Month: December, 2016
By James Thompson
Today A. Shaw and James Thompson presented a dozen red roses and a letter expressing our condolences to the Russian Consul General in Houston. The letter was as follows:
“December 29, 2016
Alexander Zakharov
Consul General, Russia
1333 West Loop South, Ste. 1300
Houston, TX 77027
Dear Alexander Zakharov:
The Houston Communist Party, Houston Peace Council and Houston Socialist Movement want to express our deepest condolences. We are very sad to learn of the tragic recent events. The crash of the airliner in the Black Sea and the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey cause us much sorrow.
Many of us are admirers of the Red Army Choir/Alexandrov Ensemble.
We are also concerned about the tensions between our two great nations and want to express our opposition to further conflict. We are hopeful that the President-elect of the United States will maintain his campaign positions in support of peace with Russia. Any sensible person can easily recognize that a major war between Russia and the US would reduce us all to cockroach food. As Pete Seeger sang many years ago “We can all be cremated equally.”
We applaud Russia’s efforts to establish peace in Syria and hope the next President of the US will work with Russia in an honest atmosphere of cooperation and dialogue in order to neutralize the terrorists who have done so much damage.
Peaceful coexistence rather than delusional allegations should be our one and only goal.
Peace and solidarity,
Houston Communist Party
Houston Peace Council
Houston Socialist Movement”
The consulate staff who received the letter were very gracious and professional. They showed us a display they had organized on a small table. It had flowers and a picture of the assassinated Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov. Needless to say, it was quite moving.
As we were leaving, the consulate staff member, Dmitri, called for better relations between our two countries. We replied simply, “We need peace!” Hopefully, 2017, the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution which ended the Czarist monarchy and marked the beginning of a socialist government, will bring better relations between the U.S. and the Russian Federation.
worker |
December 18, 2016 |
9:43 pm | Analysis, class struggle, Donald Trump, political struggle, Russia |
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by James Thompson
It was a chilling moment when I woke up to a surreal New World in which Donald Trump had been elected President of the United States (POTUS) the night before.
Just like one of the disjointed scenes from the 1971 Monty Python movie “And Now for Something Completely Different”, the present absurd reality shocks us out of the previous absurd reality. The previous buffoon has been jettisoned and a new buffoon takes the stage.
Now we are confronted with a new POTUS that some on the left characterize as a right-wing, authoritarian populist. It is too early to tell whether he is a true fascist since he has never held public office before. There can be no question that many of the kooks and clowns he has appointed to his new administration are open fascists. However, “one swallow does not make a summer.” The world will soon find out if the US people have elected a true fascist to head their government.
Meanwhile, the vanquished social Democrats in the United States refuse to be excluded from the buffoonery. The buffoon-elect is no stranger to bad ideas and bad policy. He has a terrible history of vicious public attacks on people with disabilities, women, racial minorities, immigrants, i.e. you name it, and he has attacked it. He advocates dismantling government programs and replacing them with privatization schemes which only benefit the wealthy. He has put his foot in the middle of almost all important domestic economic issues.
Do the so-called “progressive” forces in the United States call out the new buffoon in the White House on these issues? When you listen to the mainstream media, do you hear about the new POTUS’ absurd stance on these issues?
No, all you hear about are the unfiltered delusions of the progressive left about the Russians hacking poor, innocent little Hillary and causing her Majesty to lose an election that was hers to lose. All you hear about is the Russian state propaganda machine which has poisoned the minds of innocent Americans and turned them into agents of Putin.
Never before has one man had such pervasive control over the minds of Americans. Putin has been turned into a modern day Rasputin, Hitler and Darth Vader all combined into an evil individual who threatens the very survival of the American way of life. Indeed, Putin and Trump are accused of threatening “American democracy.”
Trump, in spite of his repugnant racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, etc., has resisted the demonization of the Russians and has argued against the social Democrats’ rush to war with the Russians. In this regard, Trump has assumed the role of the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.
Trump seems to get it that war with Russia would be the end of capitalism, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in short order.
This position infuriates the most reactionary sector of the US bourgeoisie.
So, what do the social Democrats do? In an opportunistic orgy they attempt to savage Trump in an effort to please the most reactionary sector of the US bourgeoisie. By attacking Trump’s peaceful tendencies towards Russia, they prove without a doubt that the social Democrats in the United States view their alliance with the most reactionary sector of the US bourgeoisie to be more important than their alliance with the US working class.
A war with Russia would definitely benefit the US bourgeoisie but would be devastating and catastrophic for the US working class.
