Over 100,000 Peasants March Through CalcuttaInternational News
Socialist organizations in Turkey who are continuously under state terror have been raided again. As a result of the office and house raids by the Turkish police, about 60 people have been arrested and arrest warrants were issued for many others. The ESP (Socialist Platform of the Oppressed) and BEKSAV (Foundation of Science, Education, Aesthetic, Culture and Art Researches), the SGD (Socialist Youth Association), the EKD (Laboring Women’s Association) and Limter-Is (Dockyard Workers’ Union) have been targeted by such repression also on September 21, 2006 and scores of activists were arrested and imprisoned.
Las March 10, early in the morning, the police raided the offices of the Socialist organizations and the homes of their activists simultaneously in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Adana, Antakya and Mersin. They confiscated all lap tops, disks CDs, letters from the political prisoners and personal notes.
Most of those arrested are barred from seeing their lawyers and they are not informed as to what is the reason that they are arrested.
CALL FOR INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY
Protests have been held in Turkey and Northern Kurdistan against these police raids and arrests. These Socialist organizations as one voice cried out: “You are not strong enough to defeat us!” The socialists will fight back as they did before against these attacks and will continue their march towards the revolution.
We Want Freedom Campaign calls upon all progressive, revolutionary and communist forces top show solidarity with the arrested socialists and to protest to the Turkish state.
Please send your letters to the addresses below:
President of the Republic Abdullah Gul – cumdurbakablygy@tccb.gov.trPlease send a copy of your protest e-mail and solidarity to: info@wewantfreedom.org
Long live revolution, long live socialism!
Long live international solidarity!
NSC has sent solidarity message and protests. We urge all NSC readers to do likewise.
Over 100,000 Peasants March Through CalcuttaFrom aiaaif2006@yahoo.com
More than one hundred thousand peasants under the banner of All India Krishak and Khet Mazdoor Sangathan (all India Peasants and Agricultural Laborers Organization) from all over the state of West Bengal in India congregated in the city of Calcutta and marched with a charter of demands.
They were voicing their protests over the policies of the Central and State Governments who are uprooting the peasants from their fertile agricultural lands and handing them over to national and foreign capitalists as SEZs for setting up industries and for real estate businesses.
Last year, despite the atrocities unleashed by the state and its military, the peasants were determined and militant in their struggles to stave off the forcible acquisition of the peasants lands at Nandigram and trying to set up a car manufacturing factory at Singur. Never before has the city witnessed such a mass rally. The peasants threw a challenge to the so-called Communist Party of India (M) who rules this region: “Either meet our demands or shoot us down!”
The demands are:
(1) Stop black-marketing and have a fair price for seeds, fertilizers, pesticides etc to the peasants.
(2) Withdraw the tax on diesel and supply free electric power to farmers with less than 3 acres of land.
(3) Ensure a fare price for the agricultural products.
(4) Stop the police atrocities on the poor peasants and the tribal people
(5) Conserve and protect agricultural land.
(6) Introduce free medical care and education for the rural poor.
(7) Stop all trafficking of women.
The march ended with a huge public meeting where leaders of state as well as political leaders from the Socialist Unity Center of India who came to express their solidarity with the protestors.
All speakers charged that the CPI(M) has forfeited the right to be called a Communist or a Marxist Party, since the true banner of Communism and Socialism was being held up high by the protesting peasants.
The militant peasants pledged to carry on their fight against the anti-people policies of the Government until victory is achieved.
Statement by the Connolly Youth Movement
The British Army have recently lunched a recruitment campaign in the north with all schools targeted, billboards erected and leaflets delivered to all homes, encouraging young students-workers to join. On such school targeted was the cross-community Belfast Metropolitan College, with the Territorial Army running a misleading campaign, which projected a romanticized image of the Brutish Army serving overseas.
Spokesperson Nicholas O’Hagan said: ”This comes amidst hard economic recession and at a time when the British Army is failing to meet its targets for recruitment. Young students-workers will be tempted with the opportunity of earning thousands of pounds and the opportunity “to see the world.”
“No mention is made by the British Army recruitment officers of the atrocities carried out by the British Army in Iraq or Afghanistan and the legacy of their actions in Ireland.”
“The Educational Institute of Scotland has banned the recruitment by the British Army in Scottish schools and the National Union of Teachers in Britain itself has already voted to oppose any distribution of misleading propaganda.”
“The Connolly Youth Movement calls upon the trade union movement here to adopt a similar policy in order to prevent more of our young people being shipped off to their certain death in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or even to face death her in Ireland as was shown in Antrim last month.”
