On my old profile

I've been thinking about rewriting my profile, and editing some other parts of this blog, but I wanted to keep some of the information around, so I'm posting the current version here:

I am a Durham native and graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill after studying biology and anthropology.  I am distantly related to Irish bourgeois democratic revolutionary Thomas Francis Meagher, who was also a US general during the Civil War and an acting governor of territorial Montana.  I was a member of AML, which dissolved around 2008 – 2012.  I worked with USMLO's Voice of Revolution newspaper locally for several years without being a member.  I joined the NC Green Party several years ago for electoral work.  Unless otherwise stated, my posts don't represent any group.  My profile image is an uncommon pinxterflower that grew near the edge of RTP in Durham for probably more than 20 years, but that bush and the entire population were seemingly killed by Duke Energy, though they knew about the flowers.  The next nearest pinxterflowers I know of are miles away, so unless there are surviving sprouts or seeds, these rare azaleas are probably not going to return there anytime soon (see my 9/8/2018 DS post).  I reserve the copyright on content I created while other content is posted with permission or under fair use.  I rarely check the listed email. 

I think previous versions gave a few different personal details, covered other groups I worked with and historical figures, and advocated policies.  Most of the time it was minimal and is longer now.  I'm not sure about posting the other profiles again here, though they are still online.  I had to check to see what I had posted previously.

I'm not sure if these versions were all actually posted:

I was born and raised in Durham. I studied biology and anthropology at UNC-Chapel Hill and since then I have done both blue and white collar work, for government and private employers. My profile photo shows Phat Ryan/Rockin' Ruben, the cardinal sculpture in Durham's Central Park.

This might have been posted February 8, 2008:

I was born and raised in Durham. As a communist, I am for a revolutionary democratic working class government that will steadily build socialism. Some steps would be to expropriate Big Business, turning it over to its workers to run within a democratically planned and sustainable economy, end “free trade,” encourage cooperatives, and nationalize land. Government should be open, the anti-democratic “national security state” should be smashed, the people armed, the legislature supreme, and officials should be elected, recallable, and paid like workers. It must support self-determination for all nations, including those in the USA, like Puerto Rico. I support enlarging the Bill of Rights, ending the second class citizenship of LGBT people and other minorities, abolishing the death penalty, preserving biodiversity, fighting climate change with renewable and nuclear power, space development, legalizing industrial hemp and ending the “War on Drugs.” 

I am an anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist, supporting revolutionary communist leaders such as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Enver Hoxha (Albania), and Bill Bland (UK) [I could add AML's Hari Kumar]. I also admire bourgeois revolutionaries such as Thomas Jefferson.

I was born and raised in Durham and studied biology and anthropology at UNC-Chapel Hill and since then have worked for private and government employers. I am distantly related to Irish bourgeois democratic revolutionary Thomas Francis Meagher, who was also a Union [or Federal] general during the Civil War and a territorial governor of Montana. I was a member of Alliance Marxist-Leninist, but since its dissolution in about 2008 I have worked with groups such as USMLO and PCUSA, though I am not a member. In electoral politics I support the Green Party, the closest thing to a left alternative in North Carolina, though punitive rules have kept it off the ballot. This blog covers a variety of issues, but I am most interested in conservation, labor and economic issues, civil liberties and democratic rights, and fighting imperialism, beginning with US imperialism. My profile photo shows appropriately crimson Phat Ryan/Rockin' Ruben, the cardinal sculpture in the Durham Central Park. My email is listed, but I don't check it very often, so if I reply, it might take a long time.  

For several years I used a late December 2009 image of 'appropriately crimson' Phat Ryan/Rockin' Ruben (there was a dispute about the name), a sculpture of a male Northern cardinal in Durham Central Park, for my profile.  I think that was the first image.  Cardinals, also called "red birds" or "redbirds," though only adult males are so showy in scarlet and black, are North Carolina's state bird.  

The current image, added a few years ago, shows the large, old, possibly ill-fated pinxterflower near Research Triangle Park blooming one evening in late April 2013.  I've thought about posting a photo essay of pinxterflowers I know of in the Triangle in bloom some spring.  The flowers remind me of East Asian higanbana/red spider lilies and pink magic lilies (genus Lycoris, in the Amaryllis family, as apparently are daffodils, soon to bloom or maybe already starting here, since it was an unusually mild January).  I might add to this post later on.  

