Wednesday 30 March 2016

IMPERIALIST VULTURES

There is no such thing as "good will " on behalf of the u.s. imperialists. They are always up to something, and only act in the interests of monopoly capital, to the detriment of the people of the world, no matter how damaging it is.
  And that is why obama's recent trip to Cuba can only mean that they are going to try and wrest control of that country through diplomatic means. Lowlife snakes.

From A World to Win News Service:

What Future for Cuba Did the Handshake Between Barack Obama and Raúl Castro Herald?

Updated and reposted March 28, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

April 13, 2015. A World to Win News Service. What future for Cuba did the handshake between Barack Obama and Raúl Castro symbolize? It was a heartbreaking moment when the leader of a country once a symbol of defiance to the despised “Yankee empire,” as Cubans and others in revolt against U.S. domination labelled it, shook hands with the “honest man,” as Castro now praised the man currently in charge of that empire. It was a bitter moment for Cubans and for people everywhere, including in the U.S. where Obama and the state machinery in general would like this gesture to relieve some of the discredit earned it by the man who is now presiding over the “slow genocide”, as it has been called, of African-Americans, and wars of aggression and attempts to reboot American hegemony throughout so much of the world.
Check out "Three Alternative Worlds," the Supplement to Chapter 2 of BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian.
One especially bitter element in this moment was the way Obama focused on the possibility of removing Cuba from his government’s “international terrorism” list as a way to bludgeon the submissive Castro regime into even more submission. It is the U.S. that held sway over Cuba through terrorist tyrants for decades, that attempted to invade Cuba to bring back the old regime two years after it was overthrown, that mounted all sorts of terrorist attacks on the new regime including, most notoriously, blowing up an airliner full of civilians, and constantly plotted to bring down the regime through the assassination of its leaders. The history of Cuban-American relations is a history of unbridled U.S. violence.
Cuba fell into the hands of the U.S. for the first time in 1898, when the U.S. invaded the island with double purpose of finishing off Spanish rivalry for control of the Caribbean and putting down a Cuban revolt that threatened to turn it into what American statesmen called “a Negro republic.” Slavery and sugar cane had created modern Cuba, and although slavery had been abolished, sugar cane still enslaved the economy and its people.
U.S. troops occupied Cuba for a total of 12 years over the course of the next two decades. The U.S. wrote an amendment into the Cuban constitution allowing it to intervene at will, which it did openly until the American ruling class fashioned a Cuban military that could be entrusted with their interests and political structures to run the country accordingly. This meant some of the world’s most notorious tyrants, generals obsequious to Washington and unspeakably cruel toward the people. U.S. installation of torture republics was standard operating procedure in many places, including in the neighboring Dominican Republic and Haiti.
Sugar cane is a crop that thrives on human flesh. Under U.S. domination, sugar plantations ate up much of the arable land. The U.S. sucked wealth out of Cuba in two ways, by dominating big agriculture and other businesses (such as rum, a sugar-dependent industry), and selling food and nearly everything else to a country that used to be extremely fertile before its forests were burned down to make way for sugar.
People worked unbearably hard in dangerous and life-shortening conditions during the harvest months and went hungry the rest of the year. A sugar cane mill worker killed in a strike was found to have no underwear or socks to be buried in. Cubans worked on U.S.-owned cattle ranches, but only a tenth of the people in the countryside ever drank milk and less than half of that percentage ever ate meat. In fact, it was often family labor on tiny plots of land that enabled people to survive from harvest to harvest in the cane fields. Small farmers, often poor whites, were not much better off than plantation workers.
Cuban society was as devastated as its economy. Under the watchful eyes of Washington’s ambassadors, the U.S.-based Mafia set moral standards and the Catholic Church blessed them. Among the most sacred values was men’s right to rule over women and women’s confinement to the following categories: mothers, wives, mistresses and prostitutes.
Prostitution flourished—in brothels and on the streets, ten percent of Havana’s population “served” American military men, civilian sailors and sex tourists. The biggest growth industry was casinos. Even as Cuba became known as a country where “anything goes” for rapacious foreigners, ordinary Cubans had no rights. The aspirations of the better-off middle classes and professionals were trampled underfoot by the country’s corrupt, arbitrary, vicious and tiny ruling class in association with the ultimate rulers, U.S. monopoly capitalists and their political representatives in Washington.
The 1959 Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and others was an inspiration to people everywhere at that time, not a “disaster” as some commentators call it, nor some obscure “Cold War” quarrel as Obama claims. It was right to overthrow a U.S.-backed regime that murdered as many as 20,000 people in its last years.
But that revolution was not led by a party with a real understanding of and commitment to what it would take to end all forms of oppressive economic and social relations and thinking they engender, despite use of the names “Communist Party” and “socialism.” Its leaders traded dependency on the U.S. for dependency on the Soviet Union. (The USSR itself had already abandoned socialism in the 1950s and had become “social imperialist”, socialist in words, monopoly capitalist and imperialist in reality.) Since the fall of the USSR that leadership has floundered, and not just economically. They have been unable to offer the Cuban people a viable alternative to an uninspiring and untenable status quo.
The unrevolutionary character of the Cuban regime led by Fidel Castro was apparent in the attempt to continue the island’s submission to sugar (now to be sold or traded to the USSR) in forms that reproduced the old relations of exploitation and oppression in old and new ways. Neither the dependent economy nor the society that economy had created were ever thoroughly transformed in a liberating way.
The lack of political rights and ferment of dissent that the Cuban regime’s reactionary critics complain about was stultifying. Yet the most central right such people never talk about and will never agree to anywhere, and that the Castro regime never dreamed of, is the right of the masses of people to increasingly take part in running society through a new kind of state, transforming economic, social and political relations and themselves, leading to a world free of all oppressive relations among human beings. Raúl Castro’s attempt to ensure his regime’s survival by crawling to the U.S. imperialists, the biggest criminals against humanity today and Cuba’s historic slave masters, is painfully ugly, but it is consistent with the nature of the regime and society he and his brother Fidel have led.
The country’s dependency is shifting from sugar plantations to tourism plantations, an “industry” that offers no hope for economic independence and the fulfilment of human potential. And prostitution, which has been reintroduced and thriving for decades, is both a metaphor and mechanism for the further destruction still to come as the “free market”, whose awful power was never abolished in Cuba but now to be stoked by U.S. capital, further destroys bodies and souls.
The lust with which the U.S. now looks at Cuba is terrifying. More generally, however, the Obama-Castro handshake does not represent a new and durable triumph for U.S. imperialism, but manoeuvring in a world where American hegemony is increasingly endangered. An understanding of why the Cuban revolution has ended up where it is today, and why that was not and is not inevitable, would be important for people everywhere whose revolutionary aspirations have not been quenched.
****
For more, see “Re-Colonization in the Name of Normalization—Behind the Re-Establishment of U.S.-Cuba Diplomatic Relations,” by Ramond Lotta, Revolution #367, December 29, 2014, at revcom.us. Also “Burn Down the Cane Fields! Notes on the Political Economy of Cuba,” A World to Win magazine nos. 14 and 15, available at http://bannedthought.net/International/RIM/AWTW/1989-14/AWTW-14-Cuba.pdf
http://www.bannedthought.net/International/RIM/AWTW/1990-15/AWTW-1990-15-Cuba.pdf
or http://www.librarything.com/work/14333556
Further, despite its theoretical flaws, the classic Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano, who died April 13, 2015, remains a valuable, highly insightful and poetic denunciation of that continent’s history under colonialism and imperialism. (Monthly Review Press, 1997)

