.

In June of 2008, Wanbli Tate initiated an online petition entitled “Wounded knee Medals of Dishonor.” By May 3rd, the day of the incident where three Blackhawk helicopters attempted to land at the Wounded Knee Memorial site, but were prevented by Lakota women, children and men. They had not been notified earlier that they were coming and felt that landing at the site by the military was an insult and desecration of their ancestors grave site. The people who defended Wounded Knee said they would have welcome the military coming to hear their story, but don’t bring their weapons of war to their sacred grounds.

Working-Class Solidarity or Colonial Complicity? Quebec Unions and Asbestos

By David Mandel, writing for The Bullet, the e-newsletter of the Socialist Project. David is a member of Professors’ Union (CSN), University of Quebec in Montreal.

The struggle for workplace health and safety is undoubtedly one of the most noble aspects of the labour movement. It is a struggle for human dignity, the refusal of workers to sacrifice their health and years of their lives in order to earn a living and support their families. It is also one of the most radical aspects of the labour movement because it challenges management prerogatives in an area that it has always jealously kept for itself: the organization of production. Quebec’s union movement has waged stubborn, sometimes heroic, struggles on this battlefield and has won significant victories, even if much remains to be done.

All the more troubling, therefore, was the reception that Quebec’s union federations reserved the other week for a delegation from Asia, consisting of a representative of the Building and Wood Workers’ International and victims of asbestos. The immediate aim of the delegation was to ask the government and people of Quebec not to give financial support to the exploitation of a new vein at the Jeffrey asbestos mine, whose production would be exported to Asia. Neither the FTQ (Fédération des travailleuses et des travailleurs du Québec) nor the CSN (Centrale des syndicats nationaux) saw fit to respond to the request for a meeting. Only the CSD (Centrale des syndicats démocratiques) met the delegation, but in the presence of a lobbyist of the Chrysotile Institute.

J. Sakai’s “Settlers”: A Meta-Review

Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat by J. Sakai was a book, and more importantly, a thesis about Western society, that I used to be opposed to on simple principle. When I first encountered it I was aligned with the rather academic leftist trend known “socialism from below,” and as such the thesis and general tone of the work just seemed to be opposed to everything I believed in at the time. As I have begun to reassess my views with regards to revolutionary thought and action, I have also begun to reassess my opposition to Sakai’s work.

I am still putting together my final verdict on Sakai, as I am still waiting to read Sakai’s sequel of sorts, When Race Burns Class, and Butch Lee and Red Rover’s Night-Vision: Illuminating War and Class on the Neo-Colonial Terrain, which adds a queer feminist dimension to Sakai’s analysis. Until that time though, I have made Settlers available as part of my new and growing online resource library. I am also, in this post and the next one, posting some reviews of Settlers and Night-Vision that I have found very helpful. Both are from the Canadian revolutionary blogM-L-M Mayhem, the home of many thought provoking and well written pieces

Although J. Sakai’s Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat was published in the mid-1980s it has remained at the edges of “acceptable” social theory, just at the threshold of obscurity.  Perhaps the reason for its academic neglect can be blamed on its unsober use of language and rhetorical tone: those who study political theory within the polite confines of academia tend to zone out when they read phrases and words that break the implicit rules of intellectual chivalry.  Or perhaps the academic dismissal of Settlers is due to the fact that it was published by a fringe press and presented in a somewhat unorthodox manner: the type-setting, use of found images and collage, and 8.5×11 graphic novel size does not fit the acceptable standards of an “authoritative” book.

The Weather Underground

The Weather Underground Organization (WUO) is a group that needs little introduction to anyone involved in the revolutionary left. They grew out of the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) faction of the Students for a Democratic Society and took their name from the lyric “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”, from the Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues. It was also the title of a position paper they distributed at the final SDS convention in Chicago on June 18, 1969. This founding document called for a “white fighting force” to be allied with the Black Liberation Movement and other radical movements to achieve “the destruction of US imperialism and achieve a classlessworld: world communism.”