The Phat Ryan/Rockin' Ruben male cardinal sculpture in Durham Central Park around Christmas 2009 ©.

A large pinxterflower, Rhododendron periclymenoides, a native deciduous azalea, flowering near RTP in Durham in late April 2013 ©.

 

 

The assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, January 15, 1919

This is from the April 1999 issue of Revolutionary Democracy and was posted recently, January 16th, in the Stalin Society, India Facebook group:

'If You Do Not Follow the Order You Will Be Shot'  

New facts about the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg  

Eighty years ago [124 (correction 104) years now] on 15th January, 1919 the leadership of the Communist Party of Germany, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, were brutally assassinated. It was a momentous loss for the German and international working class movement and it had widespread and long-term repercussions. The two leaders adhered to the revolutionary trend within the German Social-Democratic Party which had developed shortly after the turn of the century.  

For the first time in Marxist literature Karl Liebknecht took up the question of militarism in the imperialist period in his book Militarism and Anti-Militarism which came out in 1907 and which led him to being sentenced to imprisonment. As a member of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies and the Reichstag he exposed the bosses of the military industries headed by Krupp for their warmongering policies and called for international proletarian solidarity as the decisive weapon in the struggle against militarism. Liebknecht welcomed the 1905 Revolution in Russia and came into a sharp political clash with the revisionists, defending the general mass strike as a special proletarian means of struggle. He denounced the assistance given by the German government to tsarism which was engaged in the suppression of the revolution and called upon the German proletariat to emulate the struggle of the Russian workers.  

At the beginning of the First World War he did not initially break with the discipline of the Social-Democratic Party, voting for war credits on August 4th, 1914. Liebknecht soon corrected his position and on 2nd December, 1914 he cast the sole vote against war credits. In a statement which was submitted to the Chairman of the Reichstag he characterised the war as one of annexation. This document was later circulated as an illegal leaflet. Even when drafted to the front, Liebknecht skilfully utilised his membership of the Prussian and Reichstag Chambers to continue the struggle. He adopted the Bolshevik slogan of transforming the imperialist war into a civil war. Together with Rosa Luxemburg he established the Spartacus group. From the rostrum of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies he called upon the Berlin proletariat to join the Mayday demonstration of 1916. In the course of this Liebknecht called for the overthrow of the government which was conducting an imperialist war : for this action he was arrested and sentenced by a military court to jail for four years. It was there that he learnt the news of the October Revolution.  

Rosa Luxemburg was born in Poland in 1871 and lived and worked in Germany from 1898. She was an early opponent of the revisionist E. Bernstein, actively opposing the ministerialism of Millerand and the opportunist compromises with bourgeois parties. Her writings on these questions were collected in 1899 in Social Reform or Revolution? With regard to the split in the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party Rosa Luxemburg did not accept the Leninist views on the need to construct a proletarian party. Stalin noted that Luxemburg had declared for the Mensheviks, arguing that the Bolsheviks had tendencies to Blanquism and ultra-centralism. During the Russian Revolution of 1905-07 she drew closer to the Bolsheviks on many questions of the strategy and tactics of the revolutionary struggle. Rosa Luxemburg correctly understood the role of the working class as the decisive force of the revolution, recognised the need for an armed uprising against tsarism and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Luxemburg expressed complete agreement with the Bolshevik view that the liberal bourgeoisie was a counter-revolutionary force and that the peasantry constituted a revolutionary class. Drawing on the experience of the 1905 revolution she supported the greatest possible development of the extra-parliamentary struggle of the masses and stressed the need to use the mass political strike. For her anti-militarist struggle she was imprisoned during the First World War.  

In her major theoretical works on political economy Rosa Luxemburg presented a critique of capitalism and imperialism where the aggressive colonial policies were described; she upheld the view, however, that the accumulation of capital under capitalism was possible through the expansion of the sphere of exploitation of the non-capitalist sectors so that imperialism was defined as the struggle of the capitalist states for the non-capitalist environment. Despite her important theoretical contribution Rosa Luxemburg deviated from Marxism on a number of questions: to wit, on the denial of the right of national self-determination and an underestimation of the revolutionary potentialities of the peasantry.  