Tuesday 29 March 2016

THE AMOUNT OF STUPIDITY

The sheer volume of stupidity in the next story is fucking baffling. Couldn't the cop think for a moment and say, "This is dumb, I'm not bringing him in for this", and were the fucking handcuffs necessary? It's a good thing the u.s. are dictating to the entire world how to run their affairs. I'm sure the people in north carolina feel safer now.

Man arrested over 14-year-late VHS of Freddy Got Fingered: ‘For the first time I got put in handcuffs’

James Meyers in the video he posted telling the world about his VHS-rental saga.
YouTube / James MeyersJames Meyers in the video he posted telling the world about his VHS-rental saga.
What would Gord do?
A North Carolina man was arrested and charged this week for failing to return a VHS rental, “Freddy Got Fingered,” to a now-defunct video store some 14 years ago.
James Meyers, from Concord, North Carolina, was served last Tuesday with an arrest warrant and charged with failing to return rental property from 2002. It’s a misdemeanour punishable by a fine up to $200, according to reports.
When Tom Green — who wrote, directed and starred (as Gord Brody) in the crude 2001 comedy — heard about the criminal charge, he said he wanted to help.
“If it’s 200 bucks, of course I’ll pay it for him,” Green told the New York Daily News, “just for the principle of the thing.”
Meyers, 37, was driving his daughter to school Tuesday when he was pulled over for a burned-out tail light; after police ran his licence, he got the news from an officer.
“He finally comes back and he’s like, ‘Sir, can you step out of the car?’ and my daughter’s in the backseat, bug-eyed: ‘What’s happening, Daddy? Are they going to take you to jail for a bad brake light?'” Meyers said in a YouTube video posted after the incident. “The guy brings me to the back of the car and he goes, ‘Sir, I don’t know how to tell you this but there’s a warrant for your arrest from 2002. Apparently, you rented a movie, ‘Freddy Got Fingered,’ and you never returned it.
“So there’s a civil suit that they processed as a criminal case, and we’re here to take you to jail. But it’s from 14 years ago, and I see you have your daughter, and I think this is ridiculous.’
“And I’m looking at this man like, ‘What?'”
Meyers said the officer told him he would let him go but that he had to report to the police station to “get this cleared up.”
When Meyers arrived at the station, he said, he was arrested.
“For the first time I got put in handcuffs,” he told WSOC-TV.
Concord police said in a statement that the warrant was issued in February 2002 by J&J Video in Salisbury, North Carolina.
“The warrant, which is signed by a magistrate, directs law enforcement officials to arrest a person and take them before a judicial official without unnecessary delay to answer to the charges,” police said in a statement. “In lieu of arresting Meyers on the scene of the traffic stop, the officer allowed Meyers to arrange a time to come to the Concord Police Department to be served with the arrest warrant.
“Later in the day, Meyers came to the Concord Police Department to be served with the arrest warrant. Officers took Meyers to the Cabarrus County Magistrate’s Office where they assisted him in getting a written promise to appear in court. Officers are required by policy to handcuff anyone prior to entering the secured area inside the of the magistrate’s office.”
When Green heard about the incident, he took to Twitter to express his disbelief.
“I just saw this and I am struggling to believe it is real,” he tweeted.
Green later talked about it on an Australian TV show, saying he called Meyers on Wednesday night to express his sympathies.
“I actually called him,” he said. “I saw the story was tweeted to me by one of his friends. I got his phone number. I called him up.”
Green added that “it’s an example of how bureaucracy can get out of control.”
Meyers is set to appear in court April 27, according to news reports.
“They’re not focusing on the crimes I think they should be focusing on,” Meyers told WSOC. “That hour the cops sat out there with me, the hour and a half I was down in the magistrate’s office could have been spent somewhere else.”

