Here are some videos of Gus Hall that are worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X-e3JnnzsQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_fG2WHIq_8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xzIgpmIErI

No to Austerity and War!
Unity and the fight for a People’s Alternative

Miguel Figueroa, leader of the Communist Party of Canada, is touring the country to speak with working people about the fight against austerity policies. He is presenting the Communist proposal for a People’s Alternative, policies that can check corporate power and put people’s needs before profit!

Wed., Feb. 20, 2013
Doors open 6:30 p.m., Meeting begins 7:00 p.m.
Millennium Library, 2nd fl. (Donald & Graham)

Info: Manitoba Committee, Communist Party of Canada
(204) 586-7824 or cpc-mb@changetheworldmb.ca

Please invite your friends!

Forward this message or invite them via facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/events/calendar#!/events/390023854430217/

Written by W. M. Tillow

Via: http://mltoday.com/subject-areas/cuba/family-visits-with-ramon-labanino-does-mrs.-alan-gross-deal-with-stuff-like-this-1605-2.html

Ramon Labanino’s 74-year-old father, his younger brother, and oldest daughter were slated to visit him at the Federal Prison in Jesup, Georgia from December 23rd through January 11th.

This would allow him to have visits on 12 days, the maximum number of days allowed under the 8-point system at Jesup Federal Correctional Institution (FCI).

In June of last year, Ramon was told that. because of his cumulative good behavior, he would be moved to a lower- level security facility. On December 11th he was told to pack all his personal belongings and be prepared to move at any moment. Because he was afraid that he would be moved before his family arrived, or in the middle of their two -week visit, he decided that the visit should be postponed and airline tickets and hotel reservations were cancelled.

He was moved from Jesup FCI on January 11th and returned there on Jan 22nd after the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) admitted that he was sent to the wrong facility. Because he knew that the BOP would keep him at Jesup for a minimum of 15 days and because the visas of his father, brother and daughter were about to expire, he made a decision that his family should make a hurried visit even though it meant that they would only be allowed to visit on eight days.

His family arrived on January 27th and left on Feb. 9th. They saw him on the first two visiting days. When they arrived at the prison (a 30-mile drive) on day three, a sign said “Lockdown No Visits.” The lockdown lasted for three visiting days. After the lockdown ended, his family saw him for a third day of visiting.

Ramon told them that he had been notified that he would be moved on Friday, Feb. 8th and therefore they would not be able to visit him that day. They arrived at the prison on Thursday, Feb. 7th, for what they thought would be their 4th and last visiting day, only to be told he had already been moved.

In total, they were able to see him on 3 of the 8 days he was eligible to have visits and they made two wasted 60 mile round trips to the prison and back. They returned to Havana on Feb. 9th. Being experienced visitors in the ways of the BOP they were able to say their goodbyes and have prison pictures taken with Ramon on the last day they actually got to see him.

Ramon’s oldest daughter, Aili, explained that as an older teenager, she traveled alone to visit him at the maximum security prison in Beaumont, Texas where he was jailed after the trial of The Five concluded. When she arrived at the prison she found it was locked down. Every day for 30 days she traveled from her hotel to the prison only to find the lockdown still in effect. After 30 days, with her visa about to expire, she went home without seeing her father.

In Jesup, visitors have had to wait for up to three hours before being admitted, while prison authorities waited for a fog to lift (you read it correctly). Visitors have been turned away because someone said their jeans were too tight, or blouses too suggestive, or shoes were not the correct kind. Only a quick trip to a 24-hour Walmart nearby saved that day’s visit.

One wonders if Judy Gross, or any of Alan Gross’ other visitors, has to endure anything like this?

February 11, 2013

By William Blum – Published February 7th, 2013

Via: http://williamblum.org/

American Foreign Policy – Have our war lovers learned anything?

Over the past four decades, of all the reasons people over a certain age have given for their becoming radicalized against US foreign policy, the Vietnam War has easily been the one most often cited. And I myself am the best example of this that you could find. I sometimes think that if the war lovers who run the United States had known of this in advance they might have had serious second thoughts about starting that great historical folly and war crime.

At other times, however, I have the thought that our dear war lovers have had 40 years to take this lesson to heart, and during this time what did they do? They did Salvador and Nicaragua, and Angola and Grenada. They did Panama and Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and Iraq. And in 2012 American President Barack Obama saw fit to declare that the Vietnam War was “one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of military history”. 1
So, have they learned nothing? When it comes to following international law, is the United States like a failed state? The Somalia of international law? Well, if they were perfectly frank, the war lovers would insist that the purpose of all these interventions, and many others like them, was to keep the atheists out of power – the non-believers in America’s god-given right to rule the world – or to at least make life as difficult as possible for them. And thus the interventions were successful; nothing to apologize for; even the Vietnam War achieved its purpose of preventing that country from becoming a good development option for Asia, a socialist alternative to the capitalist model; precisely the same reason for Washington’s endless hostility toward Cuba in Latin America; and Cuba has indeed inspired numerous atheists and their alternatives for a better world.

