Comrades

On behalf of the Exeter and South Devon Branch of the Communist Party of Britain, I am writing to give our support and solidarity in your fight against the anti-democratic laws of the state of Texas.

The article recently published in the Morning Star highlights a situation that many of us thought was banished to the pages US history.

The state is indeed a machine for the oppression of one class by another and the authorities of Texas are using this machine to great affect. Good luck in your struggle, you have our support and admiration.

In Comradeship, on behalf of the Branch

Tim Gulliver
Secretary
Exeter and South Devon Branch
Communist Party of Britain

I am a communist. I am not a terrorist and yet there is a law in Texas which denies communists the right to work as a public servant or to stand for office.

I have stood in both local government elections and in the last general election as a communist. I have done this quite legally. There is absolutely no reason why communists in Texas should not have the same rights as communists in Devon, England.

I ask you to circulate the Senate and find time to remove the anti-communist legislation from the Statute Book. Sooner or later this will be seriously challenged. The most decent and cheapest way to effect this would be for this strange legislation to be voted down.

I look forward to your reply.

Gerrard Sables

To all comrades and friends in Texas,

Sincere solidarity to all our comrades in Texas, fight and fight and fight again to defeat this vicious and reactionary neo-MacCarthyite legislation in the lone star state.

Your fight is always our fight and we will back you all the way.

Comrades you are in the belly of the beast and we salute you.

Solidarity forever.

Phil Brand.

Vice-Chair.

South London Branch.

Communist Party of Britain.

W. T. Whitney Jr.

On April 9, 1948 in Bogota, Colombia, an assassin’s bullets killed the eloquent, populist Liberal Party leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. Onlookers murdered shooter Juan Roa Sierra, variously described as deranged or fascist. Radio broadcasters quickly blamed the assassination on the government and its Conservative Party leaders. For months, police and paramilitaries had been eliminating adherents of a newly unified Liberal Party widely expected in the 1950 elections to propel Gaitán into the presidency.

The assassination was tragedy, and so too was violent upheaval that within 48 hours took 330 lives in Bogota and killed 3000 people throughout Colombia over two weeks. Then ten years of conflict between guerrillas identifying with Gaitán’s Liberal Party wing and military forces of governments led by the Conservative Party or by dictator Rojas Pinilla caused over 200,000 deaths. Beginning with the early 1960’s, war between leftist insurgents and the government’s U.S. supported military machine killed tens of thousands more.

Congressman Gaitán, condemning the 1928 massacre of United Fruit Company banana workers, castigated a “government[with] its tremulous knee on the ground before Yankee gold.” The young lawyer founded the short-lived National Revolutionary Left Union as a vehicle for land reform. Rejoining the Liberal Party, Gaitán served as Bogota mayor in 1936 and later as national education minister and labor minister. The branch of the Liberal Party headed by Gaitán called for agrarian reform, poverty alleviation, and poor people’s rights. Party disunity led to Conservative Party victory in the 1946 presidential elections.

On February 7, 1948 in Bogota, a “silent march” ended with Gaitán’s famous “Oration for Peace.” Mr. President,” he said, “We ask you for deeds of peace and civilization…We deeply love this nation, and we don’t like that our victorious ship has to navigate rivers of blood.”
(Colombians intent upon preserving Gaitán’s memory have long regarded April 9 as a day for public observances. Gaitán may no longer be the primary focus of that day. The 2011 Law of Victims and Restitution of Lands redefined April 9 as a catch-all “Day of Memory and Solidarity with Victims.”)

In 1948, the government quickly attributed violence and Gaitan’s killing to communists wanting to eliminate a rival and bring down the state. Colombia cut relations with the Soviet Union. John C. Wiley, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia in 1946-1947 had reported that Gaitán “blindly promoted state socialism” and “would deplume our eagle.”

Simultaneously, amidst shootings, fires, and tumult, the ninth Pan American Conference was meeting in Bogota. For safety, delegates retreated to a secure warehouse. U. S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall was on hand to promote establishment of the Organization of American States and thereby create an institutional framework for cold war in Latin America. Marshall explained to reporters that chaos enveloping the city and nation represented “the first important communist attempt in the Western hemisphere since the end of the war.” He reiterated that theme in radio broadcasts to Colombians.

U.S. Ambassador Beaulac had warned Gaitán earlier of communist plans for an uprising that would be blamed on his Liberal Party. An Embassy official supposedly offered Gaitán a prestigious European academic position in return for leaving Colombian politics.