Monday 28 March 2016

HELL YES

Revolution Back page

WHAT IT REALLY MEANS

This is an important article about the recent attacks on civilians by some "jihadi" group. The main thing to remember is, that it's not "east vs west", but that imperialism and these fighters are two sides of the same rotten deceitful coin....

Points on the Recent Events in Brussels

March 22, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

1) Once again, forces associated with Islamic fundamentalist jihadism have struck against ordinary people going about their business, this time in Belgium. This is a reactionary attack in the service of a reactionary agenda and must be unconditionally opposed. This trend takes the anger against the oppression carried out by U.S. and European imperialism, couples it with a reactionary hunger for an idealized past that was itself awful, and misdirects it into fighting for a world in which women are dominated by men, in which superstition reigns over reason, and in which a new “caliphate” will insert itself into the same old reactionary imperialist order and the exploitation and oppression of the masses will continue.
As Bob Avakian (BA) has recently stated:
This system of capitalism-imperialism has been built on, and continues to perpetrate, slavery and white supremacy and all manner of atrocities against Black people, other oppressed peoples, and the masses of humanity throughout the world, including the half of humanity that is female. Some claim that the answer to this is Islam, and in particular fundamentalist Islamic jihad. But that is not the answer – it is not a radical alternative to this system and its monstrous crimes – it is itself another form of enslavement, oppression, and atrocity, against women and the masses of people overall. The answer is an actual revolution – a really radical and emancipating revolution – communist revolution, to bring an end at long last, to all oppression, everywhere.
2) But as BA has also emphasized, this trend would not be nearly as significant in the world today were it not for the far greater oppression carried out by imperialism and, in particular, U.S. imperialism. The U.S. along with its European allies has supported Israel in its open-air, slow-motion genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza (punctuated by periodic wars of aggression against Gaza) and in Israel’s apartheid-like oppression in the territory of historic Palestine overall; the U.S. has supported other reactionary regimes and social forces throughout the region, bringing down terrible suffering and mayhem on literally millions and millions, as it is doing today in its proxy war in Yemen carried out by Saudi Arabia, where thousands of civilians have died from U.S.-manufactured cluster bombs dropped from U.S.-supplied warplanes; and the U.S. has itself directly waged war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other places as well that has resulted in millions of deaths and the driving of many millions more into refugee camps or the open seas.
Now these imperialist hypocrites will use this attack, as they have all the others, to not only reinforce and intensify the worldwide horror they carry out, but to further whip up a warmongering patriotism and xenophobia (fear and hatred of “others”) and to crack down on all dissent and opposition within their “home base.” This will focus on Muslims very broadly, but will extend beyond that. Those who doubt this should consider how the French imperialists used the “state of emergency” measures after jihadist attacks last November to spy on, repress and jail environmental activists.
Bringing Forward Another Way
Bringing Foward Another Way is an edited version of a talk by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, to a group of Party supporters, in 2006. It is must reading for a serious understanding of what the U.S. "war on terror" is really about and how to bring forward a positive force in the world in opposition to both Western imperialism and Islamic Jihad.
Download PDF
We should in no way support ANY measures undertaken by our own oppressors in the name of safety, security, or any other buzzword they use. We should in every way OPPOSE anything that is done by our oppressor or other imperialists. Such opposition, rather than rallying around their flag, could actually contribute to the dynamic the world so desperately needs: a dynamic in which people all over the world see that people in the countries which are the main source of the oppression are saying NO to both poles of the madness.
3) Even more fundamentally: there IS an alternative to this madness, to a world in which this disastrous dynamic plays out daily all over the world and destroys millions – and that is revolution. Again, we direct you to the quote above from BA. This IS real... this COULD bring into being a different world beyond this horror and insanity...and you need to check this out and be part of it. Go to revcom.us and dig deeper into all this. Help get out this message. Support this movement and be part of helping to spread it.


Sunday 27 March 2016

IT'S BIGGER THAN HIP HOP.....

Dead Prez are one of my favourite and most inspirational hip hop groups of all time. The Revolutionary message they put into their songs combined with their intense musical style is an unbeatable combination, at least for me. In recent years they have done some collaborations that are fucking awesome, such as this one with Rebel Diaz. If this doesn't make you want to fight the power, you are both emotionally and brain dead....
Which Side Are You On ?

Saturday 26 March 2016

WORTHLESS

The trial of filthy smarmy prick gomeshi is over, and the fucking asshole judge saw fit to acquit him of all the charges. Many people were surprised, but many people were not. They recognized the whole "shame the victim culture" we live in, even if they don't necessarily see the entire system as being at fault. But it fucking is. This is a culture who's system and its enforcers disregard the many victims of the Highway Of Tears , and could have caught pickton far sooner had they respected and listened to the voices of the near victims, and the families of those victims. But they fucking didn't, because in this society women's lives are disposable, especially those who live on the fringes of this fucked up world.

Monday 21 March 2016

MY MONEY'S ON KEITH

It looks like Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards is not a horrible judge of character, despite his many decades of self-abuse and craziness. Anyone who wanted to knife fight trump can't be all bad, now can they?

Sunday 20 March 2016

WAKE THE FUCK UP

You can listen to the assholes bray on and on about how "you have no right to complain if you don't vote", or you can get in touch what's really going on in the world. Elections are just one of the ways they have you convinced that you actually have a say. But you don't. Fuck them and fuck their lying genocidal system. 

This is the most important thing you can do with your life.

