“’This is something similar to what occurred in Gaza or worse, because neither observers nor journalists had access to the war zone,’ stated a UN source who asked for anonymity. The army acknowledges that 6,200 soldiers and 22,000 guerrillas died in the last three years of the longest civil war in Asia. The UN affirms that between 80,000 and 100,000 persons died in the conflict,” wrote Elisa Reche of Prensa Marea Socialista.

“During the war,” Reche continued, “the army had 200,000 troops. Now with peace, 100,000 are being incorporated… A strange peace it is that requires more troops than in actual combat.”

More troops are needed because systematic ethnic cleansing is now the order of the day for the Tamil people. Their Homeland will be obliterated by introducing more Sinhalese settlers. The same strategy, as John Pilger pointed out, that Israel uses against Palestinians.

This is what M.K. Bhadrakumar, an ambassador for India who served in Sri Lanka and other countries, wrote about the day after Sri Lanka declared victory.

See, they have already solved the Tamil problem in the eastern provinces… The Tamils are no more the majority community in these provinces. Similarly, from tomorrow, they will commence a concerted, steady colonization program of the Northern provinces where Prabhakaran reigned supreme for two decades. They will ensure incrementally that the northern regions no more remain as Tamil provinces… Give them a decade at the most. The Tamil problem will become a relic of the bloody history of the Indian sub-continent.

Ethnic cleansing goes hand-in-hand with the policy of imprisoning and mistreating hundreds of thousands of Tamils. For more than a year before its military victory, the Sri Lanka government enticed Tamils, wishing to flee the war zone, into so-called “welfare” centers or villages. Tens of thousands became “Internally Displaced Persons” (IDP), and are thus subject to United Nations regulations concerning decent living conditions, food and water, freedom of movement and the right to leave and rejoin families. All these rights and necessities have been denied them.

“Really if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy,” President J.R. told the Daily Telegraph, (UK) on July 11, 1983.

A quarter-century later, the current president is striving to fulfill his predecessor’s genocidal intentions. Mahinda Rajapakse has claimed that no IDP is held against his/her will and all are treated well. However, the few United Nations visitors—there are no official investigators into abuses since the Human Rights Council majority blocked such a possibility—who come to observe have quite another picture.

When UN’s political chief, Lynn Pascoe, visited camps in September he said people were not free or well treated… “this kind of closed regime goes directly against the principles under which we work in assisting IDPs all around the world.”

Rajapakse told Pascoe another tale about “free movement”. He said that detention was necessary because the army was clearing the area for mines, and it was still looking for guerrillas hiding among civilians. However, as the UN resident coordinator reported, and Amnesty Internationalquoted: “Under international humanitarian law, captured combatants…may be held pending the cessation of hostilities. Once active hostilities have ceased, prisoners of war must be released ‘without delay.’”

At of July, there were 9,400 individuals with purported links to the LTTE held separately from the rest of the population. They have not been released nearly half-a-year after internment.

Amnesty International also reported that the camps are clearly militarized. The 19-member Presidential Task Force established in mid-May “to plan and coordinate resettlement, rehabilitation and development of the Northern Province” is headed Major General CA Chandrasiri, who was also appointed governor of the province. All inmates are enclosed by barbed-wire fences, guarded and brutalized by well-armed soldiers.

“Arrests have been reported from the camps and Sri Lankan human rights defenders have alleged that enforced disappearances have also occurred,” wrote Amnesty.

“Sri Lanka’s history of large-scale enforced disappearances dating back to the 1980s, and the lack of independent monitoring… raises grave concerns that enforced disappearances and other violations of human rights may be occurring… Previous research [shows] that [persons] suspected by the government of being members or supporters of LTTE are at grave risk of extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearance, and torture, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.”

“Although the government calls these facilities ‘welfare villages,’ they are effectively detention camps…” Amnesty International also reported that not only are people not free to move as they wish, women and girls are raped by soldiers, and people live in sewage, disease-infested conditions, with little food and water and medical attention. They die in droves because of these imposed conditions.