History did repeat. The Organization of American States (OAS) returned to Colombia on April 14-15 as the 6th Summit of the Americas, which it sponsored. News coverage centered on Cuba’s exclusion from the meeting situated in Cartagena. Evidently Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa regarded Cuban absence, a non-event, as farce. His government stayed away. The OAS, having expelled Cuba in 1962, worked afterwards to isolate and enforce continent-wide hostility against revolutionary Cuba. Under Latin American pressure, the United States relented in 2009 allowing the OAS to readmit Cuba, which remains a non member.

The “Bogotazo,” as the leaderless rebellion following Gaitán’s killing is labeled, manifested another Cuba connection. Young Fidel Castro was in Bogota at the time representing the (Cuban) University Student Federation at an international student conference. He consulted with Gaitán.

CIA operative John Mepples Espirito was in Bogota in 1948 monitoring leftist students. Later in Cuba he fought against Batista and was jailed for complicity in the death of a comrade. Mepples’ revelations to Cuban intelligence officials about helping to assassinate Gaitán for the CIA became the basis for a documentary film shown to Gaitán’s daughter Gloria in 1961. Verification problems prevented its release. Later jailed as a counterrevolutionary insurgent, Mepples in 1980 told more in return for release from prison. He claimed he and others had set up Juan Roa Sierra as “fall guy” in the assassination.

U.S. lawyer Paul Wolf eventually gave up on Freedom of Information requests to secure U.S. intelligence material on the assassination. Unable to force the CIA to retrieve relevant microfilms, he claimed the FBI had disposed of hundreds of files.

Prior to the Summit of the Americas, host President Santos announced he’d urge the U.S. government to let up on Cuba. That too may end as farce.

Thomas Houchin, President of the IAMAW District 27 Retirees’ Organization
and President of the Greater Louisville AFL-CIO Retirees, announced that
both of those organizations have endorsed HR 676, Expanded and Improved
Medicare for All. HR 676 is the national single payer legislation
introduced by Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and co-sponsored by 76
congresspersons.

District 27 IAMAW represents Machinists’ members in the metropolitan
Louisville area including southern Indiana.

“As retirees we are concerned that our nation must preserve Medicare, not
just for us, but also for our children and grandchildren,” said Houchin.
“With HR 676, an Improved Medicare for All will be able to negotiate the
rates for prescription drugs just like the Veterans Administration does,
getting them for 40% less. That will secure and improve our Medicare for
the future.”

“With HR 676, we will end the co-pays and deductibles that hurt so much
for those on fixed incomes. And we will be able to cover everyone, not
just those over 65. We believe that labor must move the country forward
and lead this campaign to assure national single payer health care, HR
676,” concluded Houchin.

HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system by expanding a
greatly improved Medicare to everyone residing in the U. S.

HR 676 would cover every person for all necessary medical care including
prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and
preventive care, emergency services, dental (including oral surgery,
periodontics, endodontics), mental health, home health, physical therapy,
rehabilitation (including for substance abuse), vision care and
correction, hearing services including hearing aids, chiropractic, durable
medical equipment, palliative care, podiatric care, and long term care.

HR 676 ends deductibles and co-payments. HR 676 would save hundreds of
billions annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of the
private health insurance industry and HMOs.

In the current Congress, HR 676 has 76 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers.

HR 676 has been endorsed by 589 union organizations including 139 Central
Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 40 state AFL-CIO’s (KY, PA,
CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD, NC, MO, MN, ME, AR, MD-DC,
TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA, AK, MI, MT, NE, NJ, NY, NV
& MA).

For further information, a list of union endorsers, or a sample
endorsement resolution, contact:

Kay Tillow
All Unions Committee For Single Payer Health Care–HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551
Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayer.org
4/3/2012

they will buy commemorative stamps. they will attend banquets in your selective memory.

your classmates in years to come will reminisce how they knew you way back when…… they really crossed the streets to avoid you while you still breathed.

and yet they were all at birmingham . they all marched in selma .

they who attacked you for being so nonviolent are now among those who were at the forefront among the disciples of satyagraha. mahatma must be howling with laughter between turns in the grave.

they who called you un- american now address high school assemblies and gospel concerts. they sit on the boards of foundations and scholarship funds named after you. they are making sure your coffin is nailed tight. they are politically smart enough to believe in ghosts.

they will buy commemorative stamps. they will attend banquets in your selective memory.

they will deprive you of your humanity even to the other side of the grave. you who were so human are now infallible. you who sought to change realities will now have your perspectives reduced to one speech about a dream. you will be denied that humanity that brings the gethsamane before the crucifixion. you will be denied that humanity that invites the last temptation to withdraw while you still live.