If they were even more honest, the war lovers might quote George Kennan, the legendary State Department strategist, who wrote prophetically during the Cold War: “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.” 2

But after all these years, after decades of American militarism – though not a day passes without some government official or media acolyte expressing his admiration and gratitude for “our brave boys” – cracks in the American edifice can be seen. Some of the war lovers, and their TV groupies would have us believe that they have actually learned something. One of the first was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in February 2011: “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.”

And here’s former Secretary of State George Shultz speaking before the prestigious Council of Foreign Relations last month (January 29): “Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be the template for how we go about” dealing with threats of terrorism.
A few days earlier the very establishment and conservative Economist magazine declared: “The best-intentioned foreign intervention is bound to bog its armies down in endless wars fighting invisible enemies to help ungrateful locals.”
However, none of these people are in power. And does history offer any example of a highly militaristic power – without extreme coercion – seeing the error of its ways? One of my readers, who prefers to remain anonymous, wrote to me recently:

It is my opinion that the German and Japanese people only relinquished their imperial culture and mindset when they were bombed back to the stone age at the end of WWII. Something similar is the only cure for the same pathology that now is embedded into the very social fabric of the USA. The USA is a full-blown pathological society now. There is no other cure. No amount of articles on the Internet pointing out the hypocrisies or war crimes will do it.

So, while the United States is busy building bases and anti-missile sites in Europe, Asia and Africa, deploying space-based and other hi-tech weapons systems, trying to surround Russia, China, Iran and any other atheist that threatens American world hegemony, and firing drone missiles all over the Middle East I’m busy playing games on the Internet. What can I say? In theory at least, there is another force besides the terrible bombing mentioned above that can stop the American empire, and that is the American people. I’ll continue trying to educate them. Too bad I won’t live long enough to see the glorious transformation.

Afghanistan: Manufacturing the American Legacy

“A decade ago, playing music could get you maimed in Afghanistan. Today, a youth ensemble is traveling to the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. And it even includes girls.”

Thus reads the sub-heading of a Washington Post story of February 3 about an orchestra of 48 Afghan young people who attended music school in a country where the Taliban have tried to silence both women and music. “The Afghan Youth Orchestra is more than a development project,” the article informs us. For “the school’s many international donors, it serves as a powerful symbol of successful reconstruction in Afghanistan. And by performing in Washington and New York, the seats of U.S. political and financial power, the orchestra hopes to showcase what a decade of investment has achieved.”

“The U.S. State Department, the World Bank, the Carnegie Corporation and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education have invested heavily in the tour. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul awarded nearly $350,000 footing most of the estimated $500,000 cost. For international donors, the tour symbolizes progress in a country crippled by war.”

The State Department’s director of communications and public diplomacy for Afghanistan and Pakistan declares: “We wanted Americans to understand the difference their tax dollars have made in building a better future for young people, which translates into reduced threats from extremists in the region.”

“There’s a lot of weariness in the U.S. and cynicism about Afghanistan,” said William Harvey, an American violinist who teaches at the school, where 35 of 141 students are girls. “What are we doing there? What can be achieved? These concerts answer those questions in the strongest way possible: Cooperation between Afghanistan and the international community has made it safe for young girls and boys to learn music.”

There can be no question that for the sad country of Afghanistan all this is welcome news. There can also be little doubt that a beleaguered and defensive US foreign policy establishment will seek to squeeze out as much favorable publicity as possible from these events. On the issue of the severe oppression of women and girls in Afghanistan, defenders of the US occupation of that desperate land would have you believe that the United States is the last great hope of those poor females. However, you will not be reminded that in the 1980s the United States played an indispensable role in the overthrow of a secular and relatively progressive Afghan government, one which endeavored to grant women much more freedom than they’ll ever have under the current Karzai-US government, more probably than ever again. Here are some excerpts from a 1986 US Army manual on Afghanistan discussing the policies of this government concerning women:

• “provisions of complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, and fixation of the minimum age at marriage at 16 for women and 18 for men”
• “abolished forced marriages”
• “bring [women] out of seclusion, and initiate social programs”
• “extensive literacy programs, especially for women”
• “putting girls and boys in the same classroom”;
• “concerned with changing gender roles and giving women a more active role in politics”.3

The US-led overthrow of this government paved the way for the coming to power of Islamic fundamentalist forces, which led directly to the awful Taliban. And why did the United States in its infinite wisdom choose to do such a thing? Because the Afghan government was allied with the Soviet Union and Washington wanted to draw the Russians into a hopeless military quagmire – “We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War”, said Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser. 4

The women of Afghanistan will never know how the campaign to raise them to the status of full human beings would have turned out, but this, some might argue, is but a small price to pay for a marvelous Cold War victory.