Women and children are especially mistreated, which was the subject that James Elder, spokesperson for UNICEF, complained about to Sri Lankan authorities, who then expelled him from the country. Elder described the “unimaginable suffering” of children caught in the fighting, including babies he had seen with shrapnel wounds.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had refrained from criticizing Sri Lanka’s government, leveling his critique only at LTTE for carrying out atrocities. But when he briefly visited one camp less than a week after the end of the war, he said:

“I have traveled around the world and visited similar places, but this is by far the most appalling scenes I have seen…I sympathize fully with all of the displaced persons,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told CNN after visiting Manik Farm, the most presentable of Sri Lanka’s squalid and dangerous internment camps for Tamils civilians. The UN Chief has also promised international action regarding the heavy shelling of civilian populations during the recent fighting.

Out of the 280,000 IDPs after the end of the war (there were nearly one-half million over a year’s period), only between 15,000 and 40,000 had been released by November 1. Half of them, perhaps, have been ransomed. The Sunday Times wrote about “human trafficking at the internment camps.” Relatives were made to pay camp authorities in order to secure their release.

Future

A week after the end of the war, the LTTE communicated that several of its leaders were killed, but the organization would continue struggling for an independent Tamil Eelam in peaceful ways. July 22, the LTTE announced that its chief of international relations, Selvarsa Pathmanathan—known as KP—was made the new leader, and that a new strategy for a “free Tamil Eelam” would occur. On August 8, England’s The Independent wrote that Pathmanathan was under arrest by Sri Lanka and held incommunicado.

For us solidarity activists, left-wing organizations, and governments considered to be progressive-socialist-communist-revolutionary, I believe that our task must be to press for the lives and rights of the Tamil people. Australia’s Democratic Socialist Perspective and Socialist Alliance said it well in its October 2009 international situation report:

Now the Tamil struggle has entered a new phase. The immediate campaign must focus on defence of basic human rights, release and resettlement of the Internally Displaced Persons currently held in SL government concentration camps, an end to murders, torture, rapes, and provision of basic housing, food and drinking water to the Tamil people under brutal occupation.

As a solidarity activist, who advocates the right to resist and the necessity to conduct armed struggle once peaceful means fail to induce oppressive and terrorist governments to engage in a process aimed at peace with justice, I condemn all perpetrators of terrorism and demand they change tactics to ones that are morally in accordance with our ideology for socialism, for justice with equality.

I find that most, if not all, armed movements commit acts of atrocities, even acts of terror in the long course of warfare. This has sometimes been the case with FARC and PFLP, for instance. But I support them in their righteous struggle. They are up against, as was the more brutal LTTE, much greater military and economic forces that practice state terror endemically. Remember the ANC in South Africa’s war for liberation. They committed much the same.

The main reason why I am on their side, why I have been a leftist solidarity activist and writer for nearly half-a-century is a matter of basic ethics. I define ethics in this way: Life shall not be abused or destroyed by our conscious hand—without being attacked, invaded, oppressed beyond bare. A moral person, organization, political party, government acts in daily life and in the struggle for justice with that ethic in mind. These are my thoughts on morality.

1. We act to so that no one person, race or ethnic group is either over or under another.
2. In combat against oppressors and invaders, we do not kill non-combatant civilians nor forcefully recruit them, or use them as hostages.
3. We struggle to create equality for all.
4. We abolish all profit-making based upon the exploitation of labor or the oppression of any person, group of people or class. Instead, we build an economy based upon principles of justice and equality, one in which no one goes hungry, sharing equitably our resources and production.
5. We struggle to create a political system based upon participation where all have a voice in decision-making of vital matters, in local, national and international policies.
6. We struggle to eliminate alienation in each of us.

After following liberated Cuba for half-a-century, having lived and worked there for eight years, I find that during its guerrilla struggle, which fortunately only lasted two years, it acted in a moral manner. Cuba’s revolutionary armed struggle was exceptional in this way. The Vietnamese struggle against the invaders of France and the USA was so conducted as well. There are a few other examples: the original Sandinistas is, perhaps, one.