From the beginning of the First World War she criticised the imperialist character of the war and the betrayal of the social-democratic leadership. As a founder and leader of the Spartacus League she authored a number of anti-war tracts. Luxemburg greeted the October revolution, commended the role of the Bolsheviks while incorrectly evaluating the Bolshevik tactics on the agrarian and national question, and the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly. Her critiques of Bolshevik tactics have been widely advertised by the spokesmen of U.S. imperialism notwithstanding the fact that she retraced her steps on a number of questions relating to the Bolshevik revolution and made a turn towards Leninism defending the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Soviets in Germany.  

Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were among the founders of the Communist Party of Germany which held its constituent congress from 30th December, 1918 to January 1, 1919. After the suppression of the Berlin workers' uprising of January 1919, the ruling classes organised the brutal killings of the two communists on 15th January 1919. The roots of the murders lay in the secret accommodation reached between the right-wing socialist leader Chancellor Friedrich Ebert and General Groener which was established in November, 1918 'in order to prevent the spread of terroristic Bolshevism in Germany'. Bourgeois and socialist organs competed to hunt down the two revolutionaries. The spy office of the Reichstag Regiment founded by the Social-Democratic Party set a bounty of 100,000 marks on the heads of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. On the 13th January, 1919 two days before the murders the Social-Democratic Party paper Vorwärts carried a poem calling for the assassination of the two communists. The last verse of this ended:  

Many hundred corpses in a row—
Proletarians!
Karl, Radek, Rosa and Co —
Not one of them is there, not one of them is there!
Proletarians!  

It was not without foundation that John Heartfield was to craft the photomontage entitled 'Fraternal greetings of the SDP' in which the deathhead of Karl Liebknecht was depicted below the masthead of the SDP paper Vorwärts which was shown dripping with blood.  

After the liberation of Berlin by the heroic Red Army in 1945 a participant of the murders was arrested and interrogated. His testimony sheds light on the final hours of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.  

VS.  

 

[Please note that the book: Rosa Luxemburg's Views on the Russian Revolution, by Clara Zetkin:, 1922, is available from www.RedStarPublishers.org for $10.]  

 

Secret
Copy No.1  

4 October 1945,
N.205 cc  

From the Deputy Chairman of the Council of the People's Commissars of the USSR,  

To Comrade V.M. Molotov,  

I am forwarding for you an intimation of the military prosecutor of the Berlin garrison about the arrest and testimony of a participant to the murder of Rosa Luxemburg.  

K. Gorshenin  

The Military Prosecutor of the Berlin Garrison  

13 September 1945  

Secret  

To the Chief Military Prosecutor of the Red Army Lt. General of Law  

Comrade N.P. Afanasiev,  

On 13 June 1945 the Berlin operative group of the NKVD arrested a participant of the murder of Rosa Luxemberg — Otto Runge (living under the documents of Rudolf Wilhelm), born 1875, hailing from Gestebize (on Oder), by nationality a German and by (class — trans.) origin a peasant, educated up to 8th class, member of the NSDP since 1933, living in Berlin at 22 Greifen-Gagenerstrasse. Since 1941 was living in retirement on pension and was not working anywhere.  

The investigations revealed the following:  

Unter officer of a cavalry division Otto Runge, on the orders of the commander of his battalion, on the 13th of January 1919, was sent along with 15 other soldiers of his battalion to hotel Eden (Berlin, Nurembergenstrasse No.30) to guard the regiment's headquarter.  

On the 15th of January, Captain Pabst, an officer of the Staff of the regiment gave Runge the order to personally stand guard, along with soldier Drager, at the main entrance of hotel Eden from 18.00 hours (Berlin time) onwards. At 20.00 Runge and Drager were not replaced at the post and on orders of General Hofman, who at that time was present at the headquarters of the regiment, they were left to guard the headquarters for an unspecified period of time.  

At 20.45 a car stopped at the main entrance of hotel Eden with four officers and Rosa Luxemburg. The latter was led by the officers into the regimental headquarters. Approximately 10 minutes later a second car also stopped at the main entrance with three officers and Karl Liebknecht, who was led by these officers into the regimental headquarters.

  

At this time, having come to know about the arrest of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, people started to gather near hotel Eden.  