The US social Democrats continue unashamedly with their historical motto “Profits before People.”
No one knows whether they will be successful in pushing the new buffoon-elect into starting a new war.
They must believe that great treasure awaits them if they please their evil Masters.
Meanwhile, the US working class is stuck in a swamp full of alligators.
Will the US working class continue to cleave to the social Democrats? The next four years should tell the story.
worker |
December 8, 2016 |
8:27 pm | Analysis, Fidel Castro, Marxism-Leninism Today (MLToday.com) |
Comments closed
http://mltoday.com/article/2597-jose-fidel/90-frontpage-stories
Like many around the world we mourn the death of Fidel Castro. We express our condolences to Raul Castro and the rest of Fidel’s family, the Cuban people and the Communist Party of Cuba.
However, with that mourning comes a celebration of a life well lived in the service of humanity.
Bertoldt Brecht wrote:
There are those that struggle for a day, and they are good.
There are those that struggle for a year, and they are better.
There are those that struggle for many years, and they are better still.
But there are those that struggle all their lives.
These are the indispensable ones.
Fidel Castro was one of the indispensables ones. While there are those, as in Miami, celebrating his death, those celebrations amount to just sound and fury, signifying nothing. The leader of the Cuban Revolution accomplished his work and passed away naturally after retiring.
Castro led the first socialist revolution in the Americas, which evolved from a struggle to defeat the U.S.-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista. The armed revolt against the dictatorship was itself a fight for national liberation struggle against U.S. domination.Fidel Castro led the Cuban people in creating a socialist society with the means of production in the hands of the working class and farmers. Cuba became the first country in the Western Hemisphere to have a 100 percent literacy rate, free education and healthcare for all.
The Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro himself irked U.S imperialism for having lost control of that island nation and they attempted to thwart the socialist project through subversion, and actual invasion and an economic embargo that is still in place.. They attempted to destroy the revolution by getting rid of its leader. The US through the the CIA orchestrated over 600 plots and attempts to murder him.
Perhaps the time that Fidel Castro’s revolutionary leadership was most tested was with the counter-revolutionary defeat of the socialist camp in Europe.With the implementation of glasnost and perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev, introduced bourgeois ideas and bourgeois relations of production, thus opening the door to pro-capitalist elements and the counter-revolutionary overthrow of socialism. This counter-revolution spread through the other European socialist states.
Many communist leaders, both in the socialist and capitalist countries, left their Marxism-Leninism behind, becoming social-democrats. Others became outright proponents of capitalism.
The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, an economic organization of member-states that worked for the economic integration of socialist countries, of which Cuba was a member was disbanded. With that, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Cuba lost its most important trading partners.
However, Castro maintained a staunch defence of Marxism-Leninism and the socialist system. Being a committed Marxist-Leninist, Castro was a committed anti-imperialist and led Cuba in that direction. This was an anti-imperialism that was not just words, but action. Cuba has a long list of political, military and material support for countries fighting against imperialism. The military defence of Angola against the US-backed intervention, the support for Puerto Rican independence, and the support for the countries of Latin America to free themselves from US control comprise just a short list of the examples of Cuba’s anti-imperialism under the leadership of Fidel Castro.
While he will be missed, especially by the peoples of the world fighting for social justice and the new socialist world, his life’s work will endure as a lasting memory of one of humanity’s indispensable persons.
By A. Shaw
Those people in the picture [G10, Dec. 4, 2016, Houston Chronicle] celebrating Fidel Castro’s death look like ghouls.
Are they?
Do most Cuban Americans in Miami look like that?
The dictionary says a ghoul is an evil spirit that robs graves and feeds on the dead.
Those people in Miami will likely flock to Santiago de Cuba to dig in Fidel’s grave.
But how can they eat Fidel’s remains?
Fidel asked that his remains be cremated into ashes.
Perhaps ghouls don’t care how their supper tastes.
The living in Miami are probably thankful that their ghouls feed on the dead.
Unquestionably, reactionary Cuban Americans [not Cubans] in Miami are evil spirits.
Fidel shared the food on his plate but did he offer you a puff on his cigar?
Capitalists or cappies dominate the world. And at least 90 percent of the world lives in extreme poverty.
About 10% of the world is fat and comfortable.
So, capitalism is a disaster.
Like ghouls, the privileged 10% feeds on the oppressed 90%.
Fidel was a proletarian democrat who insisted that the people must chiefly exercise state power and chiefly exercise power  for the 90%.
