[L-I] Appeal from Tao collective
We've had a tragedy over the weekend. A major hardware failure. This was partly a result of the dramatic increase in activity our facilities underwent during the recent protests surrounding the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. We have lost our main /home paritition, and most of the data that was on it. In all likelyhood, if you are a tao user, this is your data that was lost. We hope you have backups. Most of our backups were destroyed, as the hardware failure happened, yesterday, Sunday, when we were trying to install a new drive. this was the last uptime we had: 4:30pm up 5:44, 7 users, load average: 164.11, 154.85, 111.92 note the last three sets of numbers. they've never been that high on the dojo. this was a major system failure... Please contact us via [EMAIL PROTECTED] and we can try and help you. Obviously this is a major set back for us, and could not have come at a worse time. What follows is an announcement we were going to send out this weekend, but the hardware troubles prevented us from doing so. We now send this out with extra urgency, and more desperation when we ask for your help. It is a challenge for us to provide facilities that are used by thousands of activists and revolutionaries around the world. We are volunteers, and spend our time working for social change, so when we have to do hardware work, it is an extra burden. This last weekend has been very stressful, as it comes only a week after we were active in one of the largest demonstrations this side of North America... TAO Communications P.O. Box 108 Station P Toronto Ont M5S 2S8 Canada Your contributions and solidarity are urgently requested to follow-up TAO capacities and skills in actions against global capitalism in Quebec City! TAO delivered on our offer to inform street activists' decision-making by coordinating ourselves through bilingual liaisons and applying our labour on the ground with the confidence of being recognizable in person. Protest strategies benefited from direct access to information kept open by dedicated tao workers. Our focus on equipping medics in general and communications workers in other anti-FTAA groups in particular strengthened the solidarity necessary to repeatedly confront the security fence and reliably share intelligence throughout the city. An autoworker union organizer said our communications practices were the best -- we share her praise with each and all of you TAO contributors, supporters, workers, and operatives. Heavy on-line footsteps have put our main TAO server - dojo.tao.ca - on its last legs. TAO off-line workers urgently request your contributions for the maintenance and development of our shared resouces such as dojo. Send money and/or gear to TAO P.O. Box 108, Station 'P', Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 2S8. Active TAO member Jaggi Sing of the Anti-Capitalist Convergence - www.tao.ca/~clac - remains in jail after being kidnapped April 20 in Quebec City. Yesterday, April 26, Jaggi's bail was refused. Your solidarity is needed to organize for Jaggi's freedom and against any impunity of state agents (like a death squad, plain-clothed thugs beat Jaggi without provocation, threw him in their unmarked vehicle, and raced away). We look forward to your renewed contributions and solidarity. TAO Toronto collective [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://news.tao.ca Please forward this message and ask others to support us. If there ever was a time we needed support, it is now... --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Test
Please ignore. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] First Americans arrive in Cuba for medical training
PROGRAM FOR POOR COMMUNITIES: CUBA STARTS TRAINING U.S. STUDENTS TO BE DOCTORS By Gloria La Riva Last Sept. 8 in New York's Riverside Church Cuban President Fidel Castro told a crowd of 2,500 that Cuba would accept U.S. students to study medicine for free in Cuba. The only condition was for the students to make a commitment to serving poor communities in the United States after receiving their medical licenses. On April 3, the first group, eight African American and Latino youths, left for Havana to study medicine. They come from Texas, Florida, Minnesota, California, and the Bronx, N.Y. It's a dream come true for Californian Kareema Mosi, 22, who can hardly believe she's going. "I'm extremely excited about it and totally grateful at being accepted to medical school," she said. "I always planned to be a doctor for years. But to study in the U.S., if you take all those school loans, it's a small fortune. "It'd be extremely difficult to work in an under-served community if you're worried about all those debts." In Cuba, all of Mosi's schooling will be completely free. Room and board for the six-year program will also be provided. Over 3,400 students from 23 countries, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, are already at the Latin America School of Medicine, also studying for free. The school was established in the wake of the terrible hurricanes that caused many deaths and extensive damage in Central America in 1997. But this is the first time that U.S. students are to be admitted to that program. A bigger group will be enrolled in August. Castro said at Riverside, "We are prepared to grant a number of scholarships to poor youth who cannot afford to pay the $200,000 it costs to get a medical degree in the U.S." CUBA IS OFFERING 500 SCHOLARSHIPS. President Castro made the offer originally to members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus when they were visiting Cuba. One representative, Benny Thompson from Mississippi, remarked that there were districts in his state where there were no doctors for poor, mostly African American people. Cuba's policy of international medical assistance, and now a medical school, is legendary. Since Cuba sent its first internationalist brigade of 56 medical personnel to Algeria in May 1963, more than 57,000 doctors and nurses have been sent around the world to every continent. That total is higher than the number sent by the World Health Organization. Now that solidarity is being extended to U.S. students who want not only to study medicine, but to serve where it is most needed, in poor communities in the United States. Mosi was a biology major at University of California at San Diego. She was a veterinarian's assistant for three years. Now she says: "I decided I'd rather work with people. I've always been interested in science and life and how it all works." She also recently interned at Yale Medical School in the Minority Medical Education Program. But she was somewhat discouraged by her stay there. "I thought medicine was working with people, but there it seemed so impersonal, like a conveyor belt for patients." Then she read an e-mail from the African Student Union at school. It contained a flier from Pastors for Peace, which is coordinating the outreach and acceptance process in the United States for the Cuban medical school. Mosi feels that her education in Cuba will be well suited to her goals of being a family practitioner, since the vast majority of doctors are in general practice in Cuba. "I didn't know too much about Cuba before. I do know that Cuba, with so little resources, still takes care of its people's medical needs for free. In the U.S. that doesn't happen. "I also hope that our experience will increase cultural awareness and understanding about Cuba." - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Test
Test- please ignore --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Fw: Not Mandela on Israel
It appears the letter/memo to Friedman from Mandela is not genuine- apologies. Macdonald - Original Message - From: Adam Hanieh [EMAIL PROTECTED] yes, this letter is not genuine. It's been circulating for a week or so on Palestinian mailing lists and was written by a Palestinian activist in holland. ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Moldova returns to communism
- Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Is it possible to undo a counterrevolution gradually, through reforms, without another revolutionary leap ? CB --- I think it would be somewhat foolhardy of us to spend a great deal of time analysing Moldova's election in any other than two terms: One, it shows that people in the former East Bloc are learning that there isn't a multitude of options (multi-parties), but two- capitalism or socialism. Unfortunately, capitalism can't be elected away, as we know, and I can't see why we might believe that if a territory used to be "actually existing socialism" it can do the transformation from capitalism in a fundamentally different (and shorter) route. So the first point learned by the Moldovans also shows that all the implications of it aren't grasped- whether or not the people have chosen not "understand" the dialectic of revolution. The real point, as I see it, is that it is rather than an affirmation of the fSU, a total condemnation of capitalism and the destruction it has wrought in the region. Perhaps this is about as significant (on an obviously smaller scale) as if Gennady Zhuganov and KPRF were to win an election in Russia- a brake, not a stop and much less a reversal, on the death and pillage being dealt to the population. As such, the second point might simply be that less Moldovan suffering and starvation will happen, but it isn't going to end but only slow down. If the Communists are going to welcome in the IMF continually, as is being reported, then the slowdown might not even happen and all that is being done is the further besmirching the name of communism. Fortunately, revolutionary movements don't get successful because of what they are called, but by what they do. Macdonald ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] POCKETS of RESISTANCE no. 7
of Mexico, transfixed, tuned in via radio and TV hookups. In the end Marcos who like thousands of supporters had been listening by radio outside the building gave a short farewell speech. They were ready to go back home, he said: were done now. Tomorrow were going to pack our knapsacks and leave on our return journey back to our place. But were not leaving with empty hands. Were leaving with hands filled with all the hands we reached out for. The hands we saluted close up or from afar, the hands that entwined themselves into security cordons to protect us. The hands that made great efforts to prepare our food, the hands that built and furnished the places we spent the night in. The hands that wrote us letters and words of support and encouragement. The hands that cared for us during the nights and in the dawns, the hands that were lifted high on that March 11 this year in the capital Zócalo. The hands that clenched in indignation when the stubbornness of a few tried to close the path of dialogue. The hands that voted yes in the March 22 sessions in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The hands we did not see but that grew tense sharing our anxiety and that now clap sharing our joy. Our hands are filled with your hands, and as everyone knows hands are the shape hearts take when they meet. So pull down the attached document, print it out and take it with you to read when you have the moments to savor it slowly. With it, you will join the march the color of the earth through the quirky tales, the exalting speeches, the outrageous and possible dreams that are the word of the EZLN, the world of the living and the dead, the world the color of humanity. Thanks for reading Pockets of Resistance. With each newsletter, our mailing list has grown. If you are a reader who signed on before January 2001, you will continue receiving Pockets of Resistance through number 12 for free. For all readers who sign on after January 2001, we are suggesting a donation of $12.00 a year, or a dollar a newsletter to help us cover our expenses. You can send your donation to Dark Night Press, P.O. Box 3629, Chicago, IL 60690-3629. If you like Pockets of Resistance, you should know that it is a supplement to our print journal Dark Night field notes. If you are already a subscriber to Dark Night field notes, you will automatically receive Pockets of Resistance. If you are not, you can get an even better deal by subscribing to the journal and newsletter. Check it and us out at our web site: http://www.darknightpress.org. ...resistance against neoliberalism does not only exist in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. In other parts of Mexico, in Latin America, in the United States and Canada, in the Europe of the Treaty of Maastricht, in Africa, in Asia, in Oceania, pockets of resistance multiply. Each one of them has its own history, its own differences, equalities, demands, struggles, and accomplishments. If humanity still has a hope of survival, of improvement, that hope is in the pockets filled with the excluded ones, the leftovers, the ones who are disposable There are as many shapes as there are resistances, and as many worlds as there are in the world. So draw the shape you prefer. As far as this thing about pockets goes, they are as rich in diversity as the shapes resistance takes. Subcomandante Marcos, "Seven Loose Pieces of the Global Jigsaw Puzzle," Mexico, June 1997 --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Nelson Mandela on Israel
andoning Mideast diplomacy. But I'm not going to indulge you the way your supporters do. If you want peace and democracy, I will support you. If you want formal apartheid, we will not support you. If you want to support racial discrimination and ethnic cleansing, we will oppose you. When you figure out what you're about, give me a call. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Argentine anti-FTAA protest(s).
Reuters 4-03-01 Argentine groups ready protests for FTAA meeting By Missy Ryan BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Argentine groups ranging from labor unions to student organizations said Tuesday they were preparing a rough welcome for ministers arriving in the capital this week for talks on a pan- American free-trade deal. Trade officials from 34 countries are meeting this week in Buenos Aires to sketch out plans for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The FTAA would be the world's largest free-trade zone. The agreement would facilitate free trade among the hemisphere's 783 million people and could represent 40 percent of the world's gross product. It will be a key issue at the Summit of the Americas set April 20 to 22 in Quebec City, Canada. Rodolfo Daer, head of Argentina's largest labor movement, General Labor Confederation (CGT), said the agreement had not written in the participation of unions, which could secure workers' rights. "It doesn't exist on the agenda," Daer said. Social, environmental and nongovernmental organizations argue the FTAA will grease the palms of big business while chipping away at living standards for millions of Latin Americans. More than 100 groups from Argentina and other Latin American countries are expected to stage nonviolent protests, organizers said. Officials are expected to meet Thursday through Saturday. "Because the deal links countries with different labor standards, the danger is that there will be pressure to lower those standards. This is something the governments of all these countries should be worrying about," Daer said. Daer's CGT is planning a march in central Buenos Aires Wednesday and other unions say they will stage demonstrations and information sessions. "We fully reject the FTAA and its contents because it would mean a loss of national identity for Argentina and all participating countries," said Marta Maffei, head of main teacher's union in Argentina. Many Argentines believe the economic opening undertaken in the last decade is behind the chronic double-digit unemployment rate of recent years. Unions had planned a general strike for Thursday and Friday but those plans were scrapped after the government pledged to pay "unemployment insurance" to more than 200,000 impoverished families. But hostility toward the FTAA remains. "We don't believe this is a project about integration but a project about economic subordination," said Julio Piumato of the maverick Teamsters' union. ------- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Kostunica, Milosevic and the Hague
The Globe and Mail April 4, 2001 Defiant Kostunica lashes out at West's 'selective justice' Despite President's rhetoric, analysts expect Milosevic will be sent to The Hague By Geoffrey York BELGRADE -- Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica is vowing that he will not bow to Western "blackmail" by sending Slobodan Milosevic to a war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. The threat of a cutoff of Western financial assistance will not persuade Belgrade to transfer the deposed former president to The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity, Mr. Kostunica said. His impoverished country will refuse to sell its "national dignity" for "a handful of dollars," the President said yesterday at his first press conference since Mr. Milosevic's arrest and imprisonment on the weekend. "We are ready to co-operate, but co-operating does not mean accepting everything," he said. Mr. Kostunica criticized the war-crimes tribunal for practising "selective justice" by failing to prosecute the top leaders of other Balkan nations -- or the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which launched a massive bombing campaign against Yugoslavia during the Kosovo war in 1999. "We need a much more impartial court," he commented yesterday. He also scoffed at a U.S. decision on Monday to go ahead with the second half of a $100-million aid package, which could have been terminated if U.S. officials had decided that Yugoslavia was failing to co- operate with the tribunal. The aid is "extremely small" in comparison to the estimated $30-billion worth of damage inflicted on Yugoslavia by the bombing, he said. "The international community and the United States owe much more to us than we owe to them," he said. Despite the President's defiant rhetoric, many analysts in Belgrade are convinced that Yugoslavia will eventually agree to send Mr. Milosevic to The Hague -- perhaps in about six months, when a domestic court has delivered its verdict on corruption charges against him. Although Mr. Kostunica heads the Yugoslav federation, the justice system is largely in the hands of the Serbian republic (which, with Montenegro, makes up the federation). And Serbian officials are much less willing to protect Mr. Milosevic from the war-crimes tribunal. Even Mr. Kostunica did not completely exclude the possibility that he could reach a compromise with the tribunal, as long as the domestic trial is given priority. Meanwhile, there was more bad news for Mr. Milosevic yesterday. His appeal against his detention was rejected by a Belgrade court. And the Serbian Interior Minister, Dusan Mihajlovic, said the former leader could be found guilty of "serious crimes" punishable by death. Mr. Milosevic's arrest has provoked conflicts within the reformist coalition that toppled him last October. On one side is Mr. Kostunica and the federal armed forces, which he controls. On the other side is the Serbian government, which controls the police force that arrested Mr. Milosevic after a bungled raid and a 36-hour standoff at his villa. Mr. Kostunica said yesterday that the police operation was clumsy and confused. The president rejected Serbian allegations that some army officers obstructed the police operation. But a senior Serbian official, Cedomir Jovanovic, said the officers had acted immorally by allowing Milosevic loyalists to smuggle weapons into the former president's villa. The loyalists used the weapons to repel the first police raid Saturday morning. Mr. Jovanovic was the main government negotiator in the weekend drama, spending 10 hours in talks with the former president to negotiate his surrender. In the first detailed insider's account of the 36-hour standoff, Mr. Jovanovic said yesterday that he feared a bloodbath that could have killed up to 30 people. He said the villa, once owned by former dictator Josip Broz (Marshal Tito), is a "fortress," with bulletproof windows and a labyrinth of tunnels 70 metres underground. During most of the negotiations, Mr. Milosevic was ready to fight to the death. But at the last minute he agreed to surrender, perhaps because he had expected a massive crowd of hundreds of thousands of supporters, which never materialized, Mr. Jovanovic said. Despite his criticism of the police operation, Mr. Kostunica said he was pleased that it ended without bloodshed. "March 31 was the second act of Serbia's peaceful revolution." --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of
[L-I] Six recent articles about how Brazil fits into the FTAA equation
Six recent articles about how Brazil fits into the FTAA equation *** Venezuela, Brazil resist early Americas free trade zone-Chavez http://news.excite.com/news/r/010402/10/trade-venezuela-brazil (excerpt...) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he will meet Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso Tuesday to discuss their opposition to accelerating the start date of a 34-nation free trade zone spanning the Western Hemisphere. Some countries, including the United States and Chile, have tried to bring forward the implementation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas to 2003, from the original 2005 date. But Brazil and Venezuela both resist the move on grounds it is too rushed A Friend the U.S. Can't Afford to Lose http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20010401/t27799.html (Overview of Brazil-US relations, partcularly with regard to the FTAA, by Peter Hakim, President of the Inter-american Dialogue) (excerpt...) ...With 34 Western Hemisphere heads of state scheduled to meet in Quebec City in less than a month, the main focus of the Cardoso-Bush discussion was inter-American free-trade negotiations. If the United States and Brazil can find common ground, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is a done deal. As long as they remain at odds, however, such an area will be a pipe dream, leaving other Latin American nations without the access they want to the U.S. market. ... US will face pressure on its farm subsidies http://news.excite.com/news/r/010402/11/economy-trade-americas (excerpt...) ...Brazil and other Latin American countries, want changes in U.S. anti-dumping and countervailing subsidy laws as part of the agreement. U.S. steel producers, in particular, have used the laws actively in recent years to combat a surge in imports from foreign suppliers, including Brazil Bush wants Americas trade pact "soon as possible" http://news.excite.com/news/r/010329/13/economy-trade-americas *** U.S.-Brazil talks called 'significant' http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010402/3195623s.htm (includes some Brazilian trade statistics) *** Brazil Flexes New Muscle in Another Trade Fight http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/27/world/27BRAZ.html (In addition to briefly addressing the FTAA, this article looks at Brazil's ongoing fight to maintain much praised low-cost AIDS drug program in the face of US efforts to get a WTO tribunal to shoot it down) --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] China Reminds Japan to Properly Handle History Issue (People's Daily)