After K. Liebknecht and R. Luxemburg were led into the regimental Pflugk-Hartung headquarters, captain Pflugk-Hartung approached Runge and asked : did he know who the man and the woman in civilian clothes brought in just then were, and when Runge answered in the negative, Pflugk-Hartung told Runge that they were Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, that they were pernicious revolutionaries and bandits who wanted to overthrow the rulers and seize power for themselves. Pflugk-Hartung then ordered Runge that when K. Liebknecht and R. Luxemburg come out of the hotel he must shoot them. Runge supposedly refused to do so on the pretext that a large number of people had gathered and he might slip and hurt some one else too. Subsequently Pflugk-Hartung went inside the headquarters and captain Pabst came out and gave the order to kill K. Liebknecht and R. Luxemburg by hitting them with the butt of the rifle, which Runge agreed to do. After Pabst left, lieutenant Kanaris came out and told Runge that if he did not carry out the orders i.e. kill K. Liebknecht and R. Luxemburg he himself would be shot. Kanaris also went inside the headquarters.  

When Runge and Drager were left alone at the post, the latter told Runge that if he (Runge — trans.) did not carry out the orders then Drager himself will kill K. Liebknecht and R. Luxemburg with his bayonet. To which Runge replied that 'the order has been given and I will carry it out'.  

After a few minutes the director (his name is not established) of the hotel walked out of the main entrance. He was on the right, in the middle was R. Luxemburg and to the left was lieutenant Vogel, who pushed R. Luxemburg out of the hotel directly towards the guard Runge. Runge was prepared for the murder and with the full swing of the hand struck Luxemburg with the butt of the rifle on the left side of her face and shoulder, under the impact of which the latter fell to the ground, but was still alive and attempted to stand up. At this moment 4 soldiers came out of the hotel, and along with lieutenant Vogel dragged R. Luxemburg into the same car in which she had been brought to the hotel. They themselves got into the car. Vogel took out a pistol and in that very place shot Luxemburg in the head. Her corpse was carried away.  

Subsequently, the following persons walked out of the hotel: captain-lieutenant Pflugk-Hartung, his brother, captain Pflugk-Hartung, Oberlieutenant Rithin, oberlieutenant (illegible in the original document), lieutenant Shultz, lieutenant Liepmann soldier Friedrich and among them was K. Liebknecht who was taken away by them in a car parked on the other side of the road.  

After a while Lieutenant Krul came to Runge at the post and ordered him to go immediately to the 2nd floor of the hotel and kill Wilhelm Pieck, the Editor of the Communist newspaper 'Rote-Fahne'.  

Krul brought Runge to the 2nd floor, where Wilhelm Pieck was standing in the corridor, and told Runge to shoot Wilhelm Pieck if he made a move. They wanted to fake a killing while attempting to escape while under detention.  

When Runge and Pieck were left alone in the corridor, the latter turned to Runge and said 'soldier do not shoot me, I have something more to convey to your command', after which Runge led Wilhelm Pieck to the room of captain Pabst. After a few minutes Pabst led Pieck out into the corridor and ordered Runge to accompany the latter to the commandant's office. On the way, supposedly, Runge let Wilhelm Pieck go, and returned to the headquarters and reported to Lieutenant Hervitz, that he, Runge, fell ill and had let Pieck go, as he could not accompany him any further.  

Approximately at 22.30 Lieutenant Vogel came to the headquarters and declared that they had dumped the corpse of R. Luxemburg into the river Spree.  

The second car returned approximately at 23.00 with the officers who had taken away K. Liebknecht, and they said that they took the latter along the road towards the Zoological Park and faked a breakdown in the car. They stopped the car and got out of it. Then lieutenant Shultz took a pen-knife out of Liebknecht's pocket, cut himself on the arm and then shot Karl Liebknecht, thereby trying to depict that Liebknecht was killed while attempting to escape during which he injured Shultz.  

On 16th January Runge was summoned to the regimental headquarters where Captain Pabst gave Runge the order: stay, without leaving at the apartment of Lieutenant Liepmann till he received the necessary documents for departure.  

After a gap of 8 days Lieutenants Kanaris and Liepmann gave Runge false documents in the name of Krankenwerter Dinwald and suggested to him to proceed to Fletsburg and also handed Runge a sum of 1000 Marks.  

Runge lived in Fletsburg till 11th April 1919 and then two officers from the crime police came to him and asked Runge to come along with them to Berlin.  

On the way to Berlin on the train, these officers of the crime police explained to Runge that he was being taken to the court in a case regarding the murder of K. Liebknecht and R. Luxemburg. He must deny his involvement in the killing, declaring that at the time he, Runge, was living in Fletsburg.  

On reaching Berlin Runge was put in jail on 13th April, and on 8th May the legal process started and continued till 14th of May.