all those years of entombment of another kind!

they will buy commemorative stamps. they will attend banquets in your selective memory.

but we have not forgotten who we are: we are the untalented ninety percent . we the assembled between the tablet of our parents and the altar of those who would keep god in the coffin of complacency sanctifying injustice. we are here once again to tell old caiphas that we are not leaving town and we are in that place where the prophets come to die or to win. we will not be turned away empty handed.

boston MA 1996….. berkeley CA 4.4.2011

gary hicks

By Zoltan Zigedy

Via: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2012/04/is-french-communist-party-back.html

After years of retreat and opportunism and consequent loss of support and influence, the French Communist Party (PCF) is showing signs of life. Aligned with smaller parties in the Left Front (Front de Gauche, FG), the PCF has rallied around the presidential candidacy of Jean Melenchon for the forthcoming first round of French elections. The latest polls show Melenchon with over 14% of the prospective voters, ahead of all other candidates excepting Hollande (PS) and Sarkozy (UMP).

This once dynamic party succumbed to the allure of reformism, anti-Sovietism, and compromise with its embrace of the so-called “Euro-Communist” stance in the seventies. With over half a million members immediately after World War II, and garnering more votes than any other party at that time, the PCF was poised to become the dominant force in French politics, if not the first CP to launch a Western European country onto the road to socialism.

In fairness, the US and its NATO allies did everything to see that this did not happen. The Marshall Plan, coupled with covert activities of the CIA, served to undermine the Party’s ascendancy. But as early as the 1960s, the PCF began a rightward tilt to curry electoral favor and seek a left coalition with the compromised Socialist Party of Francois Mitterand. This trend escalated under the leadership of Georges Marchais, who constantly repositioned the CP ideologically to earn “respectability” and middle-strata appeal. Locked in this concessionary cycle, the Party leadership distanced itself from the Soviet Union and its history while seeking an image of bourgeois civility and sobriety.

Thus began a long period of further compromise and decline.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the leadership – first under Robert Hue and then Marie-George Buffet – the PCF embarked on a process of discarding Leninism entirely and refashioning the organization as a social-democratic formation—the so called “la mutation.” Believing that the departure of the Soviet Union reflected a failure and rejection of Leninism and revolutionary Marxism, Hue and Buffet sought to establish a moderate party of the left suitable to the new moment. Instead, the PCF membership and electoral strength sank dramatically, culminating in Buffet’s failure to attract even 2% of the votes in the 2007 Presidential first round election, a nadir unprecedented since the Second World War. The Party’s courtship with opportunism proved disastrous.

The creation of the Left Front and the ascendancy of Pierre Laurent to the position of National Secretary have seemingly brought a modest reversal to the Party’s long-term decline. Beginning with the municipal elections of 2008, the PCP has shown some electoral vigor.

But most significantly, the 2012 electoral campaign behind Jean Melenchon has brought new energy and organizational credibility to the Party. Opinion polling has shown a strong and unexpected support for the Melenchon candidacy. The campaign culminated in a mass rally of between 110,000 and 150,000 at the Place de la Bastille in Paris on March 18, the anniversary of the Paris Commune. Speeches demonstrated at least a new symbolic militancy, with references to the Revolution of 1789 and the Paris Commune.

Perhaps the surest mark of the new direction of the PCP is the endorsement of Francois Hollande, the Socialist candidate, by the PCF’s former leader, Robert Hue. Hue led the Party from 1994 until 2002, the period of its most dramatic ideological and popular slippage. Surely that unfriendly endorsement demonstrates that some things have changed for the better.

Melenchon has campaigned on re-nationalizing many of the leading corporations, strengthening the public sector, and criminalizing corruption and fraud in the private sector. He favors direct democracy—national referenda — on all questions of French sovereignty, especially with regard to the EU. In addition, the Left Front supports higher taxes on the rich, a substantial increase in the minimum wage, and expanded rights of immigrants.

Pierre Laurent, National Secretary of the PCF, sees the campaign as more than another call for electoral support; rather, he views the movement as an invitation to “prenez le pouvoir”—to take the power.

Christian Piquet, spokesperson for the Gauche Unitaire, a component of the Left Front, reminds us that with the campaign “We are building a force indispensable for the defeat of the right, and also for the redistribution of the cards on the Left.” This resolve to unite the objective of defeating the right with strengthening the left is a mission lost on much of the left in Europe and the US, and a welcome reminder of the dialectics of Marxist politics.

Hopefully, the Communist Party of France has taken a large step towards returning to the militancy and tradition of its past.

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com