Guantánamo Bay

People on the left never tire of calling for the closing of the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The fact that President Obama made the closing a promise of his 2008 campaign and repeated it again in the White House, while the prison still remains in operation, is seen as a serious betrayal. But each time I read about this I’m struck by the same thought: The horror of Guantánamo is not its being open, not its mere existence. Its horror lies in its being the site of more than 10 years of terrible abuse of human beings. If the prison is closed and all its inmates are moved to another prison, and the abuses continue, what would have been accomplished? How would the cause of human rights be benefitted? I think that activists should focus on the abuses, regardless of the location.

The War on Terror – They’re really getting serious about it now

For disseminating classified materials that exposed war crimes, Julian Assange is now honored as an official terrorist as only America can honor. We Shall Never Forget 9/11, Vol. II: The True Faces of Evil – Terror, a graphic coloring novel for children, which comes with several pages of perforated, detachable “terrorist trading cards”. Published by Really Big Coloring Books Inc. in St. Louis, the cards include Assange, Timothy McVeigh, Jared Lee Loughner, Ted Kaczynski, Maj. Nidal Hasan, Bill Ayers, and others. 5

Superpower – the film

Starring Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Michel Chossudovksy, Karen Kwiatowski (Pentagon “defector”), William Blum, Sergei Khrushchev (son of Nikita), Kathy Kelly, and many others:https://vimeo.com/55141496 (enter password when prompted: barbarasteegmuller) – 2 hours long.

New Book and talk

The eagerly awaited (I can name at least three people) new book by William Blum is here at last. “America’s Deadliest Export – Democracy: The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else” is made up of essays which are a combination of new and old; combined, updated, expanded; many first appeared in one form or another in the Anti-Empire Report, or on my website, at various times during the past ten years or so.

As mentioned in the book, activists like myself are sometimes scoffed at for saying the same old things to the same old people; just spinning our wheels, we’re told, “preaching to the choir” or “preaching to the converted”. But long experience as speaker, writer and activist in the area of foreign policy tells me it just ain’t so. From the questions and comments I regularly get from my audiences, via email and in person, I can plainly see that there are numerous significant information gaps and misconceptions in the choir’s thinking, often leaving them unable to see through the newest government lie or propaganda trick; they’re unknowing or forgetful of what happened in the past that illuminates the present; or knowing the facts but unable to apply them at the appropriate moment; vulnerable to being led astray by the next person who offers a specious argument that opposes what they currently believe, or think they believe; and, perhaps worst of all, many of them suffer pathetically from an over-abundance of conspiracy thinking, often carrying a justified suspicion or idea to a ridiculous level; virtually nothing is taken at face value.

The choir needs to be frequently reminded and enlightened to be better able to influence others, to be better activists.

MESSAGE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF VENEZUELA, HUGO CHAVEZ FRIAS, TO THE SECOND SUMMIT OF THE COMMUNITY OF LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN STATES

Sisters and brothers:

On behalf of the people of Venezuela, receive a fervent Bolivarian greeting and living testimony of brotherhood toward each of the peoples of the Great Nation. I really and truly regret not being able to attend this event in Santiago de Chile. As it is known to all of you, since December of last year I am once again struggling for my health in revolutionary Cuba. That is why these lines are my way to be present at the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, my way of reaffirming, today more than ever, the living and active engagement of Venezuela with the historical cause of the Union.

It is impossible not to feel Simon Bolivar pulsing among us in this summit of unity. Impossible not to evoke Pablo Neruda, Pablo of Chile and America, in this land and in this present moment of the Great Nation we are made of: Liberator, a world of peace was born in your arms. / Peace, bread, wheat are born from your blood, / from our young blood which comes from your blood / will come peace, bread and wheat for the world we are to make.

Bolivar, Bolivar always. In this 2013 we are celebrating the bicentennial of the admirable campaign: 200 years of that prodigious Bolivarian epic. On May 14, 1813, an army of New Granada and Venezuela departed from Cucuta commanded by then Brigadier Simon Bolivar, advancing with prodigious speed, and fought and won in Niquitao, Los Horcones and Taguanes to liberate central and western Venezuela, entering triumphantly on August 6th of that year of glory in Caracas. The military victory of the patriots had a transcendent political consequence: the birth of the Second Republic of Venezuela.