  

On 9th June 1945 during interrogation Otto Runge gave the following evidence:  

'During the time when I was in jail prior to the trial, advocate Grinsbach and Judge Hentz came to my cell and gave me instructions as to how I should conduct myself during the trial. They told me to take all the blame on myself and not to involve any of the officers. I was supposed to declare that the killing of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht was carried out by me on my own initiative in a state of insanity'.  

During the interrogation of 14.IX.1945 Otto Runge said:  

'After I answered the question put to me by Judge Hentz that I had killed Rosa Luxemberg and Karl Liebknecht on my own initiative and in a state of insanity, no more questions were posed to me'.  

And further:  

'In reality I was not insane, I was a normal person and was answerable for my acts as a person in full control of his mental abilities.  

'Before the trial I was thrice sent for medical examination and the legal medical consultants doctors Leipmann and Shtrasmon gave the report about my insanity'.  

After the officers, who really were involved in the killing of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, when asked by the court replied that they had never issued any orders regarding the killing, indignant and angry shouts were heard in the courtroom from the general public to the effect that the officers were giving false testimony as they were the real perpetrators of the killing and Runge had served only as a tool in their hands. Judge Hentz stopped the trial and removed the public from the courtroom and the session continued in camera.  

Runge was sentenced to 25 months in jail by this trial court and all the officers were acquitted.  

While serving time in jail, some time in the month of November 1919, one colonel Apshtet, who was then told the whole truth by Runge about the killing of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, visited Runge. Colonel Apshtet made a written record of the interrogation of Runge and told the latter that this record would be placed before the Chairman of the Supreme Military Court for a second inquiry into the case for Runge's acquittal.  

On the 31st of January 1920 by a decision of the Supreme Military Court Runge was released and continued to stay at his home waiting for the second trial.  

On the 5th of February 1920 Runge was visited at his home by 3 officers of the police and Heppert, the Head of the administration of the jails. The latter told Runge that new court proceedings were going to be initiated regarding the case of the killing of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, and Runge would appear in these proceedings as a witness and the officers involved in the killing as the accused. However, due to political compulsions Runge would have to be put in jail again. Heppert took away the certificate of release by the Supreme Court' (Vishii Verkhovnii Sud — trans.) from Runge and he was taken to the jail by the policemen where he stayed till 24th March still waiting for the trial to begin.

In connection with the publication of an article in one of the journals by its editor, one Bornstein, regarding the wrong sentence passed by Judge Hentz in 1919 in the case regarding the killing of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, a new trial was initiated in which Runge appeared as a witness.

  

During the interrogation of 8th August of this year Otto Runge said:  

'About 8 days before the beginning of the trial of Judge Hentz I was approached by two persons who offered me 10,000 marks so that I would give the same evidence in this trial regarding the killing of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht as I gave in the earlier trial of 1919. These people did not mention their names but did mention that they had come on the personal request of Judge Hentz. I refused to accept their offer'.  

During this interrogation Runge also said:  

'At the trial of Judge Hentz I told the entire truth, how the killing was really carried out and also about the attempt to kill Wilhelm Pieck'.  

At the trial of Judge Hentz Wilhelm Pieck was also present as a witness.  

For fraudulently passing the judgement in the case regarding the killing of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919, Judge Hentz, supposedly, was dismissed from the post of the Chief Prosecutor of Germany after a trial in 1929.  

It was not possible to investigate the matter of the killing of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in greater detail, despite my written directive, in view of the fact that no more witnesses or direct participants of the killing could be found, and Runge's health sharply deteriorated in the second half of August. On 1st September Runge died due to deteriorating symptoms of old age (Runge was born in 1875).  

Military Prosecutor of the Berlin garrison
Colonel of Law
Kotlyar  

Courtesy: 'Vestnik' No.1, 1995. Translated from the Russian by Tahir Asghar [A correction says that this actually comes from 'Istochnik' No. 1, 1995, pp. 133-137].

Epitaphs For Karl Liebknecht and
Rosa Luxemburg  

Bertolt Brecht  

Epitaph 1919  

Red Rosa has also now disappeared
Where she lies is unknown
Because she told the truth to the poor
The rich have hunted her out of the world.  

Epitaph for Karl Liebknecht  

Here lies
Karl Liebknecht
The fighter against war
When he was struck down
Our city still continued to stand.  