By way of a brief intro to why I feel it necessary to post this article: Nestor and others have been able to point out that the battle for correct interpretation of historic events is paramount to an understanding of why a people, a class, an ethnic group, and sometimes a family can be a class struggle (indeed, across borders) all of its own. The arrest of Milosevic has almost nothing at all to do with the former president himself- it is an attempt to make resistance to Nato and colonisers a criminal enterprise among the people of Serbia- in their own mind and discussions with their younger generations in the future. China (obviously), as a part of the "global market" needs to stay on the "good side" of Japan, a major investor in the Mainland. So, to open up a dialogue of condemnation of the interpretation of events from 60 plus years ago might seem a rather counter-productive venture. But it isn't at all- it is a battle for historical truth about the anti-Japanese war. Such battles can really be the biggest a people fight, for it gives them a new weapon for the struggles to be waged today and tomorrow. Macdonald -- China's Top Legislator Reminds Japan to Properly Handle History Issue China's top legislator Li Peng said here Tuesday that China hopes the Japanese side will handle the history issue in a "particularly careful and appropriate manner" to ensure a healthy and stable development of China-Japan relations. Li made the remark during a meeting with visiting Japanese Justice Minister Masahiko Komura. How to handle the history issue appropriately is a matter related to the political basis of Sino-Japanese relations, and therefore deserves due attention, Li noted. China hopes the Japanese side will appropriately handle the matter with particular care in accordance with the principles set out in the Sino- Japanese Joint Statement and other bilateral documents as well as the common ground of "learning from past experience and looking forward to the future." Appropriate handling of the issue will clear away the obstacles to the development of Sino-Japanese relations in the 21st century, Li stressed. Li said China always pays special attention to developing good- neighborly relations with Japan because it is in the fundamental interests of the people of the two countries. Komura said the stable development of relations between Japan and China will be good not only for the stability and development of the Asian-Pacific region, but the world as a whole. Exchanges of visits between top leaders of the two countries have helped deepen bilateral relations, he noted. The Japanese minister said there are some problems during the development of Japan-China relations. But, he said, he believes that the Japanese government will continue to handle the history issue in accordance with the China-Japan Joint Statement and the speech made by former Japanese Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] People's Daily: China Slams Japan Over History Textbook
A second article on the same matter- Macdonald -- China Slams Japan Over History Textbook The Chinese government and people are strongly indignant about and dissatisfied with the new Japanese history textbook for the year 2002 compiled by right-wing Japanese scholars. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao announced this here Tuesday, in response to the Japanese government's approval of the textbook. He said that the Japanese government has approved a textbook which confounds right and wrong, disregarding the solemn representations made many times by the Chinese government and people and the just appeals of the people of other Asian countries. It must be pointed out that the basic reactionary and absurd nature of the textbook has remained, although many parts of it have been amended, Zhu said. The textbook, which intentionally blurs the nature of the aggressive war launched by the Japanese invaders, does not reflect on the deep tragedies brought about by the Japanese militarists to the Asian people, but instead whitewashes and exculpates the atrocities committed by the Japanese troops, he noted. ( rest at: http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200104/03/eng20010403_66729.html ) --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Update on server connection
Forwarded from Gary at WW, it looks like we shall be fine after all. Sorry for the undue messages. Macdonald ** Hi all, We are up, after a short outage. Apparently Verizon has announced that they will not shut down Northpoint's lines in the New York-New Jersey area for now. (They had started shutting down lines here, but then restored them.) They are supposed to be keeping the lines up until Northpoint's customers can get alternate connections. For more details, if you are interested, see http://www.blythe.org/npt-update.html. This is the Web site for Blythe Systems, which is the U.S. distributor for Cuba's Prensa Latina and other Cuban news (as well as some other stuff). They are in pretty much the same situation we are in at WW. If Verizon gives us 30 days or so then there may be no disruption of any kind, though we have no reason to trust that Verizon will do that. But I think that the crisis is at least delayed if not over completely. Gary --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] DIGNITY vs. BARBARISM - March 24 BELGRADE
En relacin a Re: [L-I] DIGNITY vs. BARBARISM - March 24 BELGRA, el 1 Apr 01, a las 20:02, Boris Ikhlov dijo: Russian political union "Worker", All Russia' party "New lefts", workers trade union "ZZZ" support demands of Forum and suggest to expand the campaign for disbandment of NATO. We'd like to remember about the USA provocation that was the reason of the war in Bosnia with 145 000 deaths, with such actions of NATO as "Deliberation Force" and others actions of NATO' IFOR-SFOR-EFOR. One of the main reasons of USA actions in Balkans is to save NATO after decay of the Warsaw block and to unite USA and Europe to soft economy competition and to weaken the pressure of united Europian currency euro. Boris Ikhlov, secretary of executive committee of union "Worker", leader of "New lefts", member of trade union committee of "ZZZ" ___ --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] queery on Thatcher
clip from: Nezavisimaya Gazeta March 22, 2001 "Something Wicked Comes This Way": Sad Story of U.S. Aid to Russian "Reformers". By Alexander N. Domrin. (as received from JRL) In reality, since Margaret Thatcher's infamous endorsement of Gorbachev in December 1984 through the latest period of contemporary Russian history, the Western governments have been promoting a "strategic alliance with Russian _reform_" rather than an alliance with Russia herself. A guiding principle of the U.S. foreign policy was not to support Russia, but to support "Russian _reforms_"[...] Any comments on this story of Thatcher? I was definitely not aware of this at all... hoping some light can be shed. Macdonald --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Milosevic refuses to be taken alive, army obstructs arrest
c's ultimate superior is President Vojislav Kostunica, who is supreme commander of the Yugoslav army. Asked whether Pavkovic could be accused of being "accomplice" to a criminal deed, Mihajlovic said: "No." "But other representatives of the Yugoslav army are responsible for obstruction" of the police tasks, he said. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Cubans Aid USA
s. They feared my flight would open a way for more U.S.-sponsored provocation by private pilots, such as the events that led to the shoot down of two planes by Cuba in 1996." The whole Miami Herald Editorial by Dr. Kirkpatrick can be found at http://www.miami.com/herald/ It was published February 28,2001 Dorothy Guellec Health Commentary writer [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Service interruption
People on both lists, our interruption is imminent. If you choose to start a thread of discussion, by all means- but you could be cut off in the cyber equivalent of mid-sentence. The subscriber list will be maintained, and both lists will be re-launched. As my tech knowledge is not quite medium, my understanding of the trouble we are about to go through is minimal- suffice to say a backup distributor is being set-up. There may not be any actual interruption, but the speed with which all messages relay to the list(s) might be painfully slow. The server that our friends at Worker's World has gone bankrupt (bubble economy go burst- *snicker*). We WILL stay with these folks, as they have been absolutely wonderful in the service they have provided, with absolutely no requests for return except that we help move along the struggle in all these areas. We shall do them that much. Macdonald Stainsby, (co) Moderator. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Militarising the Revolution
Some of the list members here have expressed, in the past at least, a belief that an overwhelming majority of the popular revolutions of the last 150 years (give or take) have been decimated by their own militarisation. At this point, so goes the argument, the revolution no longer has the input (and indeed the righteousness) that comes with mass democracy. Miltarisation kills the revolution, so it goes. The question then surely becomes one of the state itself. Is not the state composed of what Lenin quoted Engels "several bodies of armed men, prisons, etc?". Such a statement is fairly succinct, and it would seem to me, irrefutable. And a process of making a revolution ultimately *will* confront the armed military response of the bourgeoisie. So, in today's struggles- and nothing else really should be of our concern- is their any logic to descriptions of radically transformed relations without a military input- one we can and should abhor, but also resign to the inevitable? --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] IMPORTANT MODERATORS NOTE: LIST GOING OFF LINE
Comrades and friends of Rad-Green and Leninist-International: The list(s) may be down for awhile. Rather than do a disservice to the telling of the events, I simply forward you the information received from "headquarters", as it were. People who would like a temporary transfer over to an unreliable, ad-based protocol (such as "yahoo groups") should let me know. I'll do whatever I can to make this down time seamless- even that. Sincerely, Macdonald Stainsby, (co) Moderator, Rad Green and Leninist International. -- __ Hi, We were informed this morning that Northpoint, the company that provides us with our broadband Internet connection, that our connection will be shut down. This is what their message said: "The cessation of services to our customers and the complete shut down of our network is imminent." This is acutally the result of the collapse of the dot-com economy. Northpoint entered banruptcy about a month ago. Now it is closing down completely. We are working on a replacement, but no possible solution will be without disruption of service (at least none that I know about at this time.) I will let everyone know if I learn of an exact time of shutdown. We are not "going out of business." No, in fact, we think that the emerging capitalist crisis will give us great opportunities for "expansion." However, this is a possible disruption that we have no control over. I am sorry to have to give you this news and urge everyone to do whatever they feel is necessary to continue their lists (or wait it out with us). Believe me when I say that this is even more of a disruption for us at WW than it will be for you and we'd do anything we could to avoid it. Gary ------- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] KCNA: On NMD
By way of a follow up to my previous rant. Macdonald * U.S. urged to face up to trend of times Pyongyang, March 21 (KCNA) -- The U.S. Defense Department on March 5 in an annual report submitted to the congress argued that a test program for the "National Missile Defense" initiative (NMD) is too passive. The report suggested that for now it is difficult for the united states to have the immediate capacity to deploy the "NMD" for a real war between 2006 and 2010 as planned. In this regard Rodong Sinmun today says in a signed article: The annual report goes to clearly prove how frantically the U.S. is working to put into practice the "NMD" as soon as possible. Its real aim is to realize its ambition for world supremacy. A spokesperson for the U.S. Defense Department in charge of ballistic missile defense admitted that the system which is now being developed by the U.S. as regards the "NMD" is projected to cope with threat from a dangerous state, not China, Russia and others. The U.S. hue and cry over "measure" to cope with any country's "threat" is a pretext to justify the establishment of the "NMD". Whenever the united states undertook any aggression and war, it invented pretexts to justify them. A proof of this was its smear campaign against the DPRK over its "missile threat". The ulterior intention of the U.S. is to sacrifice the DPRK for attaining Washington's sinister aim. That is why the U.S. is talking about a "hard line policy" towards the DPRK, letting loose such outbursts as labelling it as "a dangerous state" and "sponsor-terrorism". This is a very dangerous development as the U.S. is pushing the DPRK-U.S. relations to the phase of new confrontation and seriously threatening the peace and security in the Korean peninsula and the rest of Asia. The United States should refrain from criminal acts of going against the trend of the times towards detente and peace. -------- --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Canadian Labour appeal.
f the plant is moved; Be it resolved that the Winnipeg Labour Council demand all levels of government organize an emergency, full scale inquiry with public hearings into the fate of the Versatile factory and the jobs and pensions of the workers before Mr. Buhler is allowed to move the factory; Be it further resolved that the Winnipeg Labour Council participate in strike support at the Versatile factory and at information pickets at Mr. Buhler's other factories. * Position on the Runaway Versatile Plant Whereas 600 jobs will be lost from Winnipeg if the Versatile tractor factory is moved; Whereas Versatile's new owner, Mr. Buhler, stated that he bought the factory to save jobs in Winnipeg; Whereas the loss of the jobs at the Versatile factory will greatly damage Winnipeg's economy; Whereas Versatile is the last tractor factory in Canada and moving it to the U.S.A. will harm our ability to control our agricultural industry and to support Canadian farmers; Whereas Mr. Buhler and all previous private owners have failed to save the jobs of the Versatile workers and Mr. Buhler is demanding unacceptable concessions from the workers who have been on strike since November 3, 2000; Whereas public ownership of the New Flyer plant in the 1970s succeeded in saving thousands of jobs; Be it resolved that the Winnipeg Labour Council demand that the Manitoba government freeze the assets of the Versatile factory until such time as Mr. Buhler makes an acceptable offer to the workers at Versatile and he agrees to keep the factory in Winnipeg; Be it further resolved that the Winnipeg Labour Council publicly support public ownership and democratic control of the Versatile factory in the interests of the people and especially the farmers of Canada. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Turkey bombing in No-Fly Zone.
s about the control] of Iraqi oil . . . Divide and rule was and is the policy." Recently, Richard Norton-Taylor disclosed in the Guardian that Britain's military establishment was concerned about the proposed new international criminal court. The generals complained that rules made in Brussels might "prevent British peacekeepers from carrying out their tasks effectively". Their real concern, and that of western politicians, was put by Michael Caplan, the former lawyer to General Pinochet, who questioned how Tony Blair would be able to defend himself were he charged with bombing targets in Kosovo knowing that civilians would be killed. When he was the Foreign Office minister responsible for Iraq, Peter Hain wrote to the New Statesman, describing as preposterous the very suggestion that he, and other British ministers directly complicit in the atrocious embargo against Iraq, might be summoned to appear before the new court. We shall see. www.johnpilger.com --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Notes on the Korean Pennisula and NMD
wing, seeing as the DPRK has been trying very heavily to get out of isolation for quite awhile. Macdonald --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Without 'Barefoot Doctors,' China's Rural Families Suffer
stion," he said. "We've been thinking a lot about this in the last two years. But the central government doesn't have the resources to solve this alone. It can't bear the cost." --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] help me with a quote?
Somewhere, so I am told, Mao said that "it will take 1000 years to build communism in China". Source, anyone? I can't exactly run a search engine on "Mao" and "Communism". [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Re: Leninist-International digest, Vol 1 #403 - 3 msgs
done. Subject: [L-I] Re: Leninist-International digest, Vol 1 #403 - 3 msgs can you unscribe me please dear macdonald ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Quebec City suburb nixes anti-scarf bylaw
Mar. 7, 2001. 12:36 PM The Toronto Star Quebec City suburb nixes anti-scarf bylaw Mayor reverses ban aimed at Summit of the Americas protesters QUEBEC (CP) - A bylaw passed by a Quebec City suburb to bar people from concealing their faces with scarves or masks at the Summit of the Americas has been scrapped. Ste-Foy Mayor Andree Boucher said she ''listened to her conscience'' and decided to respect individual rights and the presumption of innocence. ''Too often in other countries, laws have been abusively applied,'' she said yesterday. The bylaw, adopted for the April 20-22 summit in Quebec City, had made it illegal to ''wear or have in your possession a mask, hood or ski mask, or any other object of the same nature to cover one's face, in whole or in part.'' A civil liberties group had said the bylaw could have given police a reason to detain protesters unnecessarily. ''We agree summit-goers should be able to go about their work peacefully, but people also need to be able to gather freely and express themselves,'' Andre Paradis, head of Quebec's Ligue des Droits et Libertes, said recently. Police had said that even though the summit is to be held in downtown Quebec City, they feared protesters would cause trouble at the airport, which is in neighbouring Ste-Foy. Security will be tight at the summit, where international free trade deals and globalization will be discussed. Five thousand police officers will be on hand for the event. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Yugoslavia's Kostunica talks of possible NATO link
Yuck. This man, should this report be true, is not a patriot tricked into anything. He is a puppet of the first order. Not even Yeltsin or Putin would dream of floating this idea. Macdonald ** Yugoslavia's Kostunica talks of possible NATO link LONDON, March 8 (Reuters) - Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica was quoted on Thursday as saying Belgrade's relations with NATO were evolving so quickly that he did not rule out Yugoslavia becoming a formal alliance partner one day. Yugoslavia had turned the page in its relations with the West, Kostunica told Britain's Times newspaper in an interview, less than two years after NATO's bombers destroyed large parts of his country's infrastructure in the Kosovo conflict. He said he was shocked by the scale of the challenges facing him, including an ethnic Albanian insurgency in the south, threats of secession by Montenegro, the junior partner in the Yugoslav Federation, and huge economic and social problems inherited from the previous government headed by Slobodan Milosevic. In addition, there was an estimated $30 billion in damage caused by NATO's bombing campaign. "When I came to office, I did not expect the situation in the country to be quite so difficult; it is discouraging," Kostunica said, citing security and constitutional problems as well as 40 percent unemployment and 800,000 refugees. "I do not have any regrets. I only wish that we had been able to make the changes sooner," he said. Kostunica said one of the most surprising successes was the goodwill that he had encountered in contacts with the West. He said he could envisage Yugoslavia one day joining NATO's Partnership for Peace programme. "Partnership for Peace is not a priority for us, but it is not excluded and has been discussed. I would need more time and a change of attitude before thinking about it," Kostunica said. NATO devised its Partnership for Peace programme to draw former communist states into closer cooperation with the Western alliance, but stops short of offering full membership, which could antagonise a suspicious Russia. A popular uprising last October forced Milosevic to concede defeat to Kostunica in federal presidential elections held 10 days before. 00:07 03-08-01 ------- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Fw: Censorship, Canadian Style
"Roland Chrisjohn, Ph. D." [EMAIL PROTECTED], To All: I'm circulating this in hopes that you'll pass it along as you see fit (or not). Overall, I think it's less interesting than the story that goes with it. I was approached late last year by Cantilevers, a Montreal-based peace organization that publishes a small-circulation journal, to do a short (3-4 pager) on the theme on Indigenous Peoples in Canada and the recent Conference on War-Affected Children. With the help of some of the more engaged students in the Native Studies department, I put together the piece you see below. Shortly after the piece was submitted, Eric Abitbol, Cantilevers' editors, was informed by the Canadian International Development Agency, a governmental office that partly sponsored the issue of Cantilevers for which "Darkness Visible" commissioned, that my article was NOT TO APPEAR in Cantilevers, and if it did, CIDA would withdraw for all time any CIDA funding Cantilever's might ever obtain. Eric contacted me to ask my opinion on what might be done. As editor, he found this attempt at censorship intolerable, but as a member of an organization, the possibility of losing a funding source would be disastrous. I certainly didn't feel it was a good idea for Cantilevers to commit suicide over me (and I still can't see what CIDA finds so damned offensive about the article), so we agreed he would try to bargain so kind of compromise while I altered the article somewhat to address some of the excuses CIDA had cited to demand its removal. The section in the 2nd paragraph, where I comment on Canada's denial of National status to indigenous nations, is the only substantial adjustment I made. Meanwhile, on the negotiation front, Eric quickly found out that CIDA was unwilling to make ANY COMPROMISE WHATSOEVER. This, regardless of any content changes I might make to address their concerns. They even stipulated that "Darkness Visible" could not even be included as a separate pamphlet in the same envelope used to mail out the CIDA-sponsored issue of Cantilevers. I suppose they want to kill my cat, too. Anyway, Eric is still trying to find some way to circulate this piece. I'm more interested in using it to expose the "Canadian Way" of censorship, which is, NOT to tell you NOT to say it, just make it a life and death decision for you as to whether or not you WILL say it. And if Canada is willing to impose such high stakes for such a piddley little thing as my article, what would they be willing to impose for something that really mattered? Roland Chrisjohn, Ph. D. Cantilevers home page: http://ssmu.mcgill.ca/qpirg/cantdir.html ** DARKNESS VISIBLE: CANADA'S WAR AGAINST INDIGENOUS CHILDREN Roland Chrisjohn,1 Pierre Loiselle,2 Lisa Nussey,2 Andrea Smith,2 Tara Sullivan2 Introduction The World Conference on War-Affected Children (Winnipeg, September, 2000) seemed to promise winners all around. After all, who but the obvious bullies and outlaws of the world could possibly be in favor of the impressments of children as combatants, deadly and disfiguring land mines, waging war on civilian populations, and the like? Not only would the victims of such abuses be provided with a forum allowing them to detail publicly their circumstances, measured steps towards redress, remedy, and prevention (like the formation of an International Criminal Court to try offenders) could be promoted or even taken. Groups, governmental and non-governmental alike, already engaged in program planning and service delivery to war-affected civilian populations, would get a chance to network and take a much-deserved international bow. And Canada, the Good (if not Great) World Citizen, could award itself another row of gold stars for their variety of jobs well done. Who could complain? About 100 or so indigenous peoples and their supporters outside the conference, that's who. Though numerically small, they stood in place of thousands more, absent for a variety of reasons which included being defined as outside the terms of reference of the conference. Specifically, by unilaterally declaring indigenous peoples "citizens" in 1960, Canada, like many colonial powers at the time, obviated any move by indigenous peoples to bring grievances under the forthcoming UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights before the International Court of Justice, since only countries (and not "internal minorities") would be recognized. This "enforced citizenship" evasion, touted as an act of humanity by Canadian press and politicians at the time, would itself have been included as an act of genocide had not Canada and the other major colonial powers removed it from the draft UN Genocide Convention during the post-WWII deliberations. "Enforced citizenship," a fundamental denial of the human right to self-determination, is a Canadian