For the next seven years following the dissolution of the SDS, and the break up of the Revolutionary Youth Movement into RYM I (The Weathermen) and RYM II (The New Communist Movement) the WUO carried out a series of acts of armed propaganda against the American state. The WUO could not sustain its initial burst though in the post-Viet Nam era, and eventually it as well broke into two faction, the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, which advocated returning to above ground organizing, and the May 19th Communist Organization, which allied itself with the Black Liberation Army and continued to carry out armed attacks.

What follows is the 2002 documentary film directed by Sam Green and Bill Siegel about the WUO. It tells the WUO’s story and is loaded with interviews from past members. The experience of the WUO, and other groups that went down a similar path, such as the BLA, is something we must learn from as radicals today if we are to hope to build a fighting revolutionary movement here in North America. It is for that reason that this film has been posted.

Chairman Omali Yeshitela on Christmas

RSU History: American Indian Movement (A.I.M.)

The Utah Valley University Revolutionary Student Union is a non-tendency revolutionary group. According to them:

We do not believe our current systems of government, economy, and society are working for us. Moreover, we don’t believe that changes to the system with fix the problem. These systems are the problem. We need to replace these systems with new systems of politics, economics, and society. Hence, we are revolutionary.

However, we allow any revolutionary tendency. You can believe in violence or peaceful revolution. You can be a Marxist, Leninist, Maoist, Democratic Socialist, Social Democrat, Anarchist, Syndicalist, Mutualist, or any other ideology that doesn’t support our system of corporate capitalism.

You can check out their hompage at http://uvursu.blogspot.com/ and follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/uvursu . They also have an excellent Youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/UVURSU . They’ve also been quite influential on the formation of the Red Path Society in Kitchener-Waterloo.

Part of their purpose is to have talks about various aspects of history and political theory. The one I have posted below is an excellent introductory talk on the American Indian Movement, the most important Native liberation org to emerge from the 1960s and 70s.

Sinter Klaas and Zwarte Piet: The Origins of Santa Claus are in Anti-African Dutch Tradition

Sinter Klaas and Zwarte Piet

The following presentation was made by Chairman Omali Yeshitela in St. Petersburg, Florida on December 19, 2004 at a weekly meeting of the African People’s Socialist Party. It appeared on Uhuru News.

I want to talk a little bit about Santa Claus. How many people know of Santa Claus in here? Well, there’s a history to Santa Claus and we want to say some things about that history.

I was recently in Holland. One of the places I went to in Holland was Amsterdam. This was on November 4.

In Amsterdam, they have this parade about Santa Claus. The little cherubic, chubby, unhealthy white guy — well, now he’s even become brown and black — who you take your children to go and visit has his origin, his immediate origin, in Sinter Klaas.

Sinter Klaas is the Dutch name for Santa Claus, and he is the patron saint of shipping. There’s a Catholic in the room who knows what I’m talking about when I say “patron saint” of shipping.

According to the Dutch, Sinter Klaas is this wonderful guy who comes along, and traveling with Sinter Klaas is an African whose name is Zwarte Piet — “Black Pete.”

Sinter Klaas travels throughout the Netherlands, throughout Holland, and Piet is the helper. He works for Sinter Klaas and he gives away gifts to the good children and he puts the bad children in a sack and takes them to Spain.

If Jesus Was a Revolutionary Then Why Is Your Preacher Such an Uncle Tom?

Adopted from Aguila y Condor, the political education organ of Union del Barrio:

Jesus Christ – A revolutionary anti-Roman organizer that was later to be made the central figure of Christianity, and described as the “son of god” who was raised from the dead. He became one of the most influential figures in human history, but as revolutionaries we take him up as a revolutionary that struggled on the side of the poor and oppressed (unlike many modern so-called “Christians”).