A letter to a sister by her brother Thomas who is teaching English in Venezuela
My dear sister –
I’m fine, and tings in Venezuela in general, and in Lara State, in particular, are even better than I had previously imagined. They are well on their way in the construction of a new revolutionary society. I never imagined that the level of social, economic and also political consciousness of the ordinary Venezuelan would be as high as it evidently is. These are indeed an awakened people!
Virtually everyone I encounter asserts his or her conviction that socialism – built from below – is their first and only path. When the “capitalist” owners of small furniture and grocery stores assert the same conviction, in my presence, I am left speechless by the apparent contradiction. Why, I wonder would a successful furniture-grocery store owners in Rio Tocuyo, embrace socialism? How did all this happen in just ten short years since Hugo Chavez was first democratically elected president by an overwhelming majority?
I have assisted the teacher in English classes at a High Scholl here in Rio Tocuyo (an indigenous word), and I think I learnt more from the experience than I was able to teach. Since my Spanish is non-existent I am forced to rely on my helpful teacher friend, Jesus Rojas, who faithfully translates every world I say. The kids enjoy my presence in the classroom and expressed great interest in my background, my interest in Venezuela, and they have all invited me back again to help them speak English. They were beautiful teenagers and I showed them great respect and, naturally, they reciprocated.
The English-teaching professors, journalists and political activists have done the same, and they have all expressed gratitude for my presence among them. They too wish to converse with me in order to improve their English pronunciations as well as to enquire about my analyses and interpretation of their “Socialism for the 21st Century” which is the process of being built from below.
They quickly recognize that I am not a “Cultural Imperialist”. My favorite quotation is from Professor Parenti – which they enjoy hearing as follows:
“Imperialism is the process of empire. It occurs when the dominant interests of one nation brings to bear their military and economic power upon another nation or region in order to expropriate its land, labor, capital, natural resources, and markets. During the course of conquest, the colonizers trample under foot much of the indigenous people’s social fabric. The people lose not only their land, but their way of life, their mores, historic lore, healing arts, music, myths, gods, shamans, and eventually even their language.” (Pages 48-49).
The Venezuelans are truly making remarkable strides and I was able to witness, first hand, real democracy in practice in a large farming community near Rio Tocuyo, where every member of the community, from 15 years of age, and beyond, exercised their constitutional right to elect a great number of representatives to their Communal Council, where all decisions are made collectively and openly; where all projects are planned, budgeted, and voted on before they are submitted to the national government for approval, and more importantly, for the funds to do the work.
Hundreds of quality houses for the homeless and poorly housed are being built by these Communal Councils and given free to the deserving needy. It’s truly a remarkable process and truly a remarkable achievement.
This is Democracy in form and in content! We in the West have democracy only in form, wherein the purchased politicians are selected and then “elected” to govern over us as if we were small children.
I visited a number of recently constructed homes; all built with the peoples’ oil wealth, which is being given back to them in a firm of a decent home to live in.
Which other oil-rich nation is doing this?
Your loving brother. In a major setback for the Pentagon plans to install a U.S.
Military Radar Base in the Czech Republic, the Czech government had to
withdraw last month its consent give to Washington under great pressure
from the people, whose two-thirds are opposed to the NATO base on the
Czech territory.
The Czech anti-radar movement has drawn large
support from around the world from people who are alarmed by the
dangerous military escalation by the NATO proposed European Missile
Defense Program.
Flame of Freedom From the book “Communist Karthigesan – 25th Anniversary.”
Where ape had first raised its head
to stand up as a man
And the lording alien had whip-lashed him
to stoop again,
Out of the darkness and despair
of decades on end
Flashed Lumumba, flame of Freedom,
Scorching forest and savanna,
fox-hole and uranium mine,
Smoking out the white ant
for the black man to rule.
But turning on their tracks lit up
for the whole world to see,
Belgium’s Baudoin and his bloated beasts,
Kasavubu’s skunks and Katanga’s jackals
Snuffed out the flames and sniffed at the flesh.
The flesh is dead: but the flame only flickered
To burn more fiercely in the hearts of millions
Who, with steel tempered in grief and swords
whetted in revenge,
Will hammer (the) shied of imperialism
And, Paul Robesons all, proclaim the voice
Of Lincoln’s America –
From out the stripes of slavery shall emerge
the stars of freedom!
This poem was written by M. Karthigesan, when he compiled Poems of Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo, who fought and died at age 35.
COMMUNIST KARTHIGESANPerampalam Balasubramaniam
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