Re: [L-I] German soldiers and Trotskyist newspapers
All listmembers: Please cut off all but the vital portions of a previous post. It helps us keep to more than just first world and relatively well off third world subscribers, by keeping doiwn their costs. Although they are kind enough never to bother people with their trivialities, I assume it also cost the folks at Workers World for bandwidth. As you can see (it's also just plain ugly), it's important we pay attention to this. Macdonald Stainsby What is "chauvinist" about the Alexander Nevsky movie? AD ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Forward From Mark Jones
[Mac, I don't have time right now to participate on L-I but I do follow the archives and I see there has been discussion about the revisionist Russian historian Viktor Suvorov. He is simply a fraud. His work has been demolished by well-respected *bourgeois* historians like Gabriel Gorodetsky. It is simply idiocy to say that Stalin planned to attack Germany. Here is an earlier posting on the subject. Perhaps you could forward this. Keep up the good work. Mark Jones] I'm constantly amazed at the sloth, slovenliness, intellectual fraud and wholesale factual inaccuracy displayed by leading scholars and writers on Soviet and Russian affairs, not to speak of distortion of often Orwellian scale and a cavalier disregard for the historical record, combined with an easy contempt for the average reader. And it's getting worse: now that they are sure no-one will contradict, they feel free to say anything, no matter how preposterous or improbable. The more famous the author, the more staggeringly inept and scandalously mendacious, the scholarship is likely to be. Notable examples include Robert Conquest, whose estimate of the numbers incarcerated in the Gulag or 'repressed' came to more than 50% of the Soviet population of employable age: which hasn't deterred him from endlessly repeating his nonsensical estimates. Conquest speaks of 60 million dead by Stalins hand, or decree, a number repeated not only in the West but by such figures as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who has the aura of oracular truth in these matters, being a former camp inmate himself; and even Roy Medvedev, really a quite honourable and worthy Russian historian and self-proclaimed Leninist, who wants to see the USSR restored: even he repeats the outrageous estimates of Conquest and others. These include Orlando Figes, son of the feminist writer Eva Figes and doyen of the new school of anti-Soviet historiography (indistinguishable from the old school). Figes mendacious account of Lenin's childhood family circumstances did not prevent his book A Peoples Tragedy from being serialised in mass-circulation papers and wildly acclaimed. Another congenital liar is Dmitry Volkogonov, the lifelong Stalinist (until Stalin was demonised by Khrushchev), then born-again Leninist throughout the second period of his career, when as a 3-Star Soviet Army general and head of the Soviet Department of Psychological Warfare, he authored over thirty books extolling the virtues of the Soviet military - until the Soviet Union fell, whereupon he (Volkogonov) suddenly realised his error, purged Lenin from his head, and became chief archival adviser of Yeltsin; Volkogonov soon came to understand that, bad as Stalin was, Lenin was actually worse, since he was the spiritual progenitor of Stalin and legitimiser of Stalins worst excesses. Volkogonovs biographies of Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky are full of incredible. elementary blunders of fact and interpretation impossible to understand coming from the pen of a man who is Yeltsin's chief archivist, the man given the job of opening up the secret CPSU, KGB and Soviet state archives to the world. Another acclaimed writer is Nina Tumarkin. Professor of history at Wellesly College and an Associate of the foremost US Russian studies faculty, the Davis Center at Harvard, Tumarkin is admired for her penetrating psychological insights into the mind of Lenin; we are encouraged to admire not merely the fruits of her contemplation of Lenins mind, but her sheer courage (being only a woman) in entering those dark and gloomy regions. Tumarkin was the first to apply postmodernist techniques to deconstructing Soviet history. Her book 'Lenin Lives!: The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia', received critical acclaim when it was first published in 1982. The book is dedicated to Adam Ulam, her chief mentor; the acknowledgements list her debt to many of the usual suspects, who are therefore be to some degree complicit in her own blunder, errors and self-defeating contradictions (they include such tyros of sovietology as: Richard Pipes, Robert C Tucker, Stephen Cohen, Adam Ulam himself, Abbott Gleason and Norman Naimark among others). 'Lenin Lives!' is about the mass psychodynamics of the 'Lenin Cult' which Tumarkin says arose in the USSR after Lenin's death in 1924, and about the attempted manipulation and brainwashing of the masses by the (cynical, scheming) Bolsheviks who inherited the state Lenin founded -- and the book is above all about Lenin the man, his psychological development, the maturation of his politics, the interplay between Lenin the thinker and Lenin the family man, party-leader, guru etc. The heart of the book is Tumarkin's theorising of how specific features of Lenin's personality became suffused into the very institutions of the Soviet state, which thus became an extension of his attributes, capabilities and of course, defects. This means of course, by definition, that the Soviet experience and Bolshevism generally has and can
[L-I] Moderator's Note.
I hate it when this happens. I was getting all settled in without this sort of nonsense. I'm removing Red Rebel. Take Care, James. I hope you get over this habit soon. None of it can be tolerated here. I look into the future and await your valuable forwards on the other lists. Just not here. Bye! Macdonald Stainsby * Red-Rebel: You're not a trotskyist by any chance are you? Sounds like their line. While Red Partisans were waging a war to the death against fascist troops the trotskyists were calling for 'fraternisation' printing newspapers for your "ordinary working-class German Soldiers" to read while they slaughtered and raped their way accross the USSR. At the same time the trotskyites called on the Red Army to turn it's guns againsty the Communist Party! --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] U.S. Thinks Agent Revealed Tunnel at Soviet Embassy
U.S. Thinks Agent Revealed Tunnel at Soviet Embassy By JAMES RISEN with LOWELL BERGMAN Stephen Crowley/ The New York Times The Russian Embassy complex on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington. WASHINGTON, March 3 - The United States government constructed a secret tunnel under the Soviet Union's embassy in Washington to eavesdrop, but federal investigators now believe the operation was betrayed by the F.B.I. agent who was arrested last month on charges of spying for Moscow, current and former United States intelligence and law enforcement officials say. The secret tunnel operation, which officials indicated was run jointly by the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency, was part of a broad United States effort to eavesdrop on and track Soviet - later Russian - facilities and personnel operating in the United States. Spokesmen at the F.B.I. and the White House declined to comment on the tunnel operation today. Current and former United States officials estimated that the tunnel construction and related intelligence-gathering activities cost several hundred million dollars, apparently making it the most expensive clandestine intelligence operation that the agent, Robert Philip Hanssen, is accused of betraying. The tunnel was designed to aid in a sophisticated operation to eavesdrop on communications and conversations in the Soviet Embassy complex, which was built in the 1970's and 1980's but was not fully occupied until the 1990's. completed at: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/04/national/04SPY.html?pagewanted=all --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] forward from unsubbed boris.ikhlov@psu.ru
from unsubbed [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [Boris- let me know if you want to be subbed] Hello MarxistMark, Saturday, February 24, 2001, 10:44:09 AM, you wrote: Mac this brave lady[18 years old;a member of the moscow komosol and Mac partisan] was unfortunately caught and executed.she was caught setting light Mac to german stables in the village of petrischevo; although she was tortured Mac the germans didn't extract any information from her.tragically because of Mac this the gallant lady was hanged on 29th november 1941. Mac the sign the germans put around her neck during execution Mac said"she set fire to houses".just before her execution ; being Mac typically defiant.she turned to a german and said..."YOU CAN'T Mac HANG ALL 190 MILLION OF US". Mac lidin,a war reporter for pravda discovered the story of Mac zoia.he saw her frozen,tortured body with the rope around her neck 2 weeks Mac later.his story made her a national heroine and a symbol of partisan Mac restistance. MacBRAVE ZOIA Thank you for all your information! I am sorry I can't read Rnglish and answer quickly, but I'l try... As for partizan war we lost about 5 millions lifes of partizans only. 7000 soviet participants of WW-2 became heros of Soviet Union among ordinary commmunists only, so they made such feat of arms that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Pertizan movement was organised from "the bottom", but "frpm the top", from Moscow too. USSR secret services even used the experiance of Denis Davidov, famous partizan of Civil War in 1812 y. But have you read books of V. Suvorov (Rezun), former internal KGB, about WW-2? He wants to support Hitler, because Stalin was going to capture Europe and the whole world to establish concentration camps regime... Our TV talks often about him. As for NTV-canal, that belongs to Gusinskii, it's support position of Suvorov! Of course, Suvorov doesn't want to support Hitler in reality and he knows that it is impossible to export the revolution. So his books actually support the position of USA and UK - if you know thay opened the second front only in 1944. Now americans say that USA, UK and USSR win together... But we lost 27 millions people, USA - 0,325 millions. 5 millions Soviet peoples were captured by fashists. Soviet Army annihilated 607 German divisions, USA and UK - 167. Or 187, I don't remember exactly. You see, my mother took part in WW-2, at the most hot moment, near Moscow in 1941. She annihilated German airplanes with the anti-aircraft machine-gun. She got an injury. So you see I hate Suvorov... Good luck! Your Boris I am sorry my English is too bad! Best regards, Borismailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] CPRF Statement
CP Russian Federation, PRAVDA OF FEBRUARY 27, 2001. No23. - From: Communist Party of Russian Federation http://www.kprf.ru , mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] , mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] PRAVDA OF FEBRUARY 27, 2001. No23. The newspaper publishes the declaration of the CPRF Central committee presidium which criticizes the governmental policies in regard to the budget. All masks have been thrown off, the declaration runs. It is now clear that under the pretext of external debt deliberations the government of Messrs. Kasyanov, Kudrin and Gref tries to force through the parliament a decision allowing the final sale of all state property. A large-scale and purposeful annihilation of the scientific and industrial potential of the country is in progress. During the last year and a half 13 thousand enterprises were liquidated. Production of crude oil is growing while peasants have no fuel for any agricultural work. They insist on adoption by the Duma of new labour laws that would deprive the labourer of all his rights and put him into the position of a serf. They also want new agricultural laws adopted which would hand the land over to home and overseas tycoons and turn the peasant into their hired work force. The Communist party believes that this government staying in power is ruinous for the country. The faction of the party started the procedure of no-confidence vote in the Duma. A whole page of the newspaper is devoted to readers letters. One of the readers, Ivan Shalygin, writes that the official media are persistently trying to convince the public that the GDP growth rate is increasing. In 2000 it allegedly was 7 percent. But they dont say a word about the fact that the level of industrial production fell in the Russian Federation in the last ten years by not less than a half. Could a 7 percent growth, if it really took place, be considered a success? Basic industrial funds are meanwhile rapidly passing out through wear and tear. Prospects of any industrial growth in the future are very questionable. Another reader, Pavel Tyrinov from Nijhny Novgorod region, says that under Soviet power not a single thief visited his household, even apples in his orchard were all intact. But with the advent of Yeltsyns "freedom" he was robbed seven times already and the thieves had not been found. In former times there were 36 militiamen in the district and there was perfect order. Now there are 94 of them and theres neither law nor order. *End* --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] US crews involved in Colombian battle
US crews involved in Colombian battle http://thescotsman.co.uk/world.cfm?id=49768 Jeremy McDermott In Medelln US PERSONNEL have become involved in fighting in Colombia's 37-year civil war for the first time, rescuing the crew of a helicopter brought down by left-wing guerrillas, it emerged yesterday. The US is funding the world's largest aerial eradication programme in an attempt to destroy drug crops in Colombia. In an engagement at the weekend, guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fired on a crop dusting aircraft and supporting helicopters. The pilot of a US-supplied Huey helicopter was hit in the barrage of small arms fire, but managed to land his stricken craft. Two other helicopter gunships circled the grounded helicopter, firing on the guerrillas, while the crew of a third helicopter rescued the crew. The pilots of some of the choppers in the rescue were Americans contracted by the US state department, a US Embassy source said. "The FARC were 100 to 200 yards away," Capt Giancarlo Cotrino, the pilot of the downed helicopter, said from his hospital bed in Bogot. "We fought for seven or eight minutes - one of my crewmen had a grenade launcher and I had a pistol - until the SAR [search and rescue helicopter] came in behind us, landed and picked us up in the middle of a very hot firefight." The rescue helicopter carried four US citizens and two Colombians, all armed with M-16s. Most of the SAR teams in Colombia are former members of the US special forces, the US source said. Last year, when the $1.3 billion (900 million) aid package to Colombia was approved by Congress, several rules were imposed. One was that no more than 500 US military personnel could be stationed in Colombia at any time. Another was that they were not to become directly involved in fighting. "The department of defence will not step over the line that divides counter-narcotics from counter-insurgency," Maria Salazar, the deputy assistant secretary of defence for drug enforcement policy, told a US congressional subcommittee. However, private US companies, paid by the state department and staffed by former US special forces and pilots, face no such restrictions. US military personnel in Colombia conduct a variety of training and monitoring roles. Three US-trained and equipped anti-narcotics battalions have been created, while US navy specialists train Colombian marines, who patrol the rivers that are the only means of transporting much of the nation. Five radar and listening stations are manned by US personnel, and others are liaison officers at the Colombian Joint Intelligence Centre (JIC), which the US helped set up. According to the letter of the law, the rules regarding US involvement in the civil conflict have not been broken, as serving military personnel have not been caught in active combat roles. However, by providing intelligence on guerrilla movements and actions, the US is already taking an active role in the counter-insurgency war. In March 1999 the US government issued new guidelines that allow sharing of intelligence about guerrilla activity in Colombia's southern drug-producing region, even if the information is not directly related to the fight against narcotics. The activities of private companies in the pay of the US are not covered under the rules imposed on military personnel. "This is what we call outsourcing a war," said one congressional aide in Washington, who asked not to be named. The company involved in last weekend's engagement with guerrillas is called DynCorp. It has been contracted since 1997 by the US state department to provide pilots, trainers and maintenance workers for the aerial eradication programme. What had not been known was that they piloted helicopter gunships that are used in an offensive capability when crop dusting aircraft came under fire. Three DynCorp pilots have been killed in operations, but one pilot said that at $90,000 a year tax free, the rewards were as high as the risks. Another company, hired by the US defence department on a $6 million a year contract, is Military Professional Resources Inc (MPRI), a Virginia-based military-consultant company run by retired US generals. Its 14-man team, holed up in an upmarket hotel in Bogot, refuses to speak to The Scotsman. Brian Sheridan, the senior Pentagon official who oversees the work of MPRI, said in congressional testimony in March last year that the firm's role in Colombia was not sinister, just "a manpower issue", insisting the US southern command did not have the men to spare to give strategic and logistic advice to the Colombian army. "It's very handy to have an outfit not part of the US armed forces, obviously," said the former US ambassador to Colombia, Myles Frechette. "If somebody gets killed or whatever, you can say it's not a member of the armed forces." Despite massive military aid to Colombia, the US has insisted it is not getting itself into another Vietnam. But an
[L-I] Bush, Pastrana Discuss Drugs, Rebels And Trade
Bush, Pastrana Discuss Drugs, Rebels And Trade New York Times, February 27, 2001 By REUTERS Filed at 6:10 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush assured Colombian President Andres Pastrana Tuesday that the United States would work to fight drug trafficking, but refused his request to join peace talks with Marxist guerrillas who are financed by the drug trade. After a 45-minute meeting in the Oval Office, Bush praised Pastrana for his efforts in the war on drugs and his steps to improve the economy and bring peace to Colombia. ``President Pastrana is a courageous leader who's dealing with very difficult problems,'' Bush told reporters. ``I explained to the president that we're fully aware of the narcotics that are manufactured in his country, but I also told him that many of them wouldn't be manufactured if our nation didn't use them. And we've got to work together to not only help Colombia, but help our own country,'' he said. In Bogota Tuesday, police said that Colombian and U.S. anti-narcotics agents smashed a drug ring that smuggled up to a ton of heroin every year into the United States. Police arrested 30 people in the two countries. But Bush rejected a request by Pastrana, the second Latin American leader he has met in two weeks, to reconsider the American policy of not talking with the rebels in order to help advance Colombia's struggling peace process. Bush met Mexican President Vicente Fox earlier this month in Mexico and has said he wants to improve relations in the hemisphere. Pastrana revived peace talks this month with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in an effort to end a 37-year conflict that has claimed 35,000 lives in the past decade alone. Last week, the FARC and Pastrana's government invited the United States and Cuba to join a group of ``friendly nations'' in another round of peace talks in March. But Bush said the United States would not participate. ``This is an issue that the Colombian people and the Colombian president can deal with,'' he said. ``We'll be glad to help Colombia in any way to make the peace. We'll be glad to help the Colombian economy through trade. But I won't be present for the discussions.'' The U.S. government, which held tentative talks with the FARC in 1998, has refused to renew ties with the guerrillas until they account for the 1999 murder of three Americans. Under former President Clinton, the United States committed almost $1.3 billion in mostly military aid for Pastrana's ``Plan Colombia'' -- a $7.5 billion plan to destroy hundreds of thousands of acres (hectares) of coca fields that have fueled the war in the world's largest cocaine producer. Pastrana's plan aims to destroy the drug market while pouring money into social resources to boost the economy. Critics of the U.S. aid, which includes the delivery of 14 Black Hawk helicopters to deploy Colombian drug battalions, say it could end up dragging the United States into a war. Bush said last week he was wary of committing U.S. troops to any engagement in Colombia. The U.S. military has between 100 and 300 personnel in Colombia training the military in counter-narcotics methods. BUSH FAVORS EXTENDING ANDEAN TRADE AGREEMENT In an effort to help improve trade with Colombia, Bush said he would support the renewal of a regional trade agreement that gives goods from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia lower tariff barriers to the U.S. market. ``I'll be pushing it. I'm a free-trader,'' he said, adding that he would bring the matter up with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. The 1991 Andean Trade Preferences Act (ATPA), agreed to during the presidency of Bush's father, former President George Bush, expires on Dec. 4. Pastrana said after the meeting that he and Bush would search for ways to expand the trade deal to other items. Pastrana has said the ATPA has created 140,000 jobs in Colombia in the past decade. Colombia sees the pact as a way to help move people from the drug trade. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] smoking -- and guns