Carl Dix and Sunsara Taylor Invite and Recruit Students Across California into the Real Revolution

March 7, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Since early February, hundreds of students have gathered at seven campuses in California to hear Carl Dix and Sunsara Taylor make the case for communist revolution and why they should dedicate their lives to revolution and the emancipation of humanity.
Carl Dix and Sunsara Taylor at Berkeley High
Carl Dix and Sunsara Taylor at Berkeley High School.
In a lively and compelling way, Dix and Taylor challenged students to confront the horrors of the world around them—murder by police of Black and Brown people, rampant violence and degradation of women, ugly wars for empire, mass deportation of immigrants, and catastrophic destruction of the environment—and revealed the roots of this in the system of capitalism-imperialism. They brought alive how Bob Avakian (BA) has, through decades of work, brought forward a new synthesis of communism that puts the process of making revolution and emancipating humanity on a consistently scientific foundation, and how this changes everything in terms of humanity's ability to finally put an end to the long dark night in which humanity has been divided into masters and slaves. And they brought alive how Bob Avakian is actively leading the process of making revolution right now as the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
Dix and Taylor opened up about their own lives, sharing how they first encountered the revolution and how BA's leadership—and sometimes BA himself—shaped their decisions to dedicate their lives to revolution and their development into communist leaders themselves.  They challenged assumptions, took people out of their comfort zones, lifted people's sights, welcomed questions from every angle, and invited many into a process of learning more as they join together with others to change the world towards revolution right now.
As soon as the presentations ended, hands shot up in the air. How will this revolution deal with the mounting environmental crisis, is it even possible—under any system—to meet the needs of all humanity without destroying the Earth's ecosystems? Even with revolution, how are you going to end racism and sexism, aren't those deeply embedded in people? How can you talk about science if so much of it hinges on one person? Aren't you promoting BA in a “cultish” way? In your new socialist society, who gets to decide policies and what voices get heard?  Will people have the freedom of religion?  Isn't Bernie Sanders better than the others—shouldn't we support him and why don't you? Are you afraid of death?  Is it really true that all porn is sexist? What are you doing today, and what should we do about all these things that are wrong right now? Is it really possible to defeat the armies of such a powerful empire? What about non-violence?  What about all the reactionary, fundamentalist white people with guns? What, exactly, is Bob Avakian's new synthesis? What do you mean by science? Don't we need better democracy? What about people who don't agree with communism, will you relocate them after the revolution? Don't you need the market to motivate people to stimulate innovation? These, and other important questions, were explored and works of BA and the website revcom.us were promoted as ways to go deeper.
Six Resolutions
Students raised the lies they had been taught about how communist leaders had allegedly “killed millions.” Taylor and Dix set the record straight not only on the particular incidents being brought up, but also exposed the dishonesty of how the history of communist revolutions is taught in this society. They challenged students to dig into the truth themselves, to go to thethisiscommunism.org website and to engage the lessons and approach that BA has forged through deeply wrestling with the actual history of communism—both the tremendous achievements as well as the very real shortcomings and errors—precisely so that we can do better and go further in the new stage of communist revolution which is urgently needed now.
At Berkeley High, there was particular interest from students in the readings that Dix and Taylor shared from Bob Avakian's memoir. BA came of age in the era of the Civil Rights movement, during which time he attended Berkeley High. While most of the questions posed by Berkeley High students in the large group focused on the communist revolution, in informal conversations almost every student said that what stood out to them most was BA's personal stories about growing up at Berkeley High. Several Black students noted, with a certain heaviness, that the kind of same kind of social segregation and tracking of Black students into different academic paths than white students that BA described from 50 years ago still goes on. They were drawn to the way BA took seriously the lives and experiences of his Black friends, and his honest acknowledgement of how much he learned from them and how this shaped his whole life.
At Stanford, one of the most elite campuses in the country, as well as among many of the graduate students who attended the Tour elsewhere, Taylor and Dix repeatedly drew from and called on people to get into both the new work from BA, The Science, The Strategy, The Leadership for An Actual Revolution, And A Radically New Society on the Road to Real Emancipation, and the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) to more deeply address the big questions put on the table. The approach of Bob Avakian's new synthesis to the relations between a socialist state and the whole world revolution, the economic functioning and contradictions, questions of international trade, questions of how “out of the box” scientists or thinkers will have their ideas engaged and debated, why the Revolutionary Communist Party must continue to lead the new society but also why it must be challenged and the whole society led to be filled with great debates, ferment, and dissent in order to keep the whole thing advancing along the broad road to communism, and more was explored.  Some of these highly intellectual students suggested that having such a Party leading was “elitist.” Others argued that in the real world only an intellectual elite could really rule and that it was “utopian” to aim to break down the division between those who have been trained to work with ideas and the vast majority on this planet who have been locked out of this.
Taylor and Dix brought alive the “5 Stops,” five key horrific concentrations of this system which people must be mobilized to STOP: police murder of Black and Brown people, oppression of women, attacks on immigrants, capitalist destruction of the environment, and wars for empire.  The stakes confronting millions of people today on each of these faultines, as well as the connections between fighting these now and preparing for revolution, was put before students. Plans were discussed—and much more needs to be organized and mobilized—for a national student strike in April against police murder and terror.
After every program, Taylor, Dix, and members of the local or campus-based Revolution Clubs stuck around, wrestling with the highest aspirations and the biggest challenges in the thinking of the students. At two schools, groups were brought together within days to read together and discuss the first essay in BAsics, “Reform or Revolution—Questions of Morality, Questions of Orientation.” At other schools, meetings were pulled together and new recruits to the Revolution Club joined more experienced members in getting out on campus right away to spread the leadership of Bob Avakian and dive in deeper to studying it themselves.  Everywhere this tour has been, the atmosphere and a section of people have been deeply impacted and transformed in significant—if beginning—ways. People were introduced to revcom.us and Revolutionnewspaper as the key organ to continue learning and acting together with others to make revolution.
There is much more to be learned from this, many new questions to be deeply engaged, and people to be organized to get much more deeply into the leadership of BA and to join in taking this out into the world at the same time as fighting to stop the many great crimes of this system. We will be covering more about these first stops—and future stops on this tour—in the pages of this website and newspaper.