And hence with a vivid memory, I want to share with you a certainty: thanks to the CELAC we are beginning to look like everything we once were and what we wanted to be but was taken from us, we’re looking like the Pachamama, the cosmic belt of the South, the queen of nations and the mother of republics.

The spirit of unity has returned with full strength, it is the spirit of our liberators reincarnated in the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean; it is the spirit in which many voices come together to speak with one voice. It was the endearing spirit of the Summit of Latin America and the Caribbean that gave birth to CELAC in Caracas; it is the enduring spirit of this Summit in Santiago de Chile.

Since that December of 2011 when we founded CELAC in Caracas, world events have ratified the extraordinary importance of the great step forward we took. There is the crisis hitting the U.S. and Europe and throwing thousands of people into misery. Thousands of men, women and children have lost their homes, their jobs, their social security, their most elemental rights. While the U.S. and Europe, paraphrasing the eminent philosopher Ernesto Laclau, are
committing collective suicide, we are weathering the storm, and we will definitely ride it out. Today, we are an example of unity in diversity, of justice, welfare and happiness to the world.

At one year and almost two months since its founding in Caracas, CELAC has managed to stand with a character and a well-defined personality, above any judgment or ambition outside its principles and tenets. Today more than ever we can say that when we affirm that we have really and truly resumed the path of our Liberators, a slogan that identifies this Community, we were not making an empty or hollow statement. And now, such a transcendent slogan requires that we fill it each day with more and more historical, political, economic and social content.

That is why today we ratify the denunciation and condemnation of the shameful imperial blockade against revolutionary Cuba, the continuous colonization and now the progressive militarization of the Malvinas Islands, both of which are violations of all UN resolutions issued to safeguard the rights of the Cuban and Argentine people, but with no will on the part of this supranational organization to fulfill them. Justice is unquestionably on the side of Cuba and Argentina. If we are a nation of republics, our sovereignty is that of the entire Great Nation, and we must enforce it.

When the mournful sound of the drums of war is heard around the world, how valuable it is that the states of Latin America and the Caribbean are creating a zone of peace that jealously protects international law and defends political and negotiated solutions to conflicts. We have a duty to face the logic of war with a culture of peace, based on justice and equality.

CELAC is the most important project of political, economic, social and cultural unity in our contemporary history. We all have the right to feel proud: the nation of republics, as the liberator Simon Bolivar called it, has begun to emerge as a beautiful and happy reality. How not to recall, once again, the voice of Neruda when he tells us in his memorable poem “The Heights of Machu Picchu”: Rise to birth with me, brother. Let us rise, sisters and brothers, because the time has come to be born again, with all of the past and all of the future illuminating the present.

The sacred purposes, the fraternal relations and the common interests that unite the republics of Latin America and the Caribbean, have in CELAC a fundamental instrument not only to guarantee the stability of the governments that our peoples have given themselves, but also their sovereignty and, let us say with Jorge Luis Borges, the perpetuity of each of our nations.

Our common path has been long and difficult since we faced the Spanish Empire in the 19th century. The fight for independence, the fight that continues today, was linked, indissolubly linked, to the thoughts and actions of our liberators, to the fight for unity, for the construction of a Great Nation based on the most solid foundation. Let us remember what Bolivar said: There should be one single nation for the Americas, given that we have had perfect unity in everything. But the oligarchy closed the door to a historical project of unity, and we are still paying the price. Argentinean writer Norberto Galasso was right: What could have been the victory of the Great Nation became twenty defeats of small nations. This history should not repeat itself. I still have faith in those words I said in Caracas on the historic 2nd of December, 2011, when CELAC was founded: We are either one nation or we are not a nation! We either make a single Great Nation, or no one on these lands will have a nation!

How could we not see ourselves in the words of liberator Bernardo O’Higgins, the great disciple of the immense Francisco de Miranda, who wrote to Bolivar in 1818: The cause that Chile defends is the same one committed to by Buenos Aires, New Granada, Mexico and Venezuela, or better yet, it is the cause of the entire continent of Colombia.

Everything we do for unity will not only be justified by history, it will also become the most enlightened legacy we can leave to future generations. We will also be actively honoring the memory of our liberators. In CELAC, as Bolivar wanted, we have become one nation.