And most of us had thought that the US government was half run by the cigarrete industry! Now, it turns out that you are being persecuted! Tony, I think this is neither here nor there. The tobacco companies, aside from being on the defensive but still producing, are not the smokers themselves. The smokers are indeed the new targets in this "enlightened capitalism". The companies are simply required to plae warnings on packages while running around usig cartoon characters as their merchandising techniques. The companies seldom have to answer for spit, yet the people who want to smoke a single cigarette are put in their own section where you live, forced outside where I live (ands sometimes even further away that that!). The smokers get told what to do and where, while the pushers of the deadly product are given a wink and a nod. Nothing contradictory about that at all. Macdonald ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] smoking guns II
Express a little concern, instead of adding your voice to the corporate message, Hunter. Tony Allow me to point out something you may not have noticed- Hunter said he no longer smokes. The corpoate message (to a liberal) is to get involved in campaigns that have *nothing to do* with the radical transformation of society. You poltical message on this point seems to be along the lines of those who are engaged in working for the Heart and Stroke foundation or Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, while throwing in a comment that denounces corporations that produce alcohol or fatty red-meats. The bourgeois message is precisely that this kind of "activism"is what a "responsible" citizen would advocate. Only the tobacco corporations promote the message to "smoke it up". The over-all ruling class message is that we are in a real dire need to meddle into each other's private business and invade their homes, maybe even snatch their kids to prevent them from "abuse" at the hands of a smoking parent (no Tony, I don't think you advocate this). Nuts to that. Macdonald ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] the need for deregulation of drugs. Was re: Smoking and guns 3
Yet much of what you have to say in defense of your personal proclivities regarding cigarettes and handguns is naturalized libertarianism. The question is: if the (socialist) majority wished to regulate, even prohibit, certain products, are you on board or not? Actually, Barryyou couldn't have picked a better time to ask this as far as my life is concerned. As soon as I finish with a few more of these rants, I will be finishing up a presentation based on stopping the "majority" from regulating to the point of insanity. Vancouver is considered the highest entry point in North America for heroin. the number of people in what we call the Downtown East Side who are addicted to some of the purest and most potent strains of heroin are epidemic. People are constantly dropping dead. Hundreds a year. There are thousands of people downtown who walk around like ghosts, barely able to function. They are brutally persecuted- from being beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in alleyways while shooting up, to being the last ones answered by ambulance calls for 911. There is a constant stream of anger and outright hatred (it reminds me of the anti-minority rants of the Nazis- no, I'm not over the top here- read them if you like in the Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers) from the population that seems to think this is precisely who and what is wrong with the society. A group called the "community alliance" here has organised large numbers of the city to go to city hall and stop all attempts to set up proper medicinal doling of heroin, or even something so badly needed- a safe-fixing site. The main argument goews that heroin is an illegal activity, it is immoral (or dumb, in any case) and that these sites would encourage drug use, rather than discourage it. The "majority"(socialist or not) here is handing a death sentence to the population of the DES. Safe fixing sites keep the people out of the alley ways, stop the dropping of needles on the ground and make it so over-doses can be responded to immediately. But we can't condone this "behaviour", so people are left to die- hundreds a year (very disproportionally Natives, I might add). Now, if I'm a libertarian because between the A-B time of the socialist revolution I want to save lives, then I'm a bloody libertarian. But in the mean time, all this "majoritarian" crap about telling people what can and can not be done is eating the underclasses of my city alive. It ain't theoretical anymore- it is epidemic. What is needed is an immediate transfer over to the policy of "victimless crime". The state ain't going to do what a state like the Cuban can and does- that would be the outright (near) total crushing of the drug trade. Given the reality- that drugs are _de facto_ legal, all this horseshit about keeping things like this (and adding tobacco) _de jure_ illegal serves to give the state a persecutory weapon and maims and kills people on a daily basis. Decriminalisation is what we can get in this society. We need it now. Macdonald ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] New Socialist Party? By Leo Panitch
em is not just that there is no viable electoral outlet for all the remarkable political activity that goes on between elections. It is also that people feel the need for many of the functions and organizational supports that socialist and communist parties used to provide for activists-a political home, a place to talk with and learn from comrades about diverse struggles, a cultural and educational centre-all of which ensured that the diverse activism was building towards something, an institutional presence through which people would not only make the struggle more continual and coherent and powerful, but through which they would develop their own personal confidence and capacities. Increasingly the conditions are there to build something new. Examples can be gleaned from abroad: the Workers' Party in Brazil, the Scandinavian Green Left parties, the socialist alliance behind Ken Livingstone's mayoralty campaign in London, and to a degree even the Nader campaign in the U.S. And there is no reason why we can't move towards a new political formation in Canada; there is tremendous creative political talent in this country, every bit as much as when the Communist Party or CCF were founded. It has been visible in the women's movement, the native movement, the environmental movement, the anti-free trade movement and the labour movement, as well as in the universities and the media. A central challenge is to figure out how to knit together the generations that comprise the old left, the new left, and today's activist youth in a way that contributes to understanding and mutual enrichment. Another challenge-and this has been the central subject of discussion at the "Rebuilding the Left" workshops-has been to ensure that the multiple oppressions of gender, race and sexuality are taken as seriously as class domination and exploitation. Yet another concern is how to define "anti-capitalist," and relatedly, how to redefine socialist, in a way that is imaginative and educative. A final challenge for the left is to build new institutions on the basis of a new approach to internal democracy. Here the question is whether we can break down the old bureaucratic, democratic centralist, and parliamentarist barriers between leaders and led; and whether we can build the kind of left institutions that are oriented toward developing popular capacities for collective self-government in every area of life. In the end, the only real proof as to whether today's activists on the left can meet these challenges will come when we try to build new institutions. Only then will we know whether we are capable of building in a new way. We are now in a transitional moment. The new "structured movement" we need must create the spaces and processes for working out ways of combining daily activism with building a broader alternative politics. It must increase the likelihood, through organizing the impressive commitments to radical change which already exist, that such energies will be organizationally cumulative rather than dissipated. The "structured movement" would not take people away from the broad-based coalitions and organizations, such as the Council of Canadians, that concentrate on campaigns against globalization; nor would it seek to undermine the electoral project of the NDP. It would have a different, much more long-term goal: developing a genuinely alternative anti-capitalist vision and programme-and a genuinely alternative practice, especially in terms of the kind of diversity, leadership qualities and democratic and capacity-building processes I have suggested. We may not succeed in building the new kind of culture on the left that will allow for this. Yet we have no alternative but to try. LEO PANITCH is Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto. He is co-editor (with Colin Leys) of The Socialist Register. His books include The End of Parliamentary Socialism (Verso, 1997) and The Assault on Trade Union Freedoms (Garamond 1994). --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Gunsmoke and Smoking for Guns
This concern about not assaulting companies is truly bizarre comng from the moderator of the list, Leninist- International! I thought that's exactly what we wanted to do. assault companies? But not if it get's us into single issue campaigns, is that it? Sorry, Tony. That's been my major critique of the whole Seattle-ite movement so far, actually. I want to assault the whole bleeding system, top to bottom- not the "corporations". That doesn't include my 60 year old, died-in-the-wool-smoker mother (although as she well knows, come visit me and take the smokes outside). Public space we both have an equal right to, I will not impose on others about what to do (unless I could make certain people take off the perfume and cologne- now that I WOULD wage war on). Anyways, that's my last word on the issue. People are getting heated here. You've got until 3pm Pacific, 6pm Eastern to wrap up this thread. Until then, smoke `em if you got `em. Macdonald ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Gunsmoke and Smoking for Guns
(I'm a big fat liar- I also had a quick clarification to make here) Tony: That's a lot of twisting and turning for just one paragraph. It seems to be saying that 'total crushing' is what you support for Cuba, and decriminalization is what you support in Canada, Macdonald. Simple, really. Cuba is led by a working class government, who act in the intereests of the masses. Cocaine, heroin, etc are not something Cuba's government will use on the population as a control mechanism for the parts of society that are marginalized economically. Because such a best doesn't really exist there. Canada has a system that has a huge pool of Lumpen elements that the bourgeoisie sees as useful, when they shoot up themselves with drugs, and not when they shoot back at the state with guns. Let me repeat what I said should be advocated by socialists regarding guns, tobacco products, and heroin, for that matter. All these products are dangerous and should be heavily regulated. In addition, drug use of ANY kind should be decriminalized, whether it be Canada or Cuba. Full democratic workers control of the FDA and the Canadian counterpart! For workers Soviets to combat the infusion of arsenic into out tobacco products! Macdonald, feeling snipey. ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Milosevic to La Stampa (integral version)
s that your security will be reduced as soon as a new government in Serbia is established. How do you feel regarding your personal safety and that of your family? A: Setting up the status of the Head of State whose term of office expired by the new Head of State is a matter of honour and moral of the new Head of State. But, in that there is also a bit of morale and honour of others, the whole nation, in the final account. Regarding to the security of my family and myself, we do feel insecure. We are exposed to so many threats every day. It's not strange that Europe sees the Balkans as a part of the continent it would wish does not exist, which compromises it. They did not Have the Strength Q: What is your opinion of Italian foreign policy at the Balkans? A: Italian foreign policy is similar to Italy. It strives to be principled, co-operative, honours others, takes account of its own interests, tries to avoid strife with Europe, to be important in Europe. On many occasions Minister Dini had a goodwill, principled, just and cordial position towards our country in the difficult years and the days of our negotiations and confrontations with some Western governments, especially during the war with NATO. Unfortunately, Italy did not have the strength to confront the crazy crime NATO inflicted against our people in 1999. Q: What do you see in the future of the federation of Serbia and Montenegro? You said once that Serbia and Montenegro are two eyes in one head. Do you believe DOS will succeed in preserving the federation? How do you imagine the future of the region? What Next A: That future depends on what political forces in Serbia and Montenegro would have decisive influence on the circumstances in these republics. Both in Serbia and Montenegro there are forces that are separatist and others, who are in favour of preservation of the Yugoslav state. At this moment I think that in both republics dominating forces are ones oriented towards the weakening of Yugoslavia, towards its disintegration, perhaps eradication. In regards to DOS I do not know whether it will manage to preserve the federation. No one knows that, because in the DOS there are extreme separatist and anti-Yugoslav oriented persons, but also those who are in favour of Yugoslavia. Though, I think the latter are fewer. Concerning my vision of the region, I have one, but on that in another interview. Now is not the time to talk about that. Q: How do you envisage your political future in the country? A: I have no plans of such nature. What I was I never planned to be. Q: Could you say to the Italian public something I omitted to ask you in this interview? A: No one may make a small man a great one, nor an honest man dishonest. Nor the coward a courageous man. Nor the bad man a good one. Not even if such endeavour is supported financially, technologically, media-wise, diplomatically and psychologically, said SPS Chairman Slobodan Milosevic in the interview to the reputable Italian daily "La Stampa". --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Fw: more on Our Pasha
- Original Message - From: Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] Guardian (UK) 21 February 2001 Pavel the just The Russian official held in America on corruption charges is being improbably recast as a martyr back in his home country By Amelia Gentleman As former presidential aide Pavel Borodin begins his second month of incarceration inside a New York jail awaiting extradition to Switzerland on money laundering charges, Russian efforts to secure his release have been renewed. Until now the "energetic measures" which Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov promised would be taken to secure his "immediate and unconditional release" have proved futile, and the once-powerful Kremlin insider remains behind bars - humiliatingly reduced from his past role as head of the Kremlin property department (responsible for some $600bn [$416bn] worth of assets), to a more modest position as inmate 55217-053 in a Brooklyn detention centre. The Duma's international affairs committee yesterday prepared a new appeal to the American state department, urging officials not to agree to the extradition request from the Swiss who intend to prosecute Mr Borodin for bribe-taking and laundering a sum of around $25m [#17m]. Pleading for clemency, the draft document stresses the national importance of Mr Borodin's current job as State Secretary of the Union of Belarus and Russia (a nebulous position granted by Vladimir Putin after Mr Borodin was dismissed from the Kremlin property department last year). The seniority of his post as coordinator of a future union between the two countries, meant his arrest and extradition had a serious impact on "Russia's state interests", the statement concludes. It seems unlikely that this appeal will succeed where personal appeals from Mr Putin to Mr Bush have failed. Bernard Bertossa, the Swiss prosecutor in charge of the case, insisted yesterday that the extradition process would not be abandoned. Mr Borodin was detained on January 18 at New York airport, after unwisely accepting an invitation to one of George Bush's inauguration celebrations in Washington - despite the existence of an international warrant for his arrest. The warrant was issued after a probe into alleged multi-million dollar kickback scams involving government officials who commissioned the Swiss construction firms, Mabetex and Mercata, to refurbish the Kremlin and other Russian public buildings in the last year's of Boris Yeltsin's presidency. As Mr Borodin gazes wistfully at the Statue of Liberty (just visible from his cell window), supporters in Moscow are working hard to generate support for his cause. It has not been an easy task to remodel the official as a suffering martyr in the eyes of a nation long-embittered by the extravagance of Yeltsin's circle. Jowly, smug and once fond of boasting about the wealth of the luxury dachas, limousines, jets and Tsarist palaces in his gift for the favoured elite, Mr Borodin is a most unlikely popular hero. But fuelled by nationalist anger at the snub perceived in America's decision to implement the arrest warrant of a serving Russian official, Mr Borodin's supporters have worked hard to reclaim him as the wronged victim of international hostility to Russia. Their efforts have met with a receptive audience. "We might not approve of him, but the American's decision to arrest him is deeply insulting to our country. It's a sign of how weak Russia has become in the eyes of the world," a retired soldier from Vladivostok commented. Even those Moscow newspapers most critical of Mr Borodin in the past have begun to question whether the case against him will stand up. Citing documents procured from the Swiss prosecutors, Novaya Gazeta claimed this week that the Swiss had no proof that Mr Borodin had received any of the laundered funds. The most surreal manifestation of the rebranding campaign came last week when an exhibition of children's drawings opened in Moscow, dedicated to the plight of "Our Pavel". Organised - with a healthy sense of the absurd - by activists from the extreme nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, most of the teachers and school children who took part were participating in good faith. Crayoned pictures of a despondent Mr Borodin, weeping because fellow prisoners had stolen his food, were on display alongside felt tip depictions of Mr Yeltsin, mourning the loss of his friend. Some children had composed poems lamenting the arrest, others prepared a care parcel containing vodka and Russian bread to boost the official's spirits. ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Serbia eyes new privatisation law by April
I just received this. Check out this telling line: "Under the existing ownership transformation law, passed by Milosevic's government in 1997, up to 60 percent of a company's capital is given to its workers and pensioners in the form of shares and the rest sold to investors in exchange for cash." So it seems when the SPS privatised enterprises, they STILL couldn't get it right- they went and turned it over to the workers! Bloody dictators, when will they learn...? Macdonald *** Serbia eyes new privatisation law by April by Beti Bilandzic Reuters Jan 28, 2001 BELGRADE, - Serbia's new privatisation minister said he was preparing new legislation allowing the use of different models in the planned sell-off of some 7,000 state or socially-owned firms in the impoverished Balkan state. Speaking a few days after Serbia's new reformist government took office, Aleksandar Vlahovic said he expected the law to be ready by April. He said it would largely abandon the privatisation model used by Slobodan Milosevic's ousted authorities. "The new privatisation law will certainly mean abandoning the insider privatisation concept, but not fully, it will be a combination of different approaches and models," Vlahovic told reporters on Saturday evening. Under the existing ownership transformation law, passed by Milosevic's government in 1997, up to 60 percent of a company's capital is given to its workers and pensioners in the form of shares and the rest sold to investors in exchange for cash. Vlahovic said this way of selling state firms did not allow for growth and development because it was unclear who the majority owner was and who ran the company, saying workers would be better off with a successful firm than with worthless shares. "The message is that it is better to live and work in an economy that is growing and developing, it is better to be a well-paid worker than a poor shareholder," he said. Vlahovic was speaking at the end of a two-day seminar to discuss privatisation experience in other ex-communist European countries, attended by representatives of the World Bank and experts from Poland, Hungary, Estonia and Slovenia. Their experiences will be valuable when Yugoslavia draws up its own privatisation concept, Vlahovic said. He said that out of some 7,000 Serb companies to be privatised, 631 had started the process with an estimated book value of $1 billion. Their real value could only be determined by the market, he added. There would be no revisions of privatisations conducted so far, only if there had been flagrant violations of the law. He said priorities were to bring in new strategic partners and create an environment for the development of small businesses, seen as crucial to help the Serbian economy recover after a decade of conflict and economic sanctions. "We consider that with the development of small and medium-sized businesses we can syphon off the surplus workforce and change the structure of the economy," he said. There would be no deadline for privatisation as some companies could start the process immediately and others, such as large energy companies, needed more time. "I expect that four years from now socially-owned capital will be completely eliminated, we will have private and state ownership and we will start privatisation of big systems but it will still be under way in some cases," he said. 11:40 01-28-01 ------- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Letter from Lorenzo Komboa Ervin to Canadian friends