Epitaph for Rosa Luxemburg  

Here lies buried
Rosa Luxemburg
A Jewess from Poland
Champion of the German workers Murdered on the orders of
The German oppressors. Oppressed;
Bury your differences!  

Translated from the German by V.P. Sharma  

 

In Memory of Karl Liebknecht, 1919-20, Käthe Kollwitz  

UNAC Statement on Palestine

The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) stands in unconditional solidarity with the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people against the ongoing Nakba: the occupation and ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine by the Israeli regime. We firmly uphold Palestinians’ Right of Return to their national homeland – from the river to the sea – and reaffirm our commitment to ending US aid to Israel, which totals nearly $4 billion per year.

Recent months have seen major escalations by Israel. Heavily armed raids on the West Bank have become a daily occurrence, with at least three Palestinian children killed by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in the opening few days of 2023. Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power has unleashed a Zionist agenda that dispenses with even the usual platitudes of some eventual negotiated peace or “two-state solution.” Instead Netanyahu brazenly declared that all of historic Palestine is part of Israel, and has committed to expanding Zionist settlements in the West Bank. Netanyahu also appointed the openly racist Itamar Ben-Gvir to be national security minister, who then led settlers to storm the sacred Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and days later banned flying the Palestinian flag.

We see these actions as acts of desperation in the face of growing Palestinian resistance. The Lions’ Den militant group has sparked an unprecedented mobilization among Palestinian youth that is spreading like wildfire from its origins in the refugee camps of Nablus. IOF incursions face spontaneous and organized resistance wherever they occur. Meanwhile, a growing international consensus acknowledges the apartheid character of the Israeli regime, and the massive displays of support for Palestine during the 2022 FIFA World Cup laid bare the unpopularity of the normalization agreements between some Arab governments and Israel.

There’s agreement from all corners that the situation is unsustainable and will likely boil over in 2023. Some have already called it the Third Intifada. Regardless what happens, we see it as the task of the international solidarity movement to support the Palestinian struggle for national liberation by any and all means: defending the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement from legalistic attacks on the right to boycott; protesting US institutional ties to the occupation; direct action against the Israeli arms industry; and continuing to educate and agitate around the truth of what’s happening in Palestine.

We also join the vast coalition of organizations worldwide in calling for the release of all Palestinian prisoners, including Ahmad Sa’adat, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who was abducted 21 years ago this week.

The Zionist project remains a prime example of modern-day colonialism, now largely sponsored by the US as a crucial beachhead for US imperialism in the broader region. Palestinians have a right to resist these attacks on their national homeland by any means necessary, and people in the US have a moral responsibility to support them. UNAC remains committed to joining with and growing the Palestine solidarity movement in 2023.

Free Palestine!
End US aid to Israel!
Defend the right to boycott!
Free Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners!

En Marcha: In Peru the fight against Dina Boluarte continues

 From En Marcha #2033, January 18-24, 2023 [ pcmle.org/EM/spip.php?article12280 ; I slightly edited the translation.] 

In Peru the fight against Dina Boluarte continues 

 

The protests of the Peruvian people against the dictatorial government of Dina Boluarte have been going on for more than a month and, in recent days, have taken on higher, more combative and generalized forms. Road blocks and important demonstrations in several regions of the country have been the order of the day, highlighting those that have occurred in Puno, Arequipa, Junín, Cusco and Apurímac. 

The unanimous cry of the people raised in protest is to demand the resignation of Boluarte, the closure of Congress, the immediate call for elections and the freedom of Pedro Castillo. If these demands are not met, the protests will continue in a combative manner. For their part, representatives of the government have not been able to hide a series of highly repressive measures, which seek to maneuver the circumstances and control the crisis created by the ruling classes of the neighboring country. 

The police have tried to unblock the roads taken over by the thousands of demonstrators who have used stones and the burning of tires; this has been responded to in a cowardly way with abundant tear gas and, most seriously, the use of firearms by the police and military. These have already left more than 50 dead and hundreds injured and detained. The "protectors", who have taken over public buildings and airports and carried out brutal repression against the people, have not been able to stop the protestors. They have not been intimidated and, on the contrary, their demonstrations have become more forceful, despite the warnings of the Boluarte government. It maintains the state of emergency, as the main mechanism to control the social discontent that has been seen again in the streets and plazas of the country. Everything indicates that the struggle in Peru will not decline until the demands have been met. 