I think that the key reason why so many millions of people the world love and respect Che Guevara is because of his moral stance, of his example as a just revolutionary leader. I conclude this all-too-long essay with these oft-quoted words from Che’s Socialism and Man.

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love… Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, the most sacred cause, and make it one and indivisible… one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into an isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.

Robinson Crusoe’s ethics are rooted in his inherent imperialism. Being the only representative of his race and culture for 27 of his 28 years upon the island, and considering both superior to all others, he not only endeavors—regardless if it is applicable, necessary, or even viable—to replicate the society from which he came but, through these means, to reign supreme over his environment. Crusoe is culpable because he acknowledges that he has been freed from socially-defined standards and, more importantly, that such standards might, in themselves, be questionable yet, after rationalizing the ethically justifiable course of action, he frequently opts for a more self-aggrandizing, convenient, or profitable avenue.

For example, he criticizes the Spanish Inquisition as being unjust yet forces a Caribbean native whom he has liberated from being cannibalized—not on moral grounds but in order to obtain a servant—to assimilate to his Anglo-Saxon lifestyle. Crusoe never bothers to ask the native’s given name. Instead, to commemorate the day upon which Crusoe acted so gallantly, “the creature” is nonchalantly dubbed “Friday.” Crusoe then demands that the native be clothed despite Friday being uncomfortable in such adornments and, moreover, the climate not requiring such. Furthermore, Crusoe rarely inquires into Friday’s perspectives, customs, or culture (the latter has to offer them), thus implying that Crusoe believes his ways to be implicitly superior as he proceeds to teach Friday to speak English and convert him to Christianity. It is worthy of note that, when Friday is rescued, he grovels at his liberator’s feet. Crusoe does not lift Friday up but permits him to remain in his subservient position so as to establish the desired hierarchy (he has Friday refer to him as “Master”) as well as to satiate his narcissism. Astoundingly, Crusoe allows this to occur not once but twice. (Similarly, prior to Crusoe’s discovery of humans upon the island, he revels in his “sovereignty” over the island’s fauna, as he observes that he has capricious control over whether it lives or dies.) The epitome of Crusoe’s moral myopia toward Friday resides in Crusoe’s lack of empathy after having once been enslaved himself. Most pointedly, being free of societal customs and beliefs, there is no alibi for why he continues to uphold the institution of slavery, especially considering that, for several years, Crusoe and Friday are the island’s only inhabitants. Granted, he does not literally bind Friday in shackles and chains, however, he treats him as an inferior and in a manner which, if back in Europe, he would by no means apply to a fellow Briton.

It is with such happenstance convenience that Crusoe reinforces his religious views before summarily dismissing them. For instance, after several languid gestures toward reverence, once Crusoe is born-again, he maintains a calendar and observes the Sabbath. Yet, when he loses track of the date, his devotion subsequently subsides. Additionally, when he notices that barley has sprouted near his “castle” (shelter), being unable to reconcile how it arrived there, he attributes its presence to God’s will. He then recalls that he’d discarded several husks which might have contained seeds and dismisses divine intervention as being the culprit. Obviously, Crusoe’s level of devotion is dependent upon need (such as illness or desperation) or occurrences which he cannot readily rationalize and his theological fervor abruptly diminishes once he no longer requires assistance or deduces a non-supernatural cause for previously inexplicable events. Not surprisingly, he considers abandoning his faith in favor of another once he is rescued because doing so would be more lucrative (Catholicism is the reigning religion in Brazil, which is where his tobacco plantation resides).