I want to invoke a few words from the wise Andres Bello, who was as deeply Chilean as he was Venezuelan, who was not only the pioneer of international law in our Americas, but also the first lawyer in the world to shape the doctrines of multilateral organizations of integration and unity. Since the 19th century, this great forger of our intellectual independence has continued marking our path: The tendency of the century we live in is to multiply the points of contact between peoples, to unite them, to bind them in friendship, to make the entire human species one single family. To resist this tendency is to descend from the heights of civilization. My belief is that in the 21st century, this tendency ought to be the same as the one so brilliantly stated by Bello.

Transcendent politics has room to flourish in CELAC. It has been eloquently stated in the manifesto that our Latin Caribbean America is capable of presenting itself and thinking of itself both within the region and before the world with full autonomy, and is capable of acting jointly.
Transcendent politics presupposes that learning is ongoing: it is learning how to live with our differences, to accept and process them, always finding the best way of complementing each other. Transcendent politics impedes schemes from dividing us. Let us not forget that painful warning from Bolivar: A schemer does more in one day than one hundred good men do in one month.

But I am convinced that in this amazing hour of our history, those who intend to divert us will fail. That what will prevail, and I say this with Bolivar’s words, is the inestimable good of unity, that the Monroe Doctrine will definitively disappear as an instrument of oppression, domination and disunity in this side of the world.

The enlightening words, following a clear Bolivarian theme, of the great Argentinean thinker Jorge Abelardo Ramos in his History of the Latin American Nation (1968), should cause us to reflect: Underdevelopment, as social scientists and technicians now call it, is not purely economic or productive in nature. It is intensely historic in meaning. It is the result of Latin American fragmentation. What happens, in short, is that there is a national question that remains unanswered. Latin America is not divided because it is “underdeveloped;” it is “underdeveloped” because it is divided. Underdevelopment is the child of division, and that is exactly why it is imperative to resolve the question of a national Americas in the coming years. Today we meet all the objective and subjective conditions to do so.

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

I am going to briefly touch on a few topics of the CELAC agenda. I have left some out so as not to make this letter too long.

I think it is crucial to rigorously comply with two great social commitments included in the Caracas Action Plan in order for CELAC to have value for our peoples: I speak of the development of the Latin American and Caribbean Literacy Program and the Latin American and Caribbean Program for Eradicating Hunger.

The only response countries of the first world have had in the face of the crisis has been cutting social spending and public investment. In CELAC, we can maintain economic growth with strong social investments, agreeing to a common agenda for equality and for the recognition of the universal right of each of our citizens, without exception, to free health care and education.

Moreover, we must reach accords that will allow us to create and promote a common energy agenda. We have the strength, at the outset, to face the extreme panorama of a world where energy sources have their days numbered. The region’s resources are huge: we only need to create appropriate policies that do justice to the gifts nature has provided. We have the experience of a successful PetroCaribe to show that is it possible to create an energy alliance based on reciprocity.
I want to paraphrase Bolivar: what we have done is but a prelude to the great task that remains to consolidate our CELAC. Never before have we had such an appropriate setting. Let us multiply the good effects and the well-managed efforts, and I say this with Bolivar, to make CELAC the center of a new system of unity of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Dear Heads of State and Government:

We have committed ourselves to giving Cuba all our support, as it will hold the pro tempore presidency of our Community following this Santiago Summit. This is an act of justice following
50 years of resistance to the criminal imperial embargo. Latin America and the Caribbean are speaking with one voice, telling the United States that all of its attempts to isolate Cuba have failed and will fail.
As fate would have it, and it will go down in history, today, precisely as Cuba assumes the pro tempore Presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, is the 160th anniversary of the birth of the apostle of Cuban independence, one of the greatest Bolivarians of all time: Jose Marti.

His prophetic words still resonate today: “we intentionally say people and not peoples so as to not think there is more than one from the Rio Grande to Patagonia. It should be one because it is one. The Americas, even when it does not want to, and when brothers fight, will be together in the end of a colossal spiritual nation, they will love each other then.”

The time has come for Marti’s love, Bolivar’s love, the love of our Americas.

That is why, from my Bolivarian heart, I hope for the resounding success of this CELAC Summit. Here in Havana I will be watching its development. With all the light of the Great Nation that burns more brightly today in Santiago de Chile, I send an endless and brotherly hug to each and every one of you.

Hugo Chávez Frías
President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
Always towards victory!
Long live the union of our peoples!
Long live CELAC!

Here are four great broadcasts from Radio Moscow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX97uTUdP3U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdYUEPxCIOY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOUMlehOAzs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5hAYA3eIns

Check out this link for news from Greece on the class struggle:

http://www.wftucentral.org/?p=5958&language=en