Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP

The following book review is from Fight Back!, the newspaper of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization:

Book Review
Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP

By Josh Sykes | February 6, 2010

Professor James J. Brittain’s new book, Revolutionary Social Change in Colombia: The Origin and Direction of the FARC-EP (Pluto Press, London: 2010), is a thoroughly researched and documented academic study of the Colombian revolution and of its largest and longest lasting guerrilla organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP). This alone makes it almost unique. Add to this the fact that it is based on five years of extensive research in Colombia’s countryside, both with the FARC and with the rural population, and it becomes clear that we have a one-of-a-kind book. What this study amounts to is a systematic and thorough defense of the FARC, facing the myths and allegations against the FARC squarely and putting them to rest. On this point, the book is invaluable.

Alabama: Campus Bus Drivers Fight for Living Wage

The following article by Laura Langley is from Fight Back! News:

Tuscaloosa, AL – Bus drivers, with the support of students at the University of Alabama (UA), are organizing a union campaign to win a living wage. The bus drivers shuttle students, football fans and others around the UA campus. Student activists are riding the buses to sign up student supporters for the bus drivers. The 62 Crimson Ride Shuttle Bus drivers work for FirstGroup PLC, a huge British multinational corporation. The union drivers and students are exposing the British company’s big ripoff of Alabama workers and taxpayers.

The bus drivers, most of whom are African American women, make only $9.50 per hour. This salary puts the drivers and their families below the poverty line. In May of 2009, the Crimson Ride Shuttle Bus Drivers at the University of Alabama unanimously voted to join the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1208, but still do not have a contract. Without a contract there are few benefits. The drivers have no job security. There are no guidelines regulating termination. The drivers are paid nothing during university holidays. Many work two jobs to make ends meet.

Communist Party of the Philippines congratulates New People’s Army for string of victories

The following is from the website of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. Please see also the CPP’s recent document, Raise the Level of People’s War in the New Decade:

CPP congratulates New People’s Army for string of victories in Cordillera and Bicol regions

CPP Information Bureau

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today congratulated the New People’s Army (NPA) for its recent string of military victories in the Cordillera and Bicol regions saying “these signals great advances in the people’s war this 2010.”

On 80th anniversary, Communist Party of Vietnam affirms road to socialism

The following is from the website of the Communist Party of Vietnam:

Advancing socialism is the inexorable development path of the Vietnamese revolution, and this is the correct choice of late President Ho Chi Minh, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and the people, says Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh.

The choice was made in the very first political programme adopted at a national conference to establish the CPV and in subsequent programmes, said Mr Manh at a grand meeting in Hanoi on February 2 to mark the 80th anniversary of the CPV.

In a keynote speech, Mr Manh reviewed major milestones in the 80-year history of the Party, saying the CPV has always been able to combine workers’ objectives with patriotic movements and class interests with national interests, becoming a pioneer leader of the working class, the people and the Vietnamese nation.

Eyewitness accounts: The Moscow Trial was Fair

"Mankind can free itself from suffering only by the road pointed out by Stalin and with his help." Mao Zedong studying the writings of J. V. Stalin in the Yenan base area during the Chinese Revolution

The following was sent by a comrade as a contribution to The Marxist-Leninist’s ongoing ‘pro-Stalin ideological offensive’, which kicked off with the article commemorating Joseph Stalin’s 130th birth-anniversary, “Long Live the Universal Contributions of Comrade Joseph Stalin“:

The Moscow Trial was Fair

1

By D. N. PRITT, K.C., M.P.

I STUDIED the legal procedure in criminal cases in Soviet Russia somewhat carefully in 1932, and concluded (as published at the time in “Twelve Studies in Soviet Russia”) that the procedure gave the ordinal accused a very fair trial. Having learnt from my legal friends in Moscow on my return this summer that the principal changes realised or shortly impending were all in the direction of giving greater independence to the Bar and the judges and greater facilities to the accused, I was particularly interested to be able to attend the trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev and others which took place on August 1923.

Janitors Vote to Authorize Strike in Minneapolis

SEIU 26 janitors vote "yes" to authorize a strike (Fight Back! News/Staff)

The following article by Brad Sigal is from Fight Back! News:

Minneapolis, MN – On Jan. 30, hundreds of janitors, mostly Latino and East African immigrants, held a spirited meeting at the Minneapolis Labor Center and voted nearly unanimously to authorize a strike. When the strike vote was taken, the multinational crowd chanted and held up signs reading “Yes! Sí! Haa! Ee! Oui!” (‘Yes!’ in English, Spanish, Somali, Oromo and Amharic). With the strike authorization vote, the workers can now strike if the union’s negotiating committee decides a strike is necessary to win their demands.

The workers are members of the union SEIU Local 26, which represents over 4000 janitors who work for 18 different cleaning contractors, including ABM and Marsden. They clean office buildings in downtown Minneapolis and Saint Paul, including offices for major banks, corporations and buildings such as Wells Fargo, US Bank, Target and the IDS Center. Their union contract expired Jan. 8, but according to union negotiating committee members, the employer is still uninterested in resolving negotiations quickly or listening to any of the union’s key proposals.

Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist): Present Situation and Historical Task of the Proletariat

This article was published in the Maoist Information Bulletin on January 28, 2010. This document is being reposted here to help inform those interested in the ongoing revolution in Nepal, led by the UCPN-Maoist.