As a side note, he spoke at the radical La Quena Collective Coffee house a couple of times in the past. He, while quite inspiring, was most dangerous in his calm, rational approach to the audience. Macdonald *** Dear Canadian Friends: I am very sorry that I cannot be there with you in Calgary or Lethbridge, to discuss issues of racism, police brutality, and capitalist globalization. It is not due to my wishes, and totally out of my control for these events to occur. The US border officials have contacted Canadian immigration officials about the great "threat" that I represent, and as a result Canadian immigration authorities have seen fit to bar me from coming into the country until I can produce "evidence" that that I am a person of "fit character" and have no outstanding felony legal cases. Of course, since I left Canada, not even two weeks ago after a speaking engagement at Concordia University in Montreal, this is clealy nonsense. Further, I have entered Canada at least 15 times in the last five years, and never been stopped before by border guards. They have no reason at all to assume that I constitute a "clear and present danger" to state security. This is not to say that I am no longer a revolutionary Anarchist or that my message is a tame one [p]reaching peace or non-violence, it's just that contrary to what the officials think, all Anarchists do not wear a long black cloak with a bomb underneath, and all Black people do not have a propensity to personal acts of violence. Some of us Anarchists even get to wear nice sweaters and jackets, with our speaking notes underneath; and surprisingly some Black people have nice manners and even know how to speak fairly proper English. I am one. (: But let us cut to the chase: the Canadian authorities did not like what I said when I was last there in January about resisting the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting to be held in Quebec City, and how all activists in the Americas have a responsibility to attend and protest the meeting this coming April. They did not like me calling these FTAA "statesmen" what they really are, a *group of international gangsters*. They did not appreciate my accusation that the global capitalist entitities like the G8 (now G20) are responsible for all the suffering, murder, and oppression of poor people all over the world. That global capitalism is responsible for mass exoduses to Europe, America, and Canada because of austerity policies forced upon various governments by the IMF, WTO, and other "alphabet soup institutions". They did not like it when I said that these institutions are also responsible for all the police state regimes in Latin America, and starvation of peasants all over the hemisphere. They did not like it when I said that "Baby Doc", (George W. Bush) would be coming to Canada to shit all over the land and people of the Americas, and that that idiot Chretien would be trailing after him like a tame puppy dog. They did not like it when I talked about the internal colonialism of native peoples in Canada, and they sure as hell didn't like it when I talked about homelessness, police brutality, and the rise of the prison-industrial complex in the Americas being an integral part of the "new" global capitalism. So that is why they did not want me there to speak to you. Once before a government stopped me from freely travelling and speaking to its people because they saw me as "a threat to national security". In 1997, I was invited by a group of Australian Aborigines, Anarchists, and anti-colonial groups to come to OZ, and plan for an international boycott of the games and oppose anti-aboriginal racism and fascism by the One Nation Party of the PM Pauline Hanson. Upon my arrival, Hanson created a hysterical racist press uproar, and demanded my expulsion from the country. "He's a terrorist and he's here to lead a Black revolution"...he wants to kill whites", and other nonsense. I was jailed, beaten, and ultimately driven out of the country. I am banned from returning by the right-wing white racist regime ever again. But the real moral to this story is that after I was jailed, my friends in Austrialia and the Black Autonomy International (the group I belonged to), began an international protest campaign against my jailing and denial of free speech. They had protests within two days in over 17 countries, and all of the major cities in Australia. Finally, the Supreme Court ruled against the Prime Minister's position ,and ordered me released. Without the protest camapign, in front of AUS consulates all over the world, this would not have happened. I would be in jail there right now [some I met had been there for *years*], or even worse, may have been killed by jailers. We need to protest what has happened to me now by the Canadian government, not just because it happened to a so-called "prominent individual," but because we must fight for the principle of the right to speak and travel freely, and
[L-I] CPC scores another Election Act victory
ion. Only registered parties may issue tax receipts for political donations, and may access free and paid broadcasting time during election campaigns. The Communist Party itself regained its registered status in the November 27, 2000 federal election when it fielded 52 candidates, but the CPC is maintaining its court challenge because it believes the current threshold is unreasonably high and discriminatory. The Party has sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada and is still awaiting word from the Court if the case will be considered. =30= For further information, contact Miguel Figueroa, CPC Leader at 416-469-2446. *End* -- Macdonald Stainsby check the "ten point platform" of Tao at: http://new.tao.ca "`Order rules in Berlin.' You stupid lackeys! Your `order' is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will rear ahead once more and announce to your horror amid the brass of trumpets: `I was, I am, I always will be!'" -Rosa Luxemburg, 1918. ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Test- Ignore
Test- please ignore. Thank you. -- Macdonald Stainsby check the "ten point platform" of Tao at: http://new.tao.ca "`Order rules in Berlin.' You stupid lackeys! Your `order' is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will rear ahead once more and announce to your horror amid the brass of trumpets: `I was, I am, I always will be!'" -Rosa Luxemburg, 1918. ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Speeches on Russian-American future relations (1)
are seeking to change the rules of the game, that is, conditions and laws aimed at creating a favorable investment climate where there are disagreements between the parliament and the government and sometimes there is even disagreement on the part of the President, but on the whole, this is a concerted behavior of the elite. So, the first thing is, of course, the land question. We think that owing to the right liberals' efforts in the parliament and the support, indirect and very cautious, on the part of the President, we managed to adopt the first reading of the law enacting chapter 17 of the Civil Code with agricultural land excluded from it. This is every important because investors, both inside and outside the country, are not interested in buying land where wheat or rye grows. They are all interested in a full and normal economic turnover of urban land, free land and land for construction regulated by law. We also agreed in the concept that we will continue to work on the Land Code, that is, the draft Land Code which has been agreed by left factions and the President and which in time will be approved by the right as well. It will exclude agricultural land. I think that this is a weak code, but still this is a serious breakthrough for Russia, because the Land Code will create transparent rules and judicial procedures to be used if these rules are violated in buying or selling non-agricultural land. Besides, it makes it possible to start using hypothecary. The regulation of agricultural land will be ensured by separate laws, from an improved version of land register and further on. So, I would not say that -- I do not quite agree with Mr. Aksakov, but on the other hand, I would not say that absolutely everything the President wants may be pushed through the State Duma. The President and the government understand that the country needs full-fledged private ownership of land. However, this law has not been passed yet because of the fierce resistance by Communists and Agrarians. This is also true of amendments to the Criminal Procedural Code, very liberal amendments that were submitted to the State Duma and then withdrawn. Not everything is so simple in this vertical mechanism of decision implementation. So, the first thing is land. Second is what Mr. Aksakov has spoken about in detail -- tax legislation, Tax Code. And I fully agree with him. Here the State Duma is pursing to a more liberal and firm line and putting a certain pressure on the government. As a result, a compromise has appeared on the three disputable issues: exclusion of spending on advertising, investment benefits for a period of five years and accelerated amortization. The question also arises of the profit tax or the income tax. Preference so far is being given to the profit tax. Also the problem of when to assess the tax -- at the moment of shipment or not? But these are rather internal technical problems. We are advancing here as well and I agree with critics that government, while declaring a liberal reform, in reality is trying to be a bit sly and every time one has to be very vigilant, closely check every letter of the initiatives suggested by government because behind all this we see so far rather a fiscal policy than a liberal one. The next direction is the deregulation and debureaucratization of the market. This is a whole package which in its time was announced by the Gref Center. Thanks to pressure put first of all by the right-wingers in parliament and by entrepreneurs in their various councils, under the prime minister and the President, government at long last is beginning to implement this package. True, this is encountering difficulties even inside the government. You see, most government structures are against this package because they want to get additional administrative levers of influence. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Speeches on Russian-American future relations (2)
d like to stress that the real signal will appear when medium and small businesses start eagerly coming to Russia. I mean not such giant corporations like General Motors, but small companies that will feel secure here, that will feel the possibility of making money here and simultaneously benefiting the Russian Federation. I think this is a criterion we should keep in mind. Now, finally, about relations between the United States and Russia. Certain apprehensions are being voiced. They are not groundless. We have a rather interesting situation now... You know, like in a communal apartment. Americans, perhaps, do not know what a communal apartment is. It is an apartment shared by many families. And they often quarrel, sometimes over nothing. And such a quarrel tends to mothball generating an atmosphere of tension. I believe that the situation in our relations today resembles a situation in a communal apartment. I am really concerned by the following circumstance. Russia badly needs the West. It is my personal opinion that Russia is in need first of all of the United States. For a very simple reason: the United States is the most progressive, the most rapidly developing economy, an economic model that is the most effective one in the world today. For many reasons the American model is closer to us and we should learn precisely from it. Some people in our country are saying that we should learn from Europe since it also has an advanced economy. I ask representatives of European companies, if they are present here, to forgive me for what I am going to say. In my opinion, Europe is excessively burdened by socialism. The load on the economy is too great. And it will be quite difficult for the European economy to develop dynamically in the coming years. And this is understood also by the European socialist governments. I was in France recently and I was told the following: yes, we will be cutting government spending although we have street demonstrations all the time protesting against something and demanding wage increases. I repeat that the model which exists in the United States suits us very much. Of course, we cannot apply a carbon copy of it here. But we could use a lot from the American experience. Together with Ambassador Collins I attended the opening of the Insurance Problems Fund which is being established with the help of the United States. I regard this as something extremely important. AT the same time there are the fears that different moods will take the upper hand in America: the post-Communist euphoria is over, the second super power no longer exists, so why show interest in Russia? Or, attention should be given to Russia only because it still has nuclear warheads. Otherwise, it can be ignored. I think this is a dangerous line of thought. I will use an expression of Senator Fulbright: "The conceit of strength." I think that America should fear this today. In my opinion, Russia is of tremendous strategic importance for the West. There should be not a tactical but a strategic belief that Russia should become a part of the Western world despite its uniqueness and tough upholding of national interests. True, the latter is done also by others who are part of the Western world. And I think we should work to encourage such a strategic approach by the West. Thank you for your attention. I hope that the further discussion will be even more interesting. *** --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Dry Rot- The Far Right Targets the Left
DRY ROT -- The Far Right Targets The Left. By Will Offley Canadian Dimension, January/February 2001 Volume 35, Number 1 Like most huge events in history, the fall of the Berlin Wall shook our world. In doing so it also changed the ground rules of politics. Whether you call it paradigm shift or merely the temporary triumph of neo-liberalism, the dust from the Wall's collapse has clouded our vision for nearly a decade. Without exception, currents of the left around the world have found themselves disoriented and scrambling to create a new vision and a new political framework within which to organize and to fight. This has not only been true for the traditional Communist Parties, but for the non-Stalinist and anti-Stalinist left as well. The left has not yet been able to reconstitute a coherent vision of the new world we want to see issue from the ashes of the old, nor have we articulated the strategy or programme or organizations necessary to make that happen. As a result, radical left politics have remained largely confined to "anti" politics for a decade or more: anticorporate, anti-globalization, anticapitalist. We have remained locked down behind the relatively easy bulwark of what we're against, rather than venturing out into the exposed and more dangerous terrain of defining what we're for. In addition, in some sectors there have been marked tendencies to view the capitalist system through the lens of conspiracism and irrationality, where plots and conspiracies replace class interests and mass politics as the motor forces of human society. This weakening of its culture, institutions and politics have rendered some sectors of the broad left vulnerable to the conscious and organized predation being carried out in Canada by a specific current of the far right. In the U.S. this dates back as far as the Gulf War, where neo-fascist currents like the Larouche organization and Spotlight sought to attach themselves to the movement against the war. Is the Canadian left immune from this sort of targeting? No. Is the situation any different now, a decade later? Yes and no. Yes, because Seattle has led to Washington, and from there to Philadelphia and L.A. and Windsor and Prague. Quebec will be next, and it won't be the end. The rise of the struggle in the streets against globalization marks the end of ten years of demoralization and confusion. There is a new dynamism and a new optimism, and if the path ahead is only partially visible, at least we're collectively underway again. However, one has only to look at Seattle to see that the growth of far right currents within and alongside the left and progressive movements has increased visibly over the decade. There are also indicators that point to a change =96 during the Gulf War, the far right was active on the fringes, but by Seattle it seemed to be active at the very centre of things. While the young militants faced down the cops and the gas in downtown Seattle, on a leadership level elements of that movement were being increasingly compromised politically by a de facto convergence between Ralph Nader and the most important far-right leader in the United States, the semi-fascist Pat Buchanan. Five months later during the April 16th mobilizations in Washington, Buchanan shared a stage with Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa Jr. as an invited guest of the AFL-CIO. Antiglobalist politics are not the exclusive preserve of the left. Though it springs from different roots, Buchanan's opposition to globalization and free trade is as genuine as ours. He just takes it in a direction diametrically opposed to everything else we stand for =96 protectionism, racism, exclusion. Not only that, there have been plenty of examples this century to show the far right can be anti-corporate too. Throughout the 1920's Hitler's Nazi Party contained a minority current led by Gregor and Otto Strasser that was inalterably opposed to the German trusts... as well as the Jews, the Communists, Social Democrats, gays and lesbians, unions, etc. Nor is the far right confined solely to the hardcore neo-Nazism of the Heritage Front or the Northern Hammerskins. It's relatively easy to ward off the interventions of groups that put swastikas on their literature. It's considerably more difficult when the politics of the groups in question are cloaked in progressive rhetoric and hidden behind coded language. Between Wolfgang Droege and Stockwell Day there is a whole swamp of currents and organizations =96 conspiracist, anti-Semitic, some with hidden fascist agendas, some totalitarian, some merely far right. Some of these are targeting the left. There is reason to be concerned. ** Although they're based at different ends of the country, they seem to be made for each other. The Radical is a monthly tabloid published in Quesnel, B.C. since June 1998 by Arthur Topham, a self-described anarchist who regards himself as "a natural, sovereign and unique critter who doesn't need
[L-I] Interview with US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
It's not the Republicans who have been in power in recent years! However, to go further back in time, it's true that I will be eternally grateful to Lyndon B. Johnson for putting into force the 1963 civil rights law; and I think that at the time, in the 1960's, the Republicans really missed a historic opportunity. They should have taken part in this movement. It remains to be said that, as an African-American, I prefer to concentrate on the present and the future, rather than hark back to a sad past. [Victor] Could you name some concrete measures taken by Governor Bush that benefit the black minority in Texas? [Rice] It is not for me to convince African-Americans to join the Republican camp. I just want to urge them to look differently at this party. As I said, up to now, none of our leaders have really succeeded in bringing about any profound changes; and if I joined President Bush's administration in the 1980's, it's because I thought he was on the right track. Eight years of the Clinton presidency, with its trail of unkept promises, have only strenthened my convictions. [Victor] What is your priority objective as you take up your duties in the Bush administration? [Rice] First, I would like to help the President to improve the situation inside the country. I would also like the United States to decide, in a coherent and rational manner, how to make use of its military power. If we do not take care, the White House might turn into a police station/first aid post [poste de police-secours] for the whole planet! [Victor] Why, in that case, [did you] support President Clinton's decision to intervene in Kosovo? [Rice] At the beginning of this interview, I said that I was not in agreement with the moral justifications advanced by the Democratic administration. I would have much preferred President Clinton to argue for the United States' engagement in Kosovo by making the point that the Balkans region is very close to our most powerful allies and that, on these grounds, we could not stand by with our arms folded. The advantage of this discourse would have been to reassure the other nations of the world by showing them that American interventionism was not without limits, while of course avoiding giving credence to the idea of an isolationist withdrawal [repli isolationniste]. [Victor] How do you see the duty of the American armed forces? [Rice] Military force is a very special instrument; it is a deadly weapon [arme meurtriere], one which is not meant to carry out police work, nor to play the role of political arbiter. I worry every time there is talk of using it to support a struggle for self-determination, whatever it is. Our planet will end up a terrible sight if all the small countries begin to meddle in [the affairs] of their neighbors under the pretext of defending the fight for self-determination of this or that people! [Victor] How can that be avoided? [Rice] Citizens' rights should be recognized everywhere! [Victor] What is your response to those who suspect the new Republican administration of not placing a high value on the Old Continent? [Rice] This reproach -- which is addressed regularly to Republicans and particularly to the subgroup to which I belong -- of wanting to abandon the traditional allies of the United States is totally unjustified. And if there is one thing of which I am certain about George Bush Jr., it is that he would never allow rogue States [Etats voyous] to subject our friends or partners to blackmail by aiming long-range missiles at them.I repeat: It is not a question of losing sight of the values that underpin our foreign policy. But we must avoid invoking these values at every turn at the risk of eliciting a rejection of what is called "American arrogance." For example, when we are holding discussions with developing countries, we must admit that democracy is not achieved from one day to the next. What bothers me about Madeleine Albright is her inclination to speak of the United States as an "indispensable nation" which sees further than all others because it is bigger than the others... The real challenge that we will have to address in the future is to be able to promote democratic values in the heart of multiethnic societies. The idea that individuals of different origins can live together and prosper is perhaps precisely the American value par excellence. [Victor] Are you ready to lift the embargo that is striking a blow at Cuba? [Rice] Not as long as Castro clings to power. The Lider Maximo has bet on the wrong horse and must take the consequences. *** --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I.