Wednesday 16 March 2016

PATHETIC DIRTBAG

Of course this saanich police chief is trying to stop an investigation which would show him to be an even bigger dirtbag than we already know. Read this....



Tuesday 15 March 2016

A LIFE WORTH LIVING

Read this article about a Comrade who didn't spend time behind a computer sniping at people for petty insignificant nonsense. This was a person who dedicated his entire life to the emancipation of humanity. We could all take a lesson from his fine example.


Will Reese
Will Reese (1950-2016)
Will was a revolutionary communist, someone proud to call himself a follower of Bob Avakian (BA), and ready at all times to marshal the science to say why he was and convince you to be a follower too. Will was a Party member who devoted his whole life to communism and went wherever people were in motion and the struggle was sharpest, wherever the Party asked him to go, to spread this revolution. Will fought as best he could within the Party and as hard as he could to grasp and struggle for the understanding brought forward by BA and to apply it to the problems of the revolution, taking initiative to come up with creative ideas and plans, and contribute as best he could to the collective struggle to transform the world toward communism.
Will spent a tremendous amount of time out among the people, particularly (but not only) among the most oppressed, and was known, loved, and respected by thousands in New York City and around the country as an unapologetic revolutionary, a fierce fighter against the many crimes of the capitalist-imperialist system, and a passionate and scientific advocate of Bob Avakian’s leadership and the new synthesis of communism that BA has developed, which Will grasped was the key linkin reaching a world free of all the unnecessary cruelty and horror that he saw raining down on the masses of people every day of his life.
Will was on the front lines of many crucial struggles over the last 35 years, in Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and finally in New York. He went to Atlanta in the time of the Child Murders, when at least 20 Black children and youths were abducted and murdered by “forces unknown” in the early 1980s. He went to Miami in the wake of two major rebellions against police murders of unarmed Black men, and to LA after the massive uprising sparked by the acquittal of four of the cops who were caught on video savagely beating Rodney King.
Will’s fierce anger in calling out these crimes against the people, his willingness to give voice to his own deep pain and that of the people, especially at what was being done to the youth, both inspired people and could move them to tears, and to action. (See the video of his talk at the August 2015 gathering of hundreds of people at a Harlem church to build for the Rise Up October protests against police terror and murder.) He led people many times to go up in the face of the oppressors in the streets, and also went widely among teachers, professionals, and intellectuals, including meeting with people like the authors James Baldwin and Tony Cade Bambara to win their support for key struggles. At the same time, Will never stopped focusing on the need to bring forward to the movement for revolution those most in need of revolution, those catching hell every day from this system—especially the youth.
Will Reese from the NYC Revolution Club calls on people to donate funds to send 100 families to Rise Up October, August 27, 2016, New York City at First Corinthian Church
But what was most striking about Will was his determination to bring things back, again and again, to the fact that unless and until people rose up to make revolution, these horrors would keep happening, over and over again, and that for revolution to happen in the future, people had to start stepping forward now and get into Bob Avakian and the revolutionary science he has forged.
Will could—and did—go into a room of hundreds of students who were raging against police brutality, but were completely bogged down in petty and illusory non-solutions, and flip the room by bringing forward the need and basis for revolution, and challenging people to make their lives about that and nothing less. He could and he did lead the Revolution Club in Harlem, who went into huge housing projects with a mission and a plan to talk to every single resident at least once, about why the premiere of the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! was something that they had to be at if they cared about the people and the future. He could and he did go out widely among the people to build for the Dialogue on revolution and religion between BA and the revolutionary Christian Cornel West in 2014. And when people responded that they wanted to go because they liked Cornel (who has well-deserved respect among large numbers of Black people), Will had no hesitation about saying to them, “That’s great, but do you know about Bob Avakian? This is a leader that you really need to get into.” Will saw the importance of, and acted on, the need to draw people forward around these efforts—making it a point to get statements from among the masses about WHY they were going to the premiere of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!and why others should go, and challenging and working with people to take responsibility for organizing others to come to the Dialogue on revolution and religion.
Will did not just promote and popularize BA—he greatly appreciated and sought to apply BA’s scientific method and approach, including an unyielding confidence in the ability of the masses to take up revolution and incredible persistence to bring this about in the face of whatever obstacles. Even when plagued with ill health, Will would stay up all night reading, thinking, talking about problems like this, putting them before other comrades and to the masses themselves, going out persistently to engage and challenge the youth and sum up that experience, keeping journals of what people had said, and then developing new plans with specific goals to make advances.
Will understood the importance of, and placed great emphasis on, bringing the basic people forward as communists, into the Revolution Club and into the Party, which often meant overcoming the problem that so many people on the bottom of society have been denied even the rudiments of an education and are illiterate or semi-literate. Drawing from his own experience teaching students who had dropped out or been thrown out of school, Will worked with people by reading aloud from BA’s writings or other works and then deeply discussing the ideas. In this way, in Los Angeles he recruited Willie “Mobile” Shaw, who himself was—until his death in 2005—a powerful force connecting BA and revolution among the people in LA. (See “Statement by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, on the Occasion of the Death of Willie ‘Mobile’ Shaw.”)
Will was also a masterful agitator who mercilessly hounded and ridiculed the enemy—right to their faces! When he was in Atlanta this earned him a bitter nickname from the pigs who called him “the Mouth of the South.” It was a common sight on the streets of Atlanta to see dozens of people gathered around Will listening intently as he called out the crimes of this system. But Will was also“listening intently.” He didn’t talk “at” people—he was always very aware of his audience, watching for signs, in their eyes, a smile, body language, from which he could get a sense of what they were thinking and going through, and he would call out to people, even if they were just walking by—“Come on, sister, you know what I’m saying is true, what do you think about this?”—and he would draw people in, forging an instant community of people resisting oppression, wrangling with why things are the way they are and how they could be different.
As part of all this, Will was an incredibly warm, playful, and loving person who saw, and reached for, the best in everyone he met, urging and welcoming people to play the greatest role they could in the movement for revolution, whether they were lifelong veterans of that movement or were just encountering it at that moment. Consciously learning from BA, Will modeled a communist spirit of loving and cherishing the masses of people but always struggling to lead them. With good humor, with firmness, and sometimes with great courage, Will challenged expressions of male chauvinism, racism, nationalism, of slavishness or submission to the oppressors, and any other idea that kept the people enslaved by the system.
Although he was deeply aware of the many barriers to people stepping out against the system, or the pulls to give up that struggle—the difficulty of just surviving, the fear of the power the system could bring down on you, the pull of a “look out for #1” society and of backward “traditional ideas”—he was even more conscious of the need and the potential for people to break through those barriers and be part of the force fighting for the emancipation of all humanity.
All of this had a powerful impact on everyone around him; many people who encountered Will even 20 or 30 years ago never forgot him, and Will held a great many people in his heart as well.