Most of the so-called “patriots” are either bourgeois democrats or lackeys of bourgeois democrats who insist that the 10% chiefly exercise power and chiefly for the 10%.
The 10% are rotten and parasitic.
True patriots are proletarian democrats like Fidel Castro.
Long live the 90%!
Power to the 90%!
17:31 01.12.2016(updated 18:39 01.12.2016)
John Wight
After Fidel Castro’s death what beckons for Cuba? Does it spell the beginning of the end of a socialist system that its many critics consider an anachronism and incompatible with democracy and human rights? Or will it survive and continue to stand as an alternative developmental model for countries of the so-called Third World These questions are now being asked when it comes to Havana, despite the fact that Fidel hadn’t held an official position within the government for some ten years prior to his death. Regardless, the symbolism of his death is hugely significant even more in that it has occurred in the same year of Washington’s diplomatic rapprochement with Cuba, cemented by Obama’s official visit to the island back in March. Something that needs to be borne in mind is the fact that the US trade embargo against Cuba remains in place and is not likely to be lifted anytime soon, regardless of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Havana and Washington not when the lifting of the trade embargo requires the support of a US Congress in which hostility towards the island remains steadfast. Another red flag is the tweet sent out by US president-elect Donald Trump in response to Fidel Castro’s death. It was followed up by a lengthier statement in which he described him as a “brutal dictator”. For many Cubans this would have been particularly galling considering that Trump is someone who has spent much of his life building casinos, while Castro spent his building clinics and schools. Indeed, what has not been in doubt after Castro’s death is the extent to which ‘El Comandante’ is revered in Cuba. Tens and hundreds of thousands of Cubans have come out to pay their respects in the days following his death, which comes as acknowledgement of his status as leader and inspiration of a revolution which succeeded in liberating Cuba from its status as a de facto US neo-colony, along with his selfless commitment and dedication to the country’s independence and dignity of its people thereafter. Be that as it may, it would be a mistake to downplay the problems and challenges that Cuba faces as a consequence of a trade embargo that has had a grievous impact on the country’s economy. Despite its burgeoning tourist industry, Cuba continues to lack hard currency and low inward investment. An infrastructure that is in dire need of modernization and replenishment is the result. The existing leadership of the country, under Raul Castro, understands the need for economic and political reform, and is moving towards more of a mixed market economic model, allowing for the emergence of small businesses, private enterprise, and liberalization. However. for some Cubans the pace of change remains too slow, which is why Fidel’s death is being viewed in various quarters as a catalyst for a bolder and faster reform process to take shape. The challenge for Cuba’s leadership in this process is the extent to which the opening up of its economy could open up space for US political interference in its internal affairs. In this regard it falls to the younger generation’s attachment to the country’s revolutionary values and principles as the barometer of what the future holds. Raul Castro, Fidel’s younger brother, has already intimated that he will step down from the government in 2018. When he does power in Cuba will, for the first time, be assumed by the country’s post-revolutionary generation. The man tipped as the country’s next president is current vice president, Miguel Diaz-Canel. Born in 1960, a year after the revolution, Diaz-Canel is considered a reformer and modernizer who is particularly keen to embrace greater internet access and press freedoms, both of which have been among the most serious concerns for the country’s younger generation. Reform is not the same as surrender, however, regardless of the celebrations Fidel Castro’s death resulted in among Cuban exiles in Miami. On the contrary, the fierce sense of independence the revolution succeeded in entrenching within Cuban society and the country’s cultural values, this shows no evidence of dissipating anytime soon given the huge number of Cubans of all ages who have turned out to pay their respects to Fidel. Ultimately, it is by no means inevitable that socialism has died in Cuba along with a man who had such a large impact on world events in the postwar and post-colonial era. The reforms that have begun to the island’s economy, though necessary in a changing world, do not necessarily spell the end of a revolutionary process that has provided two generations of Cubans with the kind of dignity that comes with justice the very same that has long been grievously lacking in Haiti, the Dominican Republican, and throughout the Americas. As for Washington, Cuba joins a list of countries throughout the world — Russia, China, Iran, etc. in waiting to see what a Trump administration will mean in practise. Will the 45th US President embrace the values of the Roman Empire that have wrought such damage and instability under previous administrations? Or will he instead embrace multipolarity and respect for the right of states such as Cuba to follow their own developmental path, one underpinned by cultural, historical, and regional specificities? If it is the former then the world, including the US, is in for a bumpy ride. If the latter then the world will emerge from the darkness of US hegemony into something approximating to peace in our time. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.
Read more: https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201612011048061061-cube-post-castro-future/
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