[L-I] Communists remain in irreconcilable opposition but... (KPRF)
Information that came through "Johnson's Russia List". It does strike me how the KPRF do appear to be simply a social-democratic party, and whatever that is worth they should be seen via that. Macdonald (( strana.ru February 16, 2001 Communists remain in irreconcilable opposition but are prepared to cooperate with authorities On the eve of the convention of the Popular Patriotic Union (PPU) that is to be held on February 17 in the Moscow countryside, its leader, Gennady Zyuganov (chairman of the Russian Communist Party) announced that the Russian Communists remain in opposition to the authorities. The Communist Party has been and remains in stiff and irreconcilable opposition to the authorities since the hopes of the Communists were not justified after Russia's president changed. The current political regime is crawling in the rut of what he called "Yeltsinism," he said in a Nezavisimaya Gazeta interview on Friday. Nonetheless, he said that the Communists had been conducting and would continue to conduct a dialogue with President Vladimir Putin. However, the main conditions for their cooperating with the authorities was "a change in the direction of policy, honesty before citizens, restoring a politically normal management," Zyuganov emphasized. The Communist leader said the priority tasks of the authorities were to provide the country with energy supplies, to fill the budget with money, to fight corruption and ensure a living wage for each and every citizen of Russia. Zyuganov believes that within the next two-three months Putin will have to make some very responsible decisions. ------- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Observations about the Forum for the World of Equals.
http://www.belgrade-forum.org/ (forum for the world of equals) This link was at the bottom of the message L-I just received from Vladimir. I have been looking through the list of participants, and it seems there are quite a number of left and/or revolutionary parties and organizations who wanted to express opinions at this forum held in Belgrade by the then-ruling SPS. Two of the participants listed? The Communist Party of Cuba and the Communist Party of China. Worth a look. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Nepal, Maoism gathers strength
rnational human rights commissions for recognition as an army under the Geneva Convention of 1947. "This is a major election because the Maoists know what people want," says Mohandra P. Lama, a Nepal expert at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "Whoever comes into power must deal with Maoist forces, because they are growing every day. You have two choices: You can deal with them militarily by force. Or you can isolate them by giving the villages something to work with that will satisfy them." Just 15 miles northeast of Kathmandu, in the preserved medieval city of Bhaktipur with its dozens of pagoda-style temples and palaces, a young sanitation worker named Krishna says he is a Maoist but does not support an armed struggle until "more education of the people takes place. We aren't ready yet." The question at present is whether, in the next few years, a ruling party can shift its policies of patronage, where a huge bureaucracy acts as a middleman between the government and the villages, and siphons off funds. Four years ago when the Marxists were in power, a "Build Your Own Village" program gave money directly to villages, and proved enormously popular. But whether Congress or another party is ready to take this step is unclear. So far, the government of Nepal, which defines the Maoists as terrorists, has only casually invited the Maoists for talks. The Maoists have ignored this. Yet in the future, as they gain strength, a more formal invitation may have to be extended that gives the Maoists legitimacy, but also brings public pressure on them to change their ways. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Laos Pledges Continued Adherence to Socialism
Laos sees China, Vietnam as 'successful' socialist model Kyodo News Service VIENTIANE, Feb. 10 (Kyodo) - By: Supalak Ganjanakhundee The Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) will continue leading Laos toward the goal of realizing a socialist society patterned after the ''successful'' models of China and Vietnam, according to a party source Saturday. A key document drafted for the communist party's seventh congress slated for next month indicates the party remains confident in its strategy of combining market-economy principles with socialist theory. The LPRP blames poor leadership and misinterpretation of theory for the collapse of communism in Russia and East European countries. ''Socialist theory is polished by its success in China. It looks better and perfect after reforms and openness in Vietnam,'' the source quoted a party political report for the coming congress as saying. ''Developments in the two countries confirm that socialism is in the right direction and that it is alive and has a very bright future,'' it said. As a socialist partner, the LPRP congress will propose that Laos continue its special relations with Vietnam and expand comprehensive relations with China, he said. The source said the guidelines are expected to intensify the rivalry between pro-Vietnam and pro-China factions within the party. The party will also urge the military and police to strengthen inspections and security measures to root out ''bad elements'' accused by authorities of masterminding a string of bombings in Vientiane since March last year. The congress, held every five years, is the most important event for the ruling party because policy directions are laid out during the gathering. It is estimated that 39% of the country's population of five million is poor. The LPRP has admitted failing to achieve targets for economic performance set five years ago. Economic growth averaged 6% instead of the targeted 8-8.5%. Per capita income during the last five years averaged $300, falling short of the target $500. ''We can partly blame the regional financial crisis (in the middle of 1997) for the failures. But our poor internal management is a major part of the economic slowdown,'' the source said. Agencies such as those dealing with economic matters, the central bank and the investment committee have been criticized for lacking unity and efficiency to implement economic action plans. Hyperinflation and economic difficulties resulted from poor coordination among government agencies. However, Lao authorities managed to reduce inflation from 141% in 1998 to 50% last year. The coming congress targets boosting gross domestic product growth by at least 6% annually in the next five years, according to the source. The market mechanism would play a key role for transforming the Lao economy. State-run enterprises urgently need improvement to enable them to compete in the market while inefficient debt-ridden firms would be dissolved or merged with others. Unlike Vietnam, which is supposed to hold its ninth congress in the same period, the LPRP mentions corruption and abuse of power among officials but made recommendations on how to tackle the problem. The date of the congress is not yet fixed. The central committee ended its 14th plenary session Feb. 3 during which several draft documents for the congress were considered. The party will have to hold another plenum to finalize drafts of a political report, socioeconomic development strategy for 2010-2020 and guidelines for 2001-2005 and socioeconomic plan prior to the congress. ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Borodin Falsely Arrested - Washington's Excuse a Lie
But are the Serbs truly defeated? They have been underestimated before. Hitler underestimated them, much to his regret. For that matter, the Russians have been underestimated too. Perhaps history is not over. Let's not give up on her, yet. -- Jared Israel, February 1, 2001 I agree with roughly 98% of what Jared has said about Serbia/Yugoslavia in the past. Not so much the Russians, but I have a different issue to take up here. I think we can be a bit nostalgic and caught up in the wrong issues when we tie too much importance to these q's. For example, history never was tied to the fight around toppling what was left of socialism in Europe. And it won't be in the future. There are valuable lessons to be learned- but these lessons are not in making out the fate of the world in Moscow. I too believe that Yugoslav tradition (a great anti-fascist one, if there is such anywhere!) should be always respected and never underestimated. How does that threaten the end of history? Fukuyama has now crawled into the Political Philosophy texts of the Universities here. Let us not even take on such bad sociological analysis and by default perpetuate it. It is too ludicrous to even entertain. It is simply a capitalist slogan that history itself will implode in a very short order. Macdonald ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Open Letter to Zhu Rongji
ined] and would have had to dismantle ["roll back"] existing legislation. The principles of National Treatment and Most Favoured Nation would have applied to investments in any area, including natural resources, intellectual property, farm or urban land, stocks, bonds and other financial instruments as well as the more classic Foreign Direct Investment, in which the legal regime would be "Right of Establishment"; not "Permission of Establishment" When citizens of OECD countries learned of this attempt by corporations and financial firms to take over national economies and national sovereignty, they began a broad-based international campaign which eventually led to the withdrawal of the French government from the OECD MAI negotiations and their subsequent collapse. The MAI was formally declared "dead" on 3 December 1998. Immediately, the transnational corporations, the financial firms and their representatives in government like Sir Leon Brittan began to lobby for the transfer of investment negotiations to the WTO. Before the MAI negotiations collapsed at the OECD, governments had agreed on about 90 percent of the text which would become the basis for new negotiations. The tactics have changed: recognising that they will have difficulties getting a "top-down", comprehensive agreement like the MAI, because citizens are now scrutinising their activities, they want simply to get the subject on the agenda of the WTO in order to create a "bottom-up" agreement which could then be gradually strengthened until it was identical to the MAI. Also, the more areas on the agenda, the more room for tradeoffs ["We will give you this on agriculture so long as you give us that on investment" and so on]. I fear that China'_ independence, like that of other developing nations, would be seriously compromised by the neo-liberal agenda of the MAI. I hope that you will ask your experts to study scrupulously all the aspects of the WTO and its likely future directions before committing China to its agenda. Respectfully yours, Susan George --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] De Leon: Reform or Revolution?
e the essential difference between Germany, England or America. That being the case, we are skeptics as to forms. We are like grown children, in the sense that we like to look at the inside of things and find out what is there. One more preliminary explanation. Socialism is lauded by some as an angelic movement, by others it is decried as a devilish scheme. Hence you find the Gomperses blowing hot and cold on the subject; and Harry Lloyd, with whose capers, to your sorrow, you are more familiar than I, pronouncing himself a Socialist in one place, and in another running Socialism down. Socialism is neither an aspiration of angels nor a plot of devils. Socialism moves with its feet firmly planted in the ground and its head not lost in the clouds; it takes science by the hand, asks her to lead and goes whithersoever she points. It does not take science by the hand, saying: "I shall follow you to the end of the road if it please me." No! It takes her by the hand and says: "Whithersoever thou leadest, thither am I bound to go." The Socialists, consequently, move as intelligent men; we do not mutiny because, instead of having wings, we have arms, and cannot fly as we would wish. What then, with an eye single upon the differences between reform and revolution, does Socialism mean? To point out that, I shall take up two or three of what I may style the principal nerve centers of the movement. complete article at: http://marxists.org/archive/deleon/works/960126.htm --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Rosa Luxemberg: Again The Masses And Leaders
measure to be active. We have, of course, the yearly party conference as highest instance which regularly fixes the will of the whole party. However, it is obvious that the party conferences can only give general outlines of the tactics for the Social-Democratic struggle. The application of these guidelines in practice requires a constant, untiring thought, quick-wittedness and initiative. The decisions of the party conferences obviously do not in the slightest exhaust the regular tasks of the political struggle, for life does not stand still, and from one party conference to the other many things take place in heaven and earth to which the party must react. To want to make a party executive responsible for the whole enormous task of daily political vigilance and initiative on whose command a party organisation of almost a million passively waits, is the most in correct thing there is from the standpoint of the proletarian class struggle. That is without doubt that reprehensible "blind obedience" which our opportunists definitely want to see in the self-evident subordination of all to the decisions of the whole party. completed at: http://marxists.org/archive/luxembur/works/1911/08_29.htm --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] William Hinton - Talk at The Socialist Scholars Conference, New York, 4/10/99
method must be mobilizing the common people to seize power from below in order to establish new representative leading bodies, democratically elected organs of power - these were breakthroughs in history summed up by the phrase "Bombard the Headquarters". They constituted, in my opinion, Mao's greatest contribution to revolutionary theory and practice, lighting the way to progress in our time. Had Mao succeeded, I think there is no doubt we would have today a burgeoning socialist economy and culture in China with enormous prestige among the people. The economic advance might be slower than the current one but it would be much more solid and much more useful as a development model for all Third World peoples now living in abysmal poverty and exploitation. Where Mao was particularly prescient and saw far was in his exposure of the capitalist road tendency and in making the target of the Cultural Revolution "Party people in authority taking the capitalist road." Today, after twenty years of Deng's " reforms" we can clearly see which way China is going and what the result will be. Surely Mao's diagnosis still stands. Mao's diagnosis for the whole of China's revolution was that the capitalist road was not open to the people of China. In a world dominated by powerful imperialists and multi -national corporations with enormous strength and global reach, any Third World country taking the capitalist road is taking a road that leads to neo-colonization. Today, with capitalist methods, one can't build an independent, self reliant economy and country, but only a, subsidiary economy and country at the mercy of these huge existing, multi-national corporations at the top of the heap that set the rules and rule the roost. The Deng (now Zhang) regime is, in essence , already a comprador regime, ready to sell out to the highest bidder China's most precious land, material and human resources. For immediate gain the current power holders will do anything, sacrifice any principal, invite in any investors, give away huge chunks of the domestic market, sell any and all resources including long term use rights to the most valuable urban land, not to mention advertising space on the walls of the Yangtze Gorges, which could stand as a symbol of the whole pradigm Recently around Beijing a big speculative boom in housing surfaced and some of the best cropland in North China was diverted to build estates for wealthy people. The prices of these houses under construction - they didn't call them houses, actually, they called them villas - ran from 450,000 American dollars to 1,500,000 American dollars. So far as I know, few if any of them were sold to anyone who wanted to live in one. In the meantime speculators from Hongkong and other parts for the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia bought a few hoping to make a bundle by selling them again before the whole scam collapsed. Will China's economy emerge from this transition period independent, self regulating and responsible to the people of China, or will it succumb to international market pressures, surrender one initiative after another and end up in a passive neo-colonial position , rocked by huge financial storms over which China has no control? I think the latter is a serious danger and should be confronted now by those responsible for China's future. Unfortunately I see no sign that anyone who is in a position to do something about it takes the problem seriously. Corruption reaches right to the top of the government and everybody is too busy trying to get rich quick to worry about the long term result. Thus I think Mao's original prediction, that in a world dominated, by powerful imperialist states no capitalist road is open to China, will turn out to be as true today as it was when he formulated it in the 20s of this century. More and more people from all walks of life will come to appreciate and honor Mao's life work, his struggle for national liberation and his struggle for socialism. My main point, the perception that severe class struggle was built into the modern, post liberation history of China , that no one, no group, no party , no faction had a free hand to apply socialist policy, and that the tragedies and casualties on all sides resulted from the friction at the interface between new domestic classes as they struggled for hegemony over society, above all inside the Communist Party, will also , I think, stand the test of time. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-In
[L-I] Socialism: A Time to Retreat? From Sept 2000 MR
When I initially saw this article a few months back, it put my spirits at ease for the day. I got this a couple days after the defeat of what was left of socialism in Yugoslavia. This was the kind of "Fuck you and your TINA" that we need more of. We need to speak with the _confidence_ of history again. After all, setbacks are only setbacks, and we are still the only answer to what is happening everywhere. Macdonald ** Socialism: A Time to Retreat? by The Editors Some wags claim that it is the conservatives who fear socialism, while the radicals believe that capitalism will last forever. Conservatives, they say, fear widespread popular discontent, while radicals abandon hope of a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. An exaggeration? Of course. Even so, this witticism is not inappropriate. Many on the left have indeed retreated from class and a vision of a democratic, egalitarian socialism. The important social issues of our day-race, gender, and the environment-more often than not are divorced from the role of class structure. The rule of the capitalist class and the class struggle are shoved to the back burner. Whether consciously or not, the implicit assumption underlying the retreat from class is that capitalism will somehow or other go on and on as it creates miraculous new technology. Best then to stick to making those adjustments in social conditions that the system will presumably allow. This retreat from class is often reinforced by the categorical dismissal of the possibility of socialism. The evidence for this comes from a superficial and ahistorical examination of the kind of socialism that emerged in the Soviet bloc. Thus, the contradictions of "socialism from above" and the emergence of privileged sectors of society disappear from view. Ignored are the wide differences among the people, between elite and masses, between town and country, and between less developed and advantaged regions. Also not taken into account is the interest of the ruling elite in new property relations as a way of ensuring their and their children's privileged positions. Instead of observing the tensions arising from conflicting interests, a leading tendency among radicals is to zero in on the presumably inevitable failure of central planning as the essential cause of the collapse. There is, of course, no uniformity in this widespread retreat from a focus on class struggle.1 We do not wish to tar all of those who are a part of this retreat with the same brush. In fact, it is not our intention to tar any leftwingers at all. Furthermore, we reject the practice of questioning the motives of those we may disagree with. Nevertheless, the widening gap on the left needs to be confronted. On that score, two recent publications offer useful insight into the disparity between those who blow the trumpet of retreat and those who dig in their heels and call for unending struggle to overcome the misery and insecurity of billions of people on this planet. On one hand is the editorial by Perry Anderson in the January-February 2000 issue of New Left Review, which announces a new stance for the journal. On the other hand, a totally contrary analysis and message permeates Daniel Singer's latest book, Whose Millennium? Theirs or Ours? (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999). finishes: http://www.monthlyreview.org/900editr.htm --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Why I am on this spamming kick...
It has been a very interesting pair of years. While in the fSU we have moved beyond the Post-Soviet era and into something as yet to be defined (replete with the Soviet National Anthem, no less) and the last anti-globalisation and somewhat pro-socialist government has been overthrown in Europe, that government being the SPS in Yugoslavia, we are witnessing a general but wholly undefined repulsion to global capitalism peeking through these dark clouds the world over. In this time of rising resistance, it is of the utmost importance that we are able to present a program for grabbing power away from the bastards of TINA that actually works. To my thinking (and obviously those who are on a Leninist list would agree), this is still Leninism. In fact, the defeats of the fSU arena only reinforce this, seeing as what happens to our working class territiry when we relax our vigilance even an eyelashes distance from the prize- we get a close up view of "third way" and "new middle" failures, we get the children of Mongolia, led by a socialist but not Leninist government playing in the sewers of Ulanbataar, we see an uprising in Ecuador crushed as fast as it emerges, we see everywhere the failures of alternatives to Leninism in their attempts to build a new society while playing nice with the global ruling elites. Enough is enough. We have that program, we ARE the alternative to TINA. WE need to speak with that confidence again. We have a world to win. The question becomes: with all the discussion around these matters, what the heck is a Leninist program today? Is it reading the Leninist classics? Some, but not really. I, unlike Mark Jones, don't see tremendous merits in simply re-tracing the steps (I'm bastardising you, Mark- feel free to tear a strip off of me) of the first successful Leninist project. The reason I spam in so much different (Marxist) theories on the state and the conquest of power is so people will punt that around, until we start to synthesize something for 2001 and the next few years that can happen. Our time is coming faster than I thought. If you are in public even in a first world country like "my"Canada these days and go on a loud tangent with a friend about what is globally beating us down, people stop and listen, engage, allow themselves to discuss these matters randomly. The only reason that is true is because it is actually relevant to them. People are thinking about these things. What are we offering then? Some food for thought. Macdonald ------- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Anyone else being joined to this racist, anti-semetic outfit?