Will Reese’s Early Life

Will himself was one of those who, from very early on in life, was driven forward by a love for the people and a hatred of the oppression they suffered, and searched restlessly for an understanding and a road forward out of this, a way to a world fit for human beings.
Will came up in rural southwest Virginia under the suffocating reign of open white supremacy, where the rules for Black people were plain to all, written in Jim Crow laws, in reactionary customs... and in blood. And all those rules came down to one rule: “know your place” and, most of all, always submit to white authority. Every Black person understood that to violate those rules could mean arrest, a beat-down, or a savage lynching.
But Will was already feeling the beat of a different rhythm, as the Civil Rights Movement spread through the South, giving heart to the rebellious spirits of youths even in the rural backwaters. At an early age, Will was one of the defiant ones who refused to submit. He and his crew boldly tried to integrate an all-white barber shop, but were turned back when the owner pulled a shotgun. They succeeded in integrating a roller rink after his little sister was turned away. They showed up at a country club dressed in their funkiest threads and insisted on playing golf. But even among these defiant ones, Will stood out for his fearlessness—one time when barely more than a child, Will and his friends were confronted by a large group of white youths; Will’s friends took off, but Will stood there, facing down the challengers.
A few years later, Will would see a picture of the Black Panther Party decked out in their berets and black leather jackets, and he recognized the militancy he wanted to emulate. So he set off searching for a beret. But there were no berets in his town! Undeterred, he fashioned one out of an old hat and got a leather jacket to go with it.
After high school Will got a football scholarship to attend Emory and Henry, a small liberal arts college that had only a few years earlier admitted its first Black students since its founding in 1839. College opened up new worlds and new possibilities for Will. He was attracted to the rebellious spirit and largeness of mind he found among the art students and professors, all of whom were white. He had a passion for oil painting, and to this day one of his paintings hangs in a community college in the area. He got into jazz. He studied history.
But with all his interests, talents, and passions, most of all, Will saw the need to radically change things, and that set the terms for his life. The upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s were increasingly influenced by revolutionary ideas, but there was not yet a clear revolutionary leadership or a clear strategy for revolution in the U.S. In these conditions, thousands of students and former students came together in small collectives and initiated different projects, often aimed at connecting the radical ideas that were flourishing on campuses to the oppressed people in different communities.
Will was part of this—after college he formed a collective to publish a magazine based in the Appalachian region near his school. The Plow published essays, creative writing, and art reflecting the unique culture of the deeply oppressed people—predominantly white—of Appalachia. Will saw this as a vehicle to spread radical ideas and initiate resistance, but others in the collective saw it purely as a cultural magazine, and when that line won out, Will moved on looking for something new.
Some friends invited him to Hawai’i in the mid-’70s, where he connected with the struggle of oppressed Native Hawaiian people to reclaim their culture as part of fighting for their liberation. Will loved to go to their encampment on the beach and hang out with them. He got a job in a pineapple processing plant and joined strikes and workplace struggles that were commonplace at the time.
Through all of this, Will continued to widen his view, learning that the problem was more than just white supremacy, his eye drawn more and more to a worldwide system of imperialism that ravaged the lives of billions, though he was still basically rooted in a revolutionary nationalist view of that.