Latest Party Document

People’s Democratic Revolution in Nepal is now passing objectively through a gateway of great victory accompanied by a danger of serious defeat. A sharp and thoroughgoing 2-line struggle on the ideological and political questions and the need to develop through it an acquiescent plan to transform the challenges into opportunity is essentially a way to acquire necessary subjective strength that the objective condition demands. With a deep sense of responsibility, our party’s Central Committee Meeting, which continued for about three months amid intense ideological and political struggle, ultimately reached to a unanimous position on the questions of line. The document adopted in the very CC Meeting has been produced herewith.

- Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

Ang Bayan: Raise the Level of People’s War in the New Decade

The following is from Ang Bayan, the organ of the Communist Party of the Philippines:

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), New People’s Army (NPA) and the revolutionary people are in a rock-solid position to advance the people’s war in the new decade to a new and unprecedented level.

Its accumulated strength and experiences and the brilliant victories of people’s war in the last four decades, and its having been tempered even more as it successfully confronted and defeated the US-Arroyo regime’s allout war and Oplan Bantay Laya this past decade serve as the firmest foundation of this declaration.

With the world capitalist system in the throes of depression and the semicolonial and semifeudal system in the Philippines mired ever deeper in permanent crisis, objective conditions are even more favorable for the Philippine revolution to further advance and make great leaps.

PFLP on the second anniversary of the loss of Al-Hakim: Revolutionaries never die!

The following is from the website of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine:

On the second anniversary of the loss of Al-Hakim, Dr. George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Arab Nationalist Movement, the Front pledged to remain on the path and fulfill the goals of Al-Hakim and all of the martyrs of our people and our nation, until return and liberation, on the path of democracy, justice and unity, pledging that revolutionaries never die – and that the example of Al-Hakim as a thinker, organizer, and revolutionary leader will live on immortally in Palestine, the Arab nation and internationally.

In the Front’s statement, issued on January 26, 2010, the PFLP said that Al-Hakim was a historic leader who lit a flame in the darkness of occupation, aggression and oppression, the flame of popular revolution and the path of freedom that shatters the shackles of dependency and hegemony, raising the banner of resistance and unity as the only path for the restoration of our land and our freedom.

CPGB-ML: Jack Shapiro Lives Forever in Our Hearts!

The following is from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist):

JACK SHAPIRO LIVES FOREVER IN OUR HEARTS!
Issued by: CPGB-ML
Issued on: 29 January 2010

It is with the deepest grief that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) announces that our beloved Comrade Jack Shapiro, Honorary President of our Party and of Hands off China!, passed away from illness in the early morning of Friday 29 January 2010 at the age of 93.

Comrade Jack was a staunch Marxist-Leninist, a proletarian revolutionary, a long-tested communist fighter and an implacable foe of revisionism and opportunism.

Philippines: Hounded by Military for Years, Ex-Bayan Leader Takes Refuge in New People’s Army

Alvin Luque reads a script of the play staged during the 41st celebration of the Communist Party of the Philippines in Caraga region. The play depicted problems of the Philippine society and the history of the Communist movement. (Photo by Jose Hernani / davaotoday.com)

The following article is from the pro-people Filipino news website, Bulatlat. Please see also the article, Alvin Luque and the Travails of Filipino Activists (from 2004) for more on the author’s story:

Hounded by Military for Years, Ex-Bayan Leader Takes Refuge in NPA

By ALVIN LUQUE

The author, the former secretary-general of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, finally got to talk about his choice to become a guerrilla to reporters covering the 41st celebration of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) on Dec. 26.

In the past three years, several speculations about my absence from the progressive movement in urban centers in Mindanao have come out. The AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines), through its propaganda spin doctors, has consistently vilified me through black propaganda, saying even, at one time, that I was already dead.

These speculations must end, and it must be pointed out that the US-Arroyo regime will stop at nothing until and unless it has snuffed-out the life of every dissenter in the nation. Therefore, I must tell the truth: there is no way out of the brutality and impunity under this government except to fight against it.

Military Buildup in Colombia: A Rumor of War

The following article, originally from The Rag Blog, is being re-posted here from the website of the Colombia Action Network:

A rumor of war:
Shadows of Vietnam in Colombia

By Marion Delgado / The Rag Blog / January 22, 2010

CARTAGENA DE INDIES, Colombia — I borrowed the title of this post from Lt. Philip Caputo’s excellent book covering the U.S. Marines’ first six months in Vietnam, not only because I like the title, but I also see some correlation between his story and the story of our troops now being written in the jungles of Colombia.

As in Caputo’s war, death, destruction, and mayhem were preceded by, first, a troop build-up, and then, small skirmishes which were the precursors to all-out war.

Communist Party of the Philippines to U.S., Arroyo governments: Stop using “Ondoy” calamity to justify intervention

The following statement from the Communist Party of the Philippines is being reposted here from the website of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines:

By CPP Information Bureau

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today denounced the US and Philippine governments for using the recent calamities to justify its deployment of more US troops in various places in the country.

The CPP issued the statement in reaction to planned large-scale joint US-RP military exercises in the coming months. Thousands of US troops are scheduled to participate in the Oplan Pacific Angel exercises on February 15 to 22 and in the Balikatan exercises on March 9 and 19. US and Philippine military officials claim that these joint exercises are geared to provide medical and other relief and rehabilitation services to recent typhoon victims.

The CPP lambasted the US government for “taking advantage of the calamities to further expand and intensify its military intervention in the country camouflaged as humanitarian work. In doing so US military forces are able to gain a foothold on significant portions of Philippine territory, particularly those considered as areas of operations of the New People’s Army, further reinforcing the position of the US as the dominant power in the country.”