The exhortations of President Boluarte have been in vain. She accuses the people of "retreat, pain, economic losses", thereby trying to hide the fact that the crisis in Peru has been caused by the anti-popular governments that are subservient to the interests of imperialism and the Peruvian ruling classes. The crisis has greatly worsened with the illegal dismissal of President Pedro Castillo through a coup d'état, supported and engineered by US imperialism. 

The decision of the people is to continue with the protests despite the violent repression and the political maneuvers that have been developed by the authorities to stop them. "They must all go", the resignation of Boluarte, the closure of Parliament, the holding of a constituent process to change the 1993 Constitution, and the call for immediate new elections are the banners that are held high. 

The Peruvian Prosecutor's Office has been forced to initiate a process of investigation into Boluarte for the crimes that have been committed against the people. However, the people do not trust that the process will be fully carried out; it may well be part of the maneuvers that try to reduce the intensity of the struggles. Boluarte, for her part, cynically calls for peace and accuses those who protest of violence. 

A Verdade: People take to the streets against fascist vandalism

 Slightly edited; see the link for the photos:

averdade.org.br/2023/01/povo-sai-as-ruas-contra-vandalismo-fascista/  [newspaper of Brazil's Partido Comunista Revolucionário / Revolutionary Communist Party] 

People take to the streets against fascist vandalism  

Demonstration in Rio for the arrest for Bolsonaro and his gang. Photo: @brunafrey  

Thousands of people mobilize in Brazil and abroad against fascist vandalism. Protesters called for the arrest of Bolsonaro and his accomplices and are against the return of the Military Dictatorship in the country.  

Felipe Annunziata | Rio Newsroom  

BRAZIL – Throughout the second day (January 9), thousands of people demonstrated against the coup events in Brasilia that occurred the day before. Dozens of state capitals and inland cities have recorded events that have also been replicated in at least 6 countries in Europe and North America.

The mobilization was called by social movements, trade unions and left-wing political parties. Demonstrators everywhere called for punishment for the coup vandals and stood against the return of military dictatorship to Brazil.  

In Sao Paolo, thousands gathered at the Art Museum against coup-ism. Photo: Thiago Salvador  

In Rio, the event took place in Cinelândia, a historic place of resistance to the Fascist Military Dictatorship (1964-1985), and more than 10,000 people gathered on a day of heavy rain and flooding in the state capital. In São Paulo, the demonstration took place on Ave. Paulista and tens of thousands of people from social movements, parties and organized supporters of all kinds gathered.  

There were also significant demonstrations in Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Salvador, Manaus and Maceió. In all cities the demand for punishment of the fascists was unanimous, the people on the street openly stand against any kind of conciliation with vandals and criminals coup-makers.  

The federal capital also registered an important anti-fascist event. Meanwhile, last night (January 9) and today morning (January 10), the House of Representatives and the Senate endorsed the decree of federal intervention in the Federal District issued by President Lula.  

The national president of UP [Popular Unity], Leonardo Pericles, stated at the event in Belo Horizonte, "it is necessary to cut the evil at the root, arresting Bolsonaro [currently sheltered in Florida], his accomplices, the reactionary generals and the big fascist businessmen."  

In Salvador, thousands of people marched against Bolsonaro's coup-attempt. Photo: Isabella Tanajuda/Jornal A Verdade  In Porto Alegre, tens of thousands of people marched under the cry of "Military Dictatorship never again!". Photo: @cunhaanselmo/@thalesrenato/@joanaberwanger  

[From the Triangle VFP January 19th:

RALLY FOR THE ABOLITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

1 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 22

Terry Sanford Federal Building, Raleigh (210 New Bern Ave,)

 

Think it can’t happen here?

This Sunday, Jan. 22, marks the 63^rd Anniversary of the catastrophic U.S. B-52 bomber accident near Goldsboro, NC (Wayne County) in 1961. A rally in remembrance of that near-detonation of a nuclear weapon, and a call for the abolition of nuclear warfare, will be held in Raleigh this Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Terry Sanford Federal Building (310 New Bern Ave.)

Our world is once again threatened by the possibility of a nuclear explosion (either by accident or by design). As members of VFP, we are called upon to stand and say NO! to nuclear weapons. PLEASE JOIN US ON SUNDAY AT 1 P.M.

For more information, see: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/williams1/

PS: Good News! On Tuesday night, and by unanimous consent, the Durham City Council endorsed the Resolution in Support of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)! Please let us know if you’d like help getting a similar resolution endorsed by your own town/city council]

Scintilla: No to chauvinist provocations and warmongers in the Balkans!