Just in time for the solstice holidays, when billions of people around the world will be celebrating the birth of one Yeshua ben Nazareth (Jesus of Nazareth – Jesus Christ), I am below posting an examination of  the lessor known side of this person. This is the side that all the mainstream preachers – white, black, brown and red -hide from you, because they don’t want you to see it. They don’t want you to see it, because they know if you do you might begin to question the way it is that these Uncle Toms are making a buck off you, and selling you out the white power structure.

This side of course is Jesus’ revolutionary side. This is the anti-imperialist, revolutionary, collectivist Jesus, who was deeply involved in the struggles of his people against imperialist occupation and exploitation. Luckily though these people have not been able to fully erase this side of Jesus from the record, try as they might.

Below, Omali Yeshitela, Chairperson of the African People’s Socialist Party, the leader of the Uhuru Movement, talks about this side of Jesus, and how it is relevant to us today. So, when you next see someone cheering on Jesus, and asking you if you know him, you will know to ask him, “if Jesus was a revolutionary, why are you such an Uncle Tom?”

The Sheeps in Wolves Clothing

By Zig Zag. H/t to ACTION

There are those in the movement ‘who understand the responsibility of being a warrior, who understand what the movement is, and why it is. Just as most people, including most Indians, are trapped within the confusion maintained by the colonizer, so too are many in the Indian movement.

Participating in the struggle for one’s peoples does not free one of the confusion, for decolonizing one’s mind requires inner strength and a commitment to spiritual ceremonies. The movement is full of people who allow their egos, greed and petty power struggles to dominate them.

Personality conflicts between those who would assume to be “leaders” is not uncommon. There are many in the movement who are good with words. They are eloquent speakers for their people. But that is all. By their ‘conduct and how they treat others, one can see they, are good deceivers and manipulators. Many do not see this and are instead mesmerized by how these people look, how they present themselves! and their words.

In truth, they are motivated by their egos and selfishness.

There are many tough warriors in the Movement, fiery talkers who might tell you about really heavy situations they’ve been in. They are false warriors. The false warriors look down on any movement’ work that needs to be done, unless it promises conflict. Of course, if weapons were e ve r used such people would be nowhere to be found. They too are motivated by ego  and selfishness. The false warrior compensates for inner weakness by projecting false’ strength.

Twas the Moon of Winter Time: Effects of Christian Religion in Indian Territory

By Johnny Hawke of ACTION

‘Twas in the moon of wintertime when all the birds had fled,

That mighty Gitchi Manitou sent angel choirs instead,Jesus your King is born,

Jesus is born, in excelsis gloria.

– Huron Christmas Carol by St Jean De Brebeuf

We are now in the season of celebrating Christmas which is really Capitalism in disguise and at its best. Capitalism has exploited a Christian holiday which in turn is a Dictatorship Religion that has exploited the teachings of a prophet of a man named Jesus Christ. During this season of over indulgence I am reminded of the history of my people and this Traditional Wendat Territory where we now reside in and the influence Religion has played upon the oppression of my people and the similarities our people have with the man named Jesus.

This area is one of many where the Christian Religion was first introduced to Turtle Island. This was the Traditional Territory of the Wendat, the Anishinabe Ojibways trade partners and allies. Ojibway lived north of Gerogian Bay and relied heavily on the farming industry of the Wendat (Huron) of this area.

Religion causes Huron to loose their Homelands

Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons was a French Jesuit settlement in Wendake, the land of the Wendat, near modern Midland, Ontario, from 1639 to 1649. It was the first European settlement in what is now the province of Ontario. Eight missionaries from Sainte-Marie were martyred.

Established in 1639 by French Jesuits the mission acted as a centre and base of operations for Jesuit missionaries in the region as they worked amongst the Huron. It also provided an example of a functioning European community to the Huron. The mission was built near the Huron settlement of Quieunonascaranas, led by Chief Auoindaon.