Even in the wake of society, Crusoe is unable to sever himself from his entrepreneurial tendencies and, however futile, desire for material and monetary possessions. Despite his conjectures that, like Jonah, he might have been cast out for his sins (Crusoe would have never found himself stranded had he not set out to sea to procure more slaves), he produces more food than he can consume only to watch it rot. He practices animal husbandry and agriculture after conceding that the island aptly provides for his needs without having to resort to such labor-intensive activities. He even goes so far as to craft a table and chair. As noted, he has a “castle,” but he also possesses another shelter-cum-estate as well, which he refers to as his “bower.” Even after admitting that money has no intrinsic value in a tender-free existence, Crusoe hordes every coin he finds. Lastly, toward the end of his “reign” upon the island, the self-described “king” begins cataloguing people as possessions: He refers to the island’s inhabitants as his “subjects,” prisoners as “my people,” and even perceives specific (and in his mind, civilized) individuals as being his own, i.e. “the Spaniard” quickly metamorphoses into “my Spaniard.”

Other instances of Crusoe’s moral hypocrisy and logistic incongruity include his consenting that cannibals might well be acting upon political or cultural principles and, as a result, it may not his place to pass judgment upon them. (Friday confirms this when he informs Crusoe that cannibalism is the consequence of warfare and is not a standard practice, as evidenced by 17 stranded Britons currently residing peacefully amongst Friday’s people.) Nevertheless, and despite his newfound religiosity, Crusoe—against his better judgment and moral conscious—proceeds to slaughter cannibals in the name of God. He never reconciles the paradox in his condemnation of the cannibals’ capital punishment and his own country’s like sentence for mutiny.

Not surprisingly, Crusoe hasn’t any friends. Rather, his associations are strictly limited to accomplices, acquaintances, or business partners. (After he is rescued, he does go on to marry but never cites his wife by name.) Every individual’s worth is based upon the person’s utilitarian value as Crusoe refuses to permit sentimentality to intervene in his decision-making. This is best evidenced in his selling of Xury, a Moorish youth who aided Crusoe in escaping enslavement, which Crusoe later regrets—not because he misses the boy (though he does)—but because he is in need of additional labor on his Brazilian plantation. Dauntingly, when he is rescued, Crusoe leaves the island to British criminals without attempting to notify those who have set off to sea in search for help—the aforementioned Spaniard and Friday’s father—that there are new, dangerous inhabitants awaiting them upon their return. These individuals are not even an afterthought in that, in lieu of the maritime risks involved atop the political tension between Spain and Britain, Crusoe never bothers to inform us of the rescue mission’s fate, even after returning to the island years later. This omission is all the more insulting given that the seafarers aided Crusoe in retaining control of the island after mutineers came ashore.

What perhaps best outlines the Crusoe’s Machiavellian nature is his reaction to a single footprint which mysteriously appears on the beach one day. Though, upon his initial appearance upon the island, he longed to be rescued, Crusoe gradually becomes apprehensive of any sign of human life, as seen in him automatically assuming the enigmatic mark to be the sign of a hostile presence. Crusoe’s paranoia stems from fear that his comfortable state of existence and omnipotence might be compromised whereas before, when he was unsure of his ability to survive, he longed for salvation. He fears, not only cannibalistic natives, but also Spaniards. Yet ironically, fellow Britons prove to be his greatest threat (thereby negating Crusoe’s ethnocentricity). His megalomania is exemplified by his inability and unwillingness to admit fault even after he has returned to Europe. Various dates in his calendar are blaringly incorrect and, though a simple pen stroke would eradicate the errors and the reader would be none the wiser (while saying nothing of the intellectual integrity that most authors would insist upon in acknowledging the mistakes so as to better represent the conditions under which they were operating), Crusoe chooses to ignore them.

Though he does possess a few redeeming qualities, such as resourcefulness and determination, Daniel Defoe’s character of Robinson Crusoe is by no means a hero or even an admirable human being. He is an unapologetic racist, imperialist, fickle theist, and megalomaniac par excellence. He continually shirks moral obligation in favor of activities wherein he will profit, be it financially or socially, or which will appease his narcissism. His lethargy is only superseded by potential harm or ennui. He displays little moral development in that he rewards those who were faithful to his financial interests while he was stranded—not out of respect or gratitude—but anxiety and vanity respectively: Fearing that the Inquisition may result in martyrdom, he sells his plantation and donates the proceeds, of which “The world will seldom be able to show the