From Scintilla, Issue 130, January 2023, by  Piattaforma Comunista – for the Communist Party of the Proletariat of Italy  

No to chauvinist provocations and warmongers in the Balkans!  

In recent times the striving for "Greater Serbia" by the Serbian bourgeoisie, which has always had historical pretensions, has been revitalized. Considering favorably the context of the conflict created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine to make progress towards this goal, the Serbian bourgeoisie, with the Vucic government, is looking for a new adventure.  

It is said that tensions have cooled since Vucic declared that the Serbs in northern Kosovo have begun to tear down some barricades that they had erected, but the situation has not changed overall, as the reasons for the conflict have deep roots.  

Vucic seems to have set his sights on Kosovo, where the chauvinist and racist Serbian nationalist gangs, the Chetniks, do not stop. They began to create tensions with Kosovo by deploying troops to the border. The Serbian bourgeoisie, which has good relations with Hungary's Orban and the far right in the new Italian government, also has its eyes on other parts of former Yugoslavia, assuming that by annexing parts of Kosovo and other Balkan countries it can create "Greater Serbia". Vucic is trying to materialize step by step the dream of the Serbian bourgeoisie together with the reactionaries in Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia.  

Since Serbia is a powerful Balkan country, the nationalism of the Serbian bourgeoisie and the aspiration for "Greater Serbia" should not be underestimated. This orientation of the Serbian bourgeoisie, which has increased especially before the First World War, has constantly posed a serious problem in the Balkans. The nationalist fervor of the Serbian bourgeoisie, which was taken up by Tito immediately after the liberation of Yugoslavia, continued with the repression of the nationalities in that country, which he detached from unity with the countries of the people's democracies.  

The domination of modern revisionism paved the way in Yugoslavia, in the USSR, and then in all the Balkan and Eastern European countries except for a few decades in Albania, to openly adopt the capitalist order of exploitation. This led to the collapse and disintegration of these revisionist countries.  

As a result, the bourgeoisies of the Balkan countries, first and foremost those of Serbia, who considered collaboration with the US, European, Russian and Chinese imperialists a solution, have provoked rivalries and conflicts between nations, spread enmities between peoples and produced national differences, in order to strengthen their hegemony in the region.  

In the 1990s, under the conditions of national oppression by the Serbian bourgeoisie, which fueled nationalism and national differences, the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO, which led the country to destruction, was bloody but not difficult. The Great-Serb aggression led by Milosevic and the disintegration of Yugoslavia led to the deterioration and widening of nationalist rivalries and conflicts among the Balkan bourgeoisie.  

The Balkans must not once again become a terrain of conflict and war, a war that will inevitably affect all the workers and peoples of Europe.  

It is necessary to prevent the bourgeoisies of the Balkan countries, especially the Serbian bourgeoisie, in collaboration with the imperialists and with the support of the remnants of revisionism, from dragging the peoples into a new nationalist struggle.  

The Balkans remain once again a center of conflict among the imperialist powers. The US and NATO "protect" Kosovo for their own interests – not for the freedom of the Albanians and the other peoples in Kosovo – and many Balkan states are now members of NATO and the imperialist EU, which are using and deepening conflicts and encouraging the pro-Western imperialist forces in the region. Russian imperialism seeks to maintain and extend its influence by fueling conflicts, supporting and fostering Serbian chauvinism.  

It is up to the working class and the peoples of the Balkans, with their communist, revolutionary and progressive organizations, to take responsibility.  

As members of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO), we declare that we stand with the peoples of the Balkans and the revolutionaries who raise the demands of peace and brotherhood against chauvinism, warmongering and fascism. 

 

The solution lies in socialism against capitalism, in real independence, in political democracy against fascism, in equality of national rights and in the international unity and solidarity of the working class and peoples against bourgeois nationalism and all imperialists.  

January 2023  

European members of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO)  

Communist Party of Albania – CPA  

Communist Workers' Party of Denmark – APK  

Communist Workers' Party of France – PCOF  

Organization for the Construction of a Communist Workers' Party of Germany  

Movement for the reorganization of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE 1919-55)  

Marxist-Leninist organization Revolusjon – Norway  

Revolutionary Labor Alliance of Serbia – RSRS  

Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist)  

Party of Labor (EMEP) – Turkey