Making the Leap to Communism

But around 1978 he met comrades from the recently formed Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) who were fighting fiercely against the oppressors, but with a different outlook, that of proletarian internationalism and communism. At that time, Bob Avakian was under heavy attack from the rulers of this system, both for his role as leader of the revolutionary struggle in the U.S.,and as a leader in the international communist movement who was calling out the new leadership in China—leadership that came to power in a military coup after the death of the great revolutionary leader, Mao Zedong—as revisionist betrayers of the revolution who were restoring capitalism in China*. BA was facing charges carrying a potential 241 years in jail stemming from a brutal police attack on a demonstration he led against Deng Xiaoping (the leader of the coup) when Deng came to DC, where the U.S. rulers welcomed him as a hero.
Will, still struggling with the need to rupture beyond revolutionary nationalism, decided to join 170 volunteers to go to Washington, DC, for six weeks for an intense political battle to free Bob Avakian and the other 17 people facing heavy charges from the demonstration. This battle involved going out very broadly among the people in DC, from the most down-pressed ghettos to artists, intellectuals and activists, to relatively privileged and professional people, and not only exposing the outrageous frame-up, but getting into the need for revolution and the role of genuine communist leaders like BA.
It was through the course of this that Will himself came to recognize that this communist movement, this science, and the leadership of BA, was what he had been looking for, the road forward for real liberation for all the people. And once he did that his tremendous defiance, love for the people, and hatred of oppression became fused with the science and the leadership that could actually forge a path to a whole different future.
And Will was all in from that point forward—to those who worked with him, he seemed both completely fearless and absolutely inexhaustible both in leading people to resist oppression and in taking revolutionary communism to them and struggling with them to take it up themselves, unleashed as a veritable force of nature, fearless, fierce, focused on bringing about revolution at the earliest possible time.
Will told people that one of his favorite writings by Bob Avakian was the final essay in BAsics, “The Revolutionary Potential of the Masses and the Responsibility of the Vanguard.” This is very fitting, and the outlook and orientation of this essay very much characterized Will. In essence, Will had a deep sense of the oppression of the masses and an unshakeable confidence in their ability to take up the struggle and the science of revolutionary communism.
One-on-one, Will would really put the whole thing to people, even if they were very new. Before the April 14, 2015, protests against police murder, a couple of college-age youths came around to help make banners for the march, but then started to head home rather than actually go to the protest. Will asked them why, and they basically said that while they supported the protest (which is why they were helping with the banners), they didn’t want to run the risk of fucking up their college education, and also thought doing this would drive a wedge between them and their parents. Will didn’t shine on that possibility, but he spoke at length about what the world needs from them now, and also talked about his own experience—and that of hundreds of thousands of people—in the ’60s, when those youth who were the backbone of the revolutionary upsurge often had to go up against and became alienated from their families. And he said that, really, revolutionary change is not possible if youth are not willing to do this, and that it is important to put the future of humanity and of the people, including people like their parents, ahead of the real pain that this might cause in the short run. This struggle was for real—Will wasn’t just making some points for these kids “to think about,” he was challenging them to make a big change in their lives because that’s what was needed.
Even in the hospital, when he was very ill, whatever energy Will had, he used to spread revolution, getting Revolution newspaper to doctors and hospital staff, starting up conversations with whoever was transporting him, and trying to deepen his own understanding so he could play a greater role. When the Six Resolutions of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, January 2016 came out, he was able to discuss it with comrades several times.
The death of Will Reese is heartbreaking to those who knew and loved him—and a great loss for the whole revolutionary movement. But it also poses a challenge. To all those who knew, admired, and loved Will, and even to those who are just learning about him: There is a great need for you to follow his example—to put the interests of the people, or to more fully put the interests of the people, at the center of your life, and to get into this—or get more fully and deeply into this—as a follower of BA, studying his scientific method and approach, popularizing and spreading his leadership in the way that Will did, in the way that made him such a precious leader and fighter for the future of humanity. This challenge goes out to longtime revolutionaries and brand-new people; it is a challenge to do the most important thing anyone can do with their life, and to do it well, and each and every one of you who responds to this will make a huge difference in the struggle for a world free of all oppression to which Will Reese devoted his entire life, body and soul.


* Today it is much easier to see that the coup in 1976 marked a reversal of the revolution, because China today is a grotesque “model” of capitalist exploitation run amok, destroying the lives of the people and the environment in pursuit of profit. But in 1978, this was not well understood even by most communists, and this confusion was actually disorienting the whole worldwide revolutionary struggle. BA’s role in very thoroughly and scientifically analyzing what had happened and on that basis opposing this and fighting to keep the communist movement internationally on the path of real revolution, was deeply threatening to the worldwide system of imperialism. [back]


Monday 14 March 2016

REAL DEMOCRACY

Never mind all of the staged photos of amerikkkan killer troops "helping" children in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is the true face of amerikkkan democracy, unstaged and real.....

 

Don't believe a fucking word they say.

Saturday 12 March 2016

REVOLUTIONARY LOVE

Carl Dix and Sunsara Taylor are two of my most respected people on this planet. I know there are many weasels insulting them behind the safety of the internet, but let those idiots yap their fool heads off. These Comrades are out there everyday, fighting for Revolution.

Big Questions, Deep Engagement, and Beginning Organization Sparked by Carl Dix and Sunsara Taylor Tour at a State University in California