I just received this in my mail, and needless to say I'm removing myself from it. Any ideas what this is, and who is behind it? It links to a series of holocaust denials and goes to "Aryan Power" type rebuttals of the Holocaust. Gross. I doubt it is even really run by Arabs, but rather is a Nazi outfit posing as Arab to spread the filth about WWII. Like Finkelstein says, the deniers need the Holocaust, and vice-versa. Here's the mail I received ** Welcome to the resistance1 group and mailing list at eGroups, a free, easy-to-use email group service. Please take a moment to review this message. RESISTANCE Inpendent organization aims specially to spread the truth of Zionist atrocities, the racism of Judaism and the Jewsih blasphemy in Old testament-Talmud, the so-called Holocaust which never happened and the Protocols of Zion. Resistance generally is against the Racism, Imperialism, Opression, Torture and Injustice Our main goal : getting our freedom... ending Israeli massacres.. Our hope : Free all Palestine from the river to the sea... Free Golan in Syria... Free Shabaa in Lebanon... Free all our occupied lands. Resistance is mainly an Islamic Organization. RESIST..NEVER GIVE UP HOPE --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] kein Betreff
.So I ask all the moderators of the list to take a stand on the issue and announce it openly. A.Holberg Fine. I ask Yoshie to do the same thing. Mine is on vacation. You haven't been unsubbed or anything like that. But I'm telling Yoshie *very publicly* (since you are fetishising this practice, so be it) that you are on my list of people who are disrupting the flow of discussion and causing a general lethargy to the whole list. Beyond that, you are extremely boring me with your attempts to challenge me into a "showdown" of the Clint Eastwood variety. This list is not here for that. You, I only ask this much, need to be silent and wait for Yoshie to respond with an answer for you. She has real political struggles in her life and isn't always here for these matters *immediately*. Now go be quiet please. You will be dealt with soon. You could have avoided this little drama with one of two other options: Learn how the simple software actually works and check yourself what is wrong with your s*bscription, or two: Ask any of us off-line. But you are into fights, and I prefer my conflicts to have actual political outcomes. The internet isn't the place. Macdonald Stainsby co-moderator, Leninist-International ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Hey Anthony...[WW] Colombia/ Farc/ELN gains
ernment, both politically and militarily. The advances made by the FARC-EP have been due to their position of strength in the process. But the timing of the government's agreement to a zone for the ELN--officially announced on Jan. 29, two days before the deadline for the FARC-EP's zone--puts the Pastrana regime's credibility very much in doubt. The Colombian government is clearly trying to divide the revolutionary forces, pitting the "good" insurgency (today, the ELN) that is willing to make "reasonable" concessions against the "bad" insurgency, the FARC-EP. The ELN and the FARC-EP, despite different histories, share a desire for a revolutionary transformation of Colombian society to favor the country's workers and peasants. In the early 1990s the two groups talked jointly with the government as part of the Simon Bolivar Guerrilla Coordinating Committee. The two forces still work together on specific military missions against government troops. But tactical differences have so far prevented the two from proposing a united dialog process with the government in the current situation. DANGER OF DIRECT U.S. INTERVENTION The danger of direct U.S. intervention in this volatile political crisis grows daily. The new U.S. president, George Bush, is trying to deny the prospect of U.S. troops on Colombian battlefields. "We have to be very cautious not to send too many troops and have them get involved in combat," Bush told reporters on Jan. 26. "There is a fine line between training and combat. I support training and aid." (Miami Herald, Jan. 27) That is an echo of Clinton's "This is not a new Vietnam." The deployment of U.S. troops into combat against the Colombian people, should it take place, will not be because of the will of individual politicians or generals. It will be a result of the cycle of intervention required to maintain political and economic exploitation over Colombia and Latin America--a fundamental feature of U.S. imperialism. Should the Colombian government decide to invade the zone cleared for talks with the FARC-EP, it will face a powerful political and military opponent with the backing of millions of Colombian workers and peasants. It's own spokespeople--in Colombia and in Washington--admit that it cannot win. That will require U.S. troops to come to the rescue of the corrupt, death squad regime. Should the Colombian government decide to extend the zone, it opens the possibility for a rupture within the ruling elite, with one side fearing the "apocalypse" of a total war and the other counting on U.S. military aid to expand its rule of terror. Such a split--a mortal danger in a period of revolution--could only be mediated by U.S. political intervention, backed by U.S. troops. The possibility of a solution to the Colombian struggle that favors the interests of the workers and peasants there will depend on the determination and clear leadership of the revolutionary insurgencies in Colombia combined with the strength of anti-war and solidarity forces in the United States and around the world. - END - (Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Acquitted Suspect Slams Lockerbie Trial
Acquitted Suspect Slams Lockerbie Trial Panafrican News Agency (Dakar) February 5, 2001 Posted to the web February 5, 2001 Tripoli Back home in Libya after 22 months in detention and following his acquittal last week, Al-Amine Khalifa Fhima Monday berated the Lockerbie trial, describing the charges as the "machinations of western intelligence." In the celebrated trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, Scottish Judges acquitted Fhima and sentenced his compatriot, Abdel Basset Al-Magrahi, to life imprisonment for the 1988 downing of American Pan Am flight 103 that killed 270 people off Lockerbie. "What was tendered in court was no evidence," Fhima declared at a press briefing, asserting that "they (evidence) were lies fabricated by American secret services." He dismissed the trial as political, claiming that he and Al-Magrahi were "pressurised during the trial." He maintained that Al-Maghahi's innocence "would be proven in the days ahead." Fhima, who has been receiving friends and sympathisers since his return, said he would ask for compensation for the "moral and material damages" he suffered. He also said that he plans to set up an Association against the American CIA. In his reaction, Libyan leader Col. Moammar Kadhafi said he would make "revelations" that would expose the political underpinnings of the trial. Former South African President Nelson Mandela and Saudi authorities played a key role in persuading Tripoli to consent to the trial of the Libyan Libyans by a Scottish court. Mandela has criticised the US and Britain for refusing to lift remaining sanctions against Libya, saying this was against the promise they made at the extradition of the two Libyans. In a related development, Norwegian intelligence service has reportedly said it was in possession of a "secret" document implicating a Palestinian movement in the Lockerbie bombing. Copyright 2001 Panafrican News Agency. Distributed by allAfrica.com. For information about the content or for permission to redistribute, publish or use for broadcast, contact the publisher. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] ONLINE CONFERENCE ON MALCOLM X
Forwarded from the Crashlist. *** ANNOUNCEMENT: OPENING THE ONLINE CONFERENCE ON MALCOLM X www.murchisoncenter.org/malcolm Tapes of 1990 Conference and 2001 online discussion (new session each week for 24 weeks) Session #1: Malcolm Remembered: 25 Years of Research and Retrospective Reflection Speakers include: Abdul Alkalimat Imam Talib Abdur Hashid Augusta Kappber Betty Shabazz Amiri Baraka Gloria Joseph C. Eric Lincoln Margaret Burroughs John Henrik Clarke Alex Haley --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Fw: AGAINST THE CRIMINAL SOLANA - messages of solidarity welcomed!
As far as I'm concerned, the group that calls itself what is listed below is VERY welcome where I reside. I pledge what little help I can give you. Historical responsibility is a very apt title. Macdonald It is upon you to show historical responsibility! PATRIOTIC ALLIANCE OF YUGOSLAVIA ANTI-NATO COMMITTEE OF SPS Belgrade, February 2nd 2001 ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Apolitical Attitude: From The Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
APOLITICAL ATTITUDE: A passive, indifferent attitude (real or pretended) toward social life and political activity. Widespread among the most backward, least class-conscious strata of the population in capitalist countries, the apolitical attitude is frequently the result of the deliberately propagated influence of the ruling class. This attitude may be more than a manifestation of backwardness: it may be a conscious expression of unconcern and indifference. The apolitical attitude that is a manifestation of backwardness must be distinguished from deliberate propagation by the ideologists of reactionary and conservative classes. These classes attempt to veil and hide the class content of their ideology, which aims at maintaining and strengthening the dominance of the bourgeoisie while drawing working people away from the struggle for their class interests. This latter form of apolitical attitude appears in the guise of doctrines of "nonparty attitude," the "neutrality" and "supraclass" nature of law and the state, "pure" science and "art for art's sake." By means of empty entertainment or gangster films, comics, pornographic literature, and other devices, the propaganda for individualism, crude material comfort, and a consumer psychology serves to distract the masses from acute political problems. (you'd better make use of this- I had to type it out by hand). ------- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] kein Betreff
You have not been "dumped". That pleasure you must earn. Something must be wrong with your subbing. In the future you can easily get in touch with I and Yoshie (and Mine, should she have returned from her proposal) by sending the mail inquiry directly to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please, all list members, make a note of this. All queeries will get answered. By the way, if you think your politics are so "unlikeminded", you are welcome to leave. But you have not been unsubbed, and were under no immediate threat. Go look in the archives if you misssed a series of mails, and you will see that removing sectarian lunatics has given new life to this valuable project. In other words, the "crisis" has left us stronger. Thanks to all those, from Pat Bond and Sam Pawlett to Barry Stoller and (of course) Yoshie for getting us a kick in the rear towards new ideas. Onward to a full discussion of theories of the seizure of power- and holding it- and building a new society. Sound vague? It's obviously the question of the day. Macdonald Stainsby, co-moderator, Leninist-International. - Original Message - From: A.Wosni [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear comrades, it's now a couple of days that I haven't received any of your messages, which is very unusual. I wonder if you have faded away due to the internal crisis (Whither LI?) or if you have decided to dump me to remain among likeminded folks undesturbed by people like me (I read that you had dumped me once. I hadn't even realized it since obviously at that time my PC was broken anyway). It would be nice to be officially informed about the matter. Best A.Holberg ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] forward on Colombia
Beware...they might visit your town! For those interested, Guillermo Rishchynski-the Canadian Ambassador to Columbia-has been travelling to parts of Canada doing PR for the Summit of the Americas the FTAA. Of course, he's also glossing over the current atrocities in Columbia. He's speaking in universities and such. Today (January 30th), he was in Fredericton. Tommorow, he plans to be in St. Andrews, and thereafter he's got things going on in Toronto. He is one of the 18 Latin American Carribean Canadian ambassadors who are doing similar speaking tours. In Fredericton, he claimed that Columbian civil society wants the FTAA. When reminded of the 20 million Columbians who went on a 2-day general strike in Sept. 99 protesting neoliberal policies, etc., and then the suggestion that this being the case, the FTAA sounds more like despotism not democracy, he replied: "Well, it all depends on how you look at it..." Then he pushed the common tactical spin that the FTAA strengthen's democratic institutions, creates jobs 'for youth', etc. The myth of Canada's human rights high-horse was also flaunted. He said that Canadian corporations have a significant $5 billion(US) of investment in Columbia. These corporations include Bell Canada, Northern Telecom and 6 active oil exploration and gas oil pipeline management companies. Canada currently engages in $500-600 million per year in trade and McCains President's Choice are household names in Columbia. Canada also exports wheat, newsprint, lentil and peas. Pierre Loiselle for more info on Columbia, check out: New Colombia News Agency (ANNCOL) home.swipnet.se/anncol/index.htm Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army FARC-EP tierra.ucsd.edu/farc-ep National Liberation Army ELN www.eln-voces.com Revolutionary and Popular Movements in Colombia (list of links) www.neravt.com/left/colombia.htm Z Magazine http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Colombia/colombiatop.htm Colombia Support Network http://www.colombiasupport.net/ Columbia Report http://www.colombiareport.org/ The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) http://www.nacla.org/ International Action Center http://www.iacenter.org/ colombia.indymedia.org www3.gratisweb.com/ciclocrisis (analyses by H. Mondragon) www.derechos.org/nizkor/colombia www.ecopetrol.com.co (official site to oil exploitation in Colombia) --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Rebuilding the Left in Toronto: Against The Current reports.
difficult when much of the activity has come from environmentalists and young people who are, rightly enough, very skeptical of labor (and socialism). The youth who are active in anti-globalization protests are less likely to work in unionized jobs and have little reason to count on a labor movement that has often compromised their future for the sake of near-sighted gains. To account for this skepticism, the Rebuilding the Left conference had a minimal base of unity premised on "anti-capitalism" in recognition that it was a broader term which more people might be motivated to organize around. This premise also communicated a willingness to discuss the merits of all forms of organizing. The conference tried to push beyond sectarian debates among left groups and provide a forum for resolving some of the issues that have continued to divide the working class on the basis of race, gender, age, ability and income. In this spirit the organizers solicited political endorsements from about 30 organizations from around the province. These included groups ranging from the local Anarchist Free Space, to the traditionally more social democratic Metro Network for Social Justice and Centre for Social Justice. It was also endorsed by radical left journals such as the Socialist Register and Canadian Dimension as well as a number of locals of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. This link to activism was important because people felt that the conference should be more than just a talk shop without any tangible results. While people were generally in agreement that the movement was not sufficiently developed to be able to support a new party in Ontario, they felt some structure should come out of the conference. A position proposed by Sam Gindin, former assistant to Buzz Hargrove (President of the Canadian Auto Workers) and now professor at York University in Toronto, was that of a "structured movement." Something, he suggested, would be "more than a movement" but "less than a party". The conference was divided into four parts that began and ended with plenary speakers. More than half of the time, however, was devoted to workshops that allowed greater participation and gave people the opportunity to gauge the possibility for working together in a new organizational model. The first workshop was devoted to drawing links between "anti-oppression" politics (such as issues of gender, race and sexual orientation) and "anti-capitalist" politics. The second workshop was devoted to discussing the challenges and opportunities that would arise in trying to move ahead with any new organization. While the attendance of the conference was not as broadly representative as would be necessary for a truly new left movement, the fact this was explicitly acknowledged by speakers and facilitators provided a positive starting point for linking anti-oppression and anti-capitalist politics. Many people commented that there was a level of genuine respectfulness that they had not previously encountered on the left. Tensions were, however, expressed about the pace and process of organizing a "structured movement". On the one hand, there was a general sense of immediacy as people were aware of the Ontario government's plan to increase its attack on labor with a bill to raise the maximum work week to 60 hours, end compulsory holidays and make it easier to decertify unions. At the same time, many felt the need to spend more time building greater representation and solidarity among excluded communities before the project could be taken forward. In spite of these tensions there was a significant interest in keeping the re/building process going and to co-ordinate a similar event in another six months time. People also felt the project could pursue popular cultural and educational events, the development of a newsletter, an activist network and national speaking tour. Presently groups in Toronto are meeting to develop a larger and more democratic coordinating committee to work on these goals. Two open meetings have followed with the participation of more than 100 activists in both cases. Various working groups have also been initiated under the banner of "Rebuilding the Left". Similar initiatives also exist in other cities such as Vancouver, Winnipeg and Ottawa. The recent meeting in Vancouver brought out another 400 people. If the Rebuilding the Left initiatives across Canada can continue to draw in committed activists connected to ongoing projects then we may have the basis of a new radicalization to push us beyond the current limits of electoral politics. Toby Moorsom, REBUILDING THE LEFT Working to build a diverse and inclusive anti-capitalist movement. For information on meeting times call (416) 516-2966 "Let's be realistic, let's demand the impossible" Che Guevara --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical
[L-I] NYTimes on DRCongo
g their wounds in the same rooms. At Rwankole Hospital, a Lendu teacher, his head battered, whose brother died beside him, lay on a mat recovering not 10 feet from a 2-year- old Hema boy, his cheek split by a machete from his mouth to his ear. "This hospital is too small," said the administrator, Oku-Onzi Dada. "We have no choice but to put them together. It's better that way. They can get used to it." --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Random Insult Generator
Why does everybody on this list have to read this bullshit? AD Ah, but comrade...this is the highest level of criticism. To critique our own bizarre little culture is a fairly positive step, all in all. Now, if I could only figure out who was revisionist by accident, and who is deliberately try to hi-jack the workers movement for ther purposes of the restoration of the Scottish Monarchy? Macdonald ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] The legacy...part 1
"reply to article in New Left Review 2, 2000" http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/hafa3/panitch.htm Mac, where was this published? Reference, please Mark --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] The legacy....part 2
that capitalist streets are not necessarily paved with gold;40 but they, like many workers in the old Third World, have no other model --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] the Legacy, Part 3
n, Penguin, 1973, p. 148. See Leo Panitch, 'Capitalism, Socialism and Revolution: The Contemporary Meaning of Revolution in the West,' Socialist Register 1989, London, Merlin, 1989. In addition to Moss, infra, see F.L. Bender's excellent introduction to his edition of The Communist Manifesto, New York, Norton, 1988, esp. pp. 3-4. 53, Frederick Engels, Preface to the 1888 English edition of the Manifesto, in Bender, ed. p. 47. His claim that lessons had been learned, coinciding as it did with the rise of industrial unionism and mass working class parties, was quite valid. 54. The measures were advanced as only 'generally applicable': they would be 'different in different countries'. And when Marx and Engels a quarter of a century later wrote their first preface to the Manifesto (for the 1872 German 48 edition), they insisted that 'no special stress' should be laid on the measures proposed, and that the whole 'passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today.' See Bender., p. 43. 55. See William Greider, 'Saving the Local Economy, The Nation, 15 December 1997 as well as the declaration and memorandum by 25 European economists, Full Employment, Social Cohesion and Equity for Europe: Alternatives to Competitive Austerity, May 1997. In the Socialist Register, among others essays, see especially Jim Crotty and Gerald Epstein, 'In Defence of Capital Controls' Socialist Register 1996, London, Merlin, 1996. 56. Gregory Albo, 'A World Market of Opportunities? Capitalist Obstacles and Left Economic Policy, Socialist Register 1997, esp. pp. 27-39. 57. Ibid, p. 28. 58. 'The text actually says 'leading civilized countries'. Without wishing to burke the question of how far Marx's use of Hegel's concept of 'world-historical' nations (in which the principle of 'freedom' had been most fully realised, etc.) involved assumptions of a racialist nature, we have omitted the word 'civilized' in the quotation in order to focus on the main point, which remains valid - the need for joint action by the leading or major economic powers. 59. Engels, Preface to the 1888 English edition, in Bender, ed., p. 48. 60. Preface to the 1883 German edition in Bender, ed., pp. 45-6. 61. E.R Thompson, 'An Open Letter to Leszek Kolakowski', The Socialist Register 1973, London, Merlin, 1973, pp. 84 and 99-100 n. 69. 62. Marx's observations on the contemporary study of social and economic history are worth recalling: 'Much research has been carried out to trace the different historical phases that die bourgeoisie has passed through ... But when it is a question of making a precise study of strikes, combinations and other forms in which the proletarians carry out before our eyes their organisation as a class, some are seized with real fear and others display a transcendental disdain.' The Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956, p. 196. 63. Quoted in Bender's introduction to the Manifesto., p. 10. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international In the contradiction lies the hope. --Bertholt Brecht ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Duma Says Yes to Buying and Selling Land
#11 Moscow Times January 26, 2001 Duma Says Yes to Buying and Selling Land With left-wing deputies staging a walkout in protest, the State Duma on Thursday gave narrow tentative approval to a bill enabling the private buying and selling of nonagricultural land. The Duma voted 229-168 on first reading to add a chapter to the Civil Code regulating business deals involving land. The proposal had been blocked by Communists who strongly opposed trading in land, most of which remains in the hands of the government and collective farms left over from the Soviet era. The bill must go through two more readings, pass the Federation Council and receive President Vladimir Putin's signature to become law. Second hearings are usually held within a month. Communists and their allies argued unsuccessfully Thursday that the rich or politically connected would gobble up the best land, pushing most of the population deeper into poverty. "Those who work and live on land don't have money and won't have any tomorrow," said Nikolai Kharitonov, the leader of the Communist-allied Agrarian faction. "If we pass this bill, we will become slaves tomorrow." He said it was "premature" to allow sales even of urban land. "Those who vote for this bill hate farmers," echoed Communist Yury Nikiforov. After the vote, Kharitonov led left-wing deputies out of the Duma hall in protest. Liberal and centrist supporters of the bill dismissed such protests as pointless since the bill only refers to nonagricultural land. The ban on deals in farmland will remain in place until a special Land Code is approved. Pavel Krasheninnikov, head of Duma's legal affairs committee and a member of the liberal Union of Right Forces faction, said the new bill would provide long-needed legal guidelines. The State Land Committee estimates the value of the nation's land at $5 trillion. Supporters of the Land Code point out that if the government were to levy a tax on privately owned land - as is done in the West - the state coffers would bulge. Land deals are currently regulated by myriad laws approved by local legislatures, and the legal confusion has created a rich ground for corruption and fraud. The absence of coherent legislation has spooked foreign investors and helped stall economic development. The approval on first reading Thursday will no doubt cheer those foreign investors who have for years been urging the government to cobble together a law that would clearly guarantee ownership rights to land. They say the lack of legislation has drastically slowed down their investments into the country. But Vladimir Plotnikov, head of the Duma's agriculture committee, said Thursday night that the bill would probably face a drawn-out fight to get through a second reading because among the agricultural lands banned from private ownership are dachas and gardens. "What we are doing by passing this article now is actually forbidding people who have dachas and gardens from doing anything with them," Plotnikov, who is also a member of the Agrarian faction, said in a telephone interview. "They can't sell them, give them away or mortgage them." The Land Code bans the sale of seven different kinds of agriculture land, and liberal deputies failed to read the fine print in their rush to get the code passed in first reading, he said. President Vladimir Putin's representative to the Duma, Alexander Kotenkov, strongly backed the bill. "If we don't enact the civil code chapter, we will preserve the black market in land," he told lawmakers before the vote. The 1993 Constitution guarantees the right of citizens to privately own land. But legislation setting up procedures for buying and selling land has been stalled for years in parliament. *** --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges within Marxism in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Forwarded from Barry Stoller (5th International)
(Barry: You sent this to the administration address. Make sure you send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -comradely, Macdonald Co-Moderator) Adam Levenstein: Nearly every Trotskyist group out there wants to rebuild, reform, or somehow start the Fourth International up again. Yet the sad, simple fact is - the Fourth International was an unquestionable failure. Roger Blackwell: Why would a Fifth International be any better? 'In the question of the social character of the U.S.S.R., mistakes commonly flow... from replacing the historical fact with the programmatic norm. Concrete fact departs from the norm... The contradiction between the concrete fact and the norm constrains us not to reject the norm but, on the contrary, to fight for it by means of the revolutionary road...' (Trotsky, In Defense of Marxism, New Park 1971, p. 3). It must be soberly conceded that Trotsky's 'programmatic norm' in the statement above refers to nothing more than his CONCEPTION of what socialism, particularly socialism under duress, SHOULD be. There is an element of nihilist utopianism even in his hard-knuckled (and tactically sound) argument for defending the gains of actually existing socialism, 'deformed' socialism as he called it. Explaining the 'degeneration' of the worker's revolution, he famously wrote: 'The basis of bureaucratic rule is the poverty of society in objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of each against all. When there is enough goods in a store, the purchasers can come whenever they want to. When there is little goods, the purchasers are compelled to stand in line. When the lines are very long, it is necessary to appoint a policeman to keep order. Such is the starting point of the power of the Soviet bureaucracy' (The Revolution Betrayed, Doubleday, Dorin Co. 1937, p. 112). What Trotsky failed to address in his long, ultimately terminal power struggle with Stalin, was what he, if placed in Stalin's shoes, would have done that would have altered the objective conditions that led to 'the poverty of society in objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of each against all.' Thus the 'great man of history' perspective, so infamously cited against Bolshevism, was adopted by Trotsky to some extent. My point being... The 4th International was created, at least in part, by Trotsky to challenge Stalin's leadership. Yet---whether or not Trotsky, given the power enjoyed by Stalin, COULD have done 'better' than Stalin is a question that contradicts the core of historical materialism. Case in point: the creation of the Soviet bloc after World War Two would have at least met some of Trotsky's grandest internationalist ambitions. I say: the dispute for leadership between Trotsky and Stalin is a dead issue---THEREFORE the 4th International, an instrument OF that leadership struggle, is also dead.* The next international, if it must have a figurehead, should have a LIVING figurehead. * This opinion in no way repudiates the many brilliant contributions to Marxist science made by Trotsky (combined uneven development, permanent revolution, unconditional defense, united front) NOR does it attempt to discredit the very real progress made on behalf of socialism by Stalin (industrialization, defeat of Nazism, development of atomic technology) and even those who initially followed him (political liberalization, deconcentration of authority, military parity with NATO) under the worst possible conditions. I see them all, and all their differences, as HISTORICAL exigencies reified. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges within Marxism in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] more important stuff from kagarlitsky
We should learn from the Finns. You can and must defend your native culture, but you have to do it using the means and opportunities of the modern world. Even with our limited resources we can find a creative solution if we apply our imaginations. I am stunned that this is what Kagarlitsky gleans from this episode. What is killing Soviet/Russian cuture is precisely what he only bothered to allude to- that the culture industry will put out whatever is mass marketed. "Apply the imaginations" to what? How to spend money that doesn't exist in a cultural war while the population starves? Alright, those who dismissed Kagarlitsky have nearly convinced me- he has a penchant to self-delusion, so as to write things that seem relevant. This article is kinda silly, if nothing else. Macdonald ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] KCNA: DPRK on new US Administration
DPRK ready to cope with whatever stand to be taken by new U.S. administration Pyongyang, January 25 (KCNA)-- The spokesman of the Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea gave today the following answer to the question put by KCNA as regards the recent provocative remark made by U.S. Secretary of State Powell against our supreme leadership. At a U.S. senate confirmation hearing held on Jan. 18 he dared make such reckless remark going against the elementary common sense as slandering our supreme leadership as "dictator of north Korea." It cannot but be something surprising that he did not bother to make such a statement debasing the dignity of the DPRK. This is an anachronistic behaviour diametrically contrary not only to the world peace-loving people's expectation and desire for genuine peace and stability on the Korean peninsula in the new century but to the present level of the DPRK-U.S. relations. The DPRK cannot but interpret what he said as a statement reflecting the sinister intention of big war industrial monopolies and other conservative hardliners in the U.S. to keep the U.S.-DPRK relations in the hostile and belligerent relationship forever and thus fish in troubled waters. The DPRK is fully ready to cope with whatever stand to be taken by the new U.S. administration towards it. The DPRK appreciates the progress so far made in the bilateral ties through negotiations with U.S. politicians of reason but has no idea of pinning any hope on those forces displeased with this process. If the U.S. brandishes a sword at us, we will counter it with a sword and if it shows good faith, we will reciprocate it. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges within Marxism in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: Teaching: [L-I] Learning (was Re: Congo)
Suppose the same piece had been signed by yours truly? Would you dismiss it the same way? Asking Me? I did not forward anything from LBO. So I can not technically dismiss something I was not part of. . I must point out that this mail was sent out to many people (such as myself) that Heartfield "spams" weekly. I have never minded, seeing as I get some 100 mails a day despite it at any rate. I would bet Yoshie did not receive it from LBO-talk (and if she did, so what? No one on LBO talk could last five postings in a debate with the Leninists who "dwell" on L-I, and they would never subject their fragile egos to several posts with us anyways), but rather forwarded something from the "Week". The LBO talk crowd would be personally honored to come visit the home of the evil old stalwarts, the crotchety dinos who believe in Leninist solutions to "Post Modern" problems. Let em try it! Macdonald ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Seven Killed in Blast- CP Bangladesh
ms. The Central Committee of the Party has called to friends and various organisations within the country and abroad to donate genrously to the fund. The money has been deposited in saving account no 9126 of Janata Bank, Purana Paltan Branch Dhaka Bangladesh. The name of the account is "Fund for support to the victims in CPB meeting " Government has formed an enquiry committee to probe into the incident and identify the culprits. CPB leaders has warned gainst speculations about the killers distorted news aimed at protecting the real illers and conspirators. MANZURUL AHSAN KHAN PRESIDENT BANGLADESH COMMUNIST PARTY DHAKA BANGLADESH --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges within Marxism in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Re: (Spanish) Peron and the IMF, 1967
Friends and comrades, Please find below, in Spanish, an excerpt from Juan Domingo Pern on the role of the International Monetary Fund. This is an important quotation due to many reasons: a) Pern explains the reasons why he decided that Argentina would not member the IMF, which was possible only after the 1955 coup. People (such as yourself, my dear compaero!) have tried to preach the progressive side of Peronism before. I had been very skeptical. The stories of the paid vacations, the opposition to US Imperial demands, all of these things- they ringed hollow, or at least not complete to me. Then Nestor goes and posts this information about Peron blocking the IMF, and my entire view is changed. Alas, on the important questions, Peron stood for sovereignty. And after that, what could possibly be more important? I hate it when these types of demonized turn out to be worthy of further explanation. It is, well, awkward? Macdonald ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] vancouver: DISCUSSION with Michel Chossudovsky
(before I get asked, no, Co-op is not currently web broadcasting) Macdonald DISCUSSION Wednesday, January 24th7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Co-Op Radio 102.7 FM Guest: Michel Chossudovsky Topic: Low Intensity Nuclear War Host, Charles Boylan, speaks with noted economist at the University of Ottawa, Michel Chossudovsky, DISCUSSION's telephone guest this Wednesday. He's speaking on the consequences of NATO's "low intensity nuclear war" against the peoples of Yugoslavia in 1999 as well as the U.S.war against the peoples of Iraq in 1991. Join In DISCUSSION's review of the consequences of the use by the U.S. of depleted uranium on its victims. Call in number is 684-9564. E-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]. Thoughts about DISCUSSION's programs, guests and future content warmly welcomed. Please forward! Apologies for any repeated messages. ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Congo
Richard Gott, per contra, is not only a real marxist and revolutionary, and a man who worked successfully for the KGB while employed as a journo at the Grauniad, he is also a man who put his life where his money is not once but at least twice. Of course, this validates nothing in his views about the Congo. Gott: Did he not just write on H.Chavez? Any reviews on the book? I've thought about getting a hold of it- I am intrigued to find out more about this new Bolivarist. As for Kabila, he was just another slave-selling SOB and we should not make a martyr out of his fat carcass. IMHO. We should learn, IMHO, not to worry about "martyr or villain" dynamics, but rather figure out if he indeed *was* whacked by people choked at him for not paying off western debts,... that seems like a good plan on my part. Kabila seems part of a new tradition of the lefts very own "3rd way", seperate from that of Blair, Schroeder, etc. That way being where the struggle is an attempt to come up with small incremental gains like Chavez' that are sufficient to actually improve less the lives of people, but the conditions for struggle. Again, IMHO, it seems that the ability for an African leader to squeeze in such little gains in sovereignty are not to be allowed. Africa is still being crushed on the bottom, and treated far harsher than all the others comibined. Macdonald Mark ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Map of IMF resistance (IMC)
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=18561 --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges within Marxism in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] 100 000 in Berlin honor Communist heroes
- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Jan. 25, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper - LUXEMBURG LIEBKNECHT: 100,000 IN BERLIN HONOR MEMORY OF COMMUNIST HEROES By John Catalinotto Berlin Some 100,000 people walked to the memorial in Friedrichsfelde Cemetery here in Berlin Jan. 15 to pay respects to two martyred communist leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. The two were murdered by the German Free Korps on Jan. 15, 1919, just days after the communist party they founded took responsibility for the Berlin workers' abortive attempt to seize power earlier that January. The two revolutionaries are famous and beloved for their courageous opposition to Germany's role in World War I. At a time when the majority of the Social Democratic Party leadership was betraying their promises to fight against their country's role in that murderous war, Liebknecht was the only member of the party in the German Bundestag (Parliament) to vote against war credits. Luxemburg was the only woman at the time who was a top ideological leader of a major party, and had influence in the struggles within the worldwide communist movement. The Luxemburg-Liebknecht demonstration takes place each year, gathering pro-revolutionary forces from all over Germany into Berlin. In times when the socialist German Democratic Republic existed, the government supported and encouraged the demonstration. Now, when there is one imperialist-ruled Germany, the demonstration is a measure of the mood of the left and the potential for struggle. Really, two demonstrations take place. One consists of marches of a coalition of left, revolutionary working-class and anarchist forces that march from further downtown to the memorial. In past years the police have provoked clashes with this part of the demonstration, though these clashes were limited to a few arrests this year. About 10,000 people took part in this march, with a larger and more visible participation this time from Turkish and Kurdish revolutionary organizations. These groups, who also were calling attention to the many Turkish and Kurdish political prisoners the Turkish military killed last month, carried banners honoring the two German revolutionaries. The other is a gathering of 90,000 people, most of them from the former GDR, who lay red carnations on the memorial site for Luxemburg and Liebknecht, or perhaps on the graves and markers of other socialist and communist heroes buried in the cemetery. These people were called out by the Party for Democratic Socialism, the only pro-socialist party in the German Bundestag. - END - (Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Indigenous Summit on FTAA.
Zapatistas announced their resistance to the North American Free Trade Agreement by asserting Indian jurisdiction over parts of Chiapas. Basta! Contact: Tony Hall, Department of Native American Studies, University of Lethbridge, Alberta Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] Linda Sioui, Wendake Nation, Village des Hurons, Quebec City [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges within Marxism in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Any translators? This from another list...
I would also like to point out that what I posted here (from another list) is also from a subscriber to this list. In other words, if Alexander (or anyone else) would like to take it upon him/herself to translate, you can direct your questions about the KPRF directly to them. They have been quietly watching us discuss them without saying a word. My criticisms of their actions in political struggle in Russia notwithstanding, I welcome them strongly and hope that some of their members have a chance to talk with us. It could only help our understanding, whether we agree or not. Anyone who slongs mud at them *directly* knows what will happen. Macdonald - Original Message - From: Alexander Domrin [EMAIL PROTECTED] TRANSLATION Dear Comrades: That would be extremely appreciated if you could send your materials to us in Russian (to avoid possible mistakes in our translation); your materials would be placed on the CPRF official site (www.kprf.ru) Hope to continue our cooperation. Our email address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sincerely, Vladimir Sovetsky - Original Message - From: Macdonald Stainsby [EMAIL PROTECTED] Уважаемые товарищи. ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Re: [L-I] : [L-I] To moderators from Russia - to Louis Proyect
- Original Message - From: Svetlana Baiborodova [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Svetlana, neither Louis or Mark are moderators here. I hope you stay, but Bilenkin is not- EVER- welcome here. I hope that can be clear. No Myers, no Bilenkin. Only one Jones. Macdonald Stainsby, Co-Moderator ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Re: [L-I] Re: ïÔ×ÅÔ: To moderators from Russia -to Louis Proyect
I once again call upon the moderators to cancel their expulsion off list, of Vladimir, Owen, and Steve. It would be an act of characer to admit the mistake, rather than compounding it. It is no sin to do something mistakenly, and then to rectify it. I like you Tony. But it ain't gonna happen. The mistake was waiting so long that all of these characters got comfortable. Beyond that, as far as Bilenkin goes, he was only partially removed because of his endorsement of racist filth against US Blacks. He also has quite a history of declaring "lines" on elists and splitting them down the middle. In fact, Bilenkin was the only individual of the three removed that Johannes agreed to. Owen and Steve, for reasons I will not go over again, are in the dustbin of L-I history. Move on. Macdonald ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
Re: [L-I] Illiterate blacks
Revolutions of the 20th century have been made by illiterate people. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ Far more often than by the literate, I would almost guarantee. If the revolution was socialist, the illiteracy wasn't going to last for long. Macdonald ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Re:Svetlana to Moderation team
Ugh. I hate the word "boss". It's sufficient grounds for suicide. I am a co-moderator. Two women- Yoshie Furuhashi and Mine Aysen Doyran- are my co-moderators. I speak clearly because I already know they agree to these points and I merely received your message first. Bilenkin was dumped "unanimously" Saying "no" to list-members is a very painful thing to do. But, in this case the list is in better hands without the gentleman you speak of. I'm sorry you feel the way you do. You are welcome to return and tell us of your struggles whenever you wish, but I get the feeling you do not understand the kind of list we are building here. Sorry, Nestor- Valdimir is trouble. I can't say your advice rings with me, at least this time. ------- Macdonald Stainsby, Co-Moderator. Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges within Marxism in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Russian officials boycott George W. Bush's inauguration celebration in Moscow
strana.ru January 19, 2001 Russian officials boycott George W. Bush's inauguration celebration in Moscow It has become known to Strana.Ru that there is a maturing opinion among the invited leading Russian representatives of the presidential administration and the government to boycott the reception at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in the evening of January 20 commemorating the inauguration of the U.S. president-elect. The reception is being given in honor of the inauguration of the newly elected President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, and is to take place from 7:00 p.m. to 10:10 p.m., exactly at the time when the newly elected American President will be sworn in. This can be regarded as an extremely scandalous and unprecedented demonstration on the part of the Russian state elite: Russian ministers, their first deputies and a number of ranking officials from the government, as well as prominent figures from the presidential administration and its subdivisions were invited to the ceremony. "This is not an official decision, and because of that, in the given situation, I would not like to speak out as an official person," one of the governmental spokesmen told our correspondent. "But as for myself, we have decided that it would be incorrect to go to the U.S. Ambassador's residence in Moscow and smile in front of the American diplomats, including those who issued a visa to Borodin, possibly knowing what kind of reception was in store for him (in the United States). The Russian government spokesman explained that, of course, the matter did not concern specific figures from the U.S. Embassy. --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges within Marxism in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
[L-I] Translators, anyone? (different format)
? . ? ??? ??? ?? ??? ? (?? ? ?? ?? ) ??? ?? ??? ?? ?? ??? ? ?? ?? ? WWW.KPRF.RU (?? ??? ?? ???) ?? ?? ??? ? . ?? ?? ??. ??? ?: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ? ?, ? --- Macdonald Stainsby Rad-Green List: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/rad-green Leninist-International: Building bridges within Marxism in the tradition of V.I. Lenin. http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international ___ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