March 6, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Recently Sunsara Taylor and Carl Dix spoke at a State University campus in California. Below a member of the Revolution Club reports on the work to build for this, and gives their impressions of the dialogue at the event.
We had done weeks of outreach, from club and class announcements, fliering to putting up posters, and people were talking about being interested in going to the event but not committing to it. Days before the event, it was announced that there would be a 40 percent cut to the Ethnic Studies department. This was a major blow to the students and faculty causing protest; and put a whole different attitude towards people’s perspectives on real change and progress.
We fliered at the protest and one of the original strikers from the battle for ethnic studies in '68 announced at the rally that a lot of people protested in the '60s but that what they didn't do then was make revolution and that revolution is what is needed and invited them to hear Carl Dix and Sunsara Taylor at the upcoming event. The day of the event, there was a hip-hop and breakdance event at the plaza in support of the battle for Ethnic Studies. The original striker from '68 again called for students to go to the event with Sunsara Taylor and Carl Dix. Carl arrived; one of the people hosting the hip hop event asked Carl, "You are the speaker at the event right? You want to say something?" Carl spoke about fighting these same struggles in the '60s (how people shouldn't have to fight to learn this history, how it should be a given), how he doesn't want to live in a world where these same battles continue but actual creating a whole different world, the need for revolution and that there is a leader for that revolution, Bob Avakian, and also inviting people to dig into this by coming to the event.
Minutes before the event, members of the Revolution Club made an announcement about the event at one of the dining halls. We talked about the wars for empire and how one in three women will be raped in her lifetime saying, "That’s a billion women.” Three Muslim women came off of that. About 80 people came to the event and about 60 of them were students. It was a diverse group, people from the Black Liberation Movement, math majors, an Ethiopian student, a break dancer and a woman who recently arrived from China.
Everything that was said is not mentioned here but these are some of the key points given during the engagement as I recall them.
The questions were sharply posed by Sunsara and Carl, "Who are we to talk about a certain type of oppression if we ourselves have not experienced it?" Sunsara pointed out that it is important to know where it started, Carl even pointed out how it's important to operate from the framework of the place we are aiming for regardless of where we are at any given point in time (how that was BA's framework when he met him). Some of this came up in the question and answer where students asked, "Are you afraid of death?" "I've watched violent porn before and my friends still do but not all porn is like that so do you think all porn is sexist?" "What do you mean by BA looking at things from where we are going?" "Didn't previous revolutions get corrupted, doesn't power corrupt, is that human nature?" "Shouldn't we vote for Sanders; in regards to deportations can't he do better than Obama?"
Answers to these questions were very in depth. When asked, "Are you afraid of death?" Carl said that he thought about this when he was drafted to go to Vietnam and that he was more scared of becoming a mindless fighting machine for this empire than death. Sunsara said yes, all forms of porn are sexist because the portrayal of women has always been to dehumanize and degrade them. She says that nowhere in porn when a woman says NO! is that respected. She also talked about how in Bangladesh young girls are given hormones to develop and even if that is not what you see in everyday porn that is what is happening and this is what mainstream porn is causing. Sunsara, in regards to looking at things from what we are aiming for, talked about how in China, socialism was not reversed because “power corrupts” even though that is what most people are taught. Rather, there was a military coup that drove people back to capitalism. Additionally, there were mistakes made by the communists, e.g. not teaching enough Marxist theory and work towards a revolutionary road, and some in power thought it was a good idea to work with imperialist rulers. The person with the, "Are you afraid of death?" question participated in the, "Is that human nature?" question by saying humans are only born knowing how to suck and grasp everything else is taught by society. Sunsara said that was an important contribution but also that there is more to it than that, she talked about humans knowing how to organize themselves, and that people are taught through this system to only care about themselves but that in a socialist society, people's outlook changes and a "serve the people" ethos is adopted.
A New Theoretical Framework for a New Stage of Communist RevolutionWhat is New in the New Synthesis?An Explorer, a Critical Thinker, a Follower of BA; Understanding the World, And Changing It For the Better, In the Interests of HumanitySome Thank Yous That Need To Be Said AloudOrder the book hereDownload the full interview in PDF format here
In the whole argument about voting for Sanders, Carl told people directly not to get played, that it’s not that the system needs your vote to do what they do but that they are going to do what the system needs to do. He gave the example that during the Vietnam War the U.S. imperialists had make a grand exit because soldiers were refusing orders and even at times killing their officers who tried to make them go out and fight a losing battle and because people here were protesting; promoting the need and righteousness of rebelling, going against business as usual. In regards to Obama being the commander and chief of deportations, he mentioned how Obama was going to be the president about positive change for immigrant people and yet he had deported more people than any other president so it’s not about who you vote for, its about what this system wants. The last point about why it is necessary to not vote for Sanders and not vote at all included letting students know that Sanders voted in support of the bombing of Gaza in 2014 by the Israeli military backed by the U.S. and that voting for him would not only grant your support of those types of horrors but also grant legitimacy to this illegitimate system.
Some people stayed for 3 1/2 hours. For those who left before the whole event was over, their comments ranged from enjoying how the speakers talked about different cultures, how they agreed with everything that the speakers said, one person didn't like how when one person in the revcom shirt would begin clapping others would follow which he felt gave the feeling of a “cult,” and the most necessary question at this point and time, “I liked everything that was said but how are we going to get more people involved?”
During the mingling time, mainly Black students and some Asian students stuck around. The discussion was aimed at the sex industry in different countries, how women have a different worth depending on where they are from, why people might have valid points but that is not the same as having the most accurate overall understanding, the analogy of Ebola was given to demonstrate how you want the answer that most corresponds to really treating the disease or problem, BA's comparing the pictures of the hanging to the depiction of women through porn, imagining a world without America (BAsics 3:1), how there are all these military bases across the world, the militarization of the border, the need for a Rev Club at this campus, being a part of building for the Stolen Lives tour and even having a stepping on the flag event when the Rev Club gets started because like Carl said during the tour, "We need a radical revolt against this revolting culture!"
Below are some of the comments left on the sign-up forms from the event:
23 yr. old student: I believe that we as people who are of different color, different gender, different ways on how we view the world need to come together in order to show people that the world ain't black and white—it’s made of many colors.  The only way we can come together as a group is by communication, cooperation and positive attitude.
20 yr. old student: Really interesting! I really appreciate the different problems and perspective that was discussed.
18 yr. old student: Very moving!!
18 yr. old student: Thank you!
47yr. old student: I am with All of Us or None and Transgender Injustice Project
18 yr. old student: I've been a feminist and maybe a socialist since I was in high school in China. This meeting made me excited.
35 yr. old student: Looking to learn more. I agree with most of the lecture.
30 yr. old worker: I look forward to learn more about B.A.
20 yr. old student: The Communism and socialism part should be elaborated since the concepts are new to people to study in such a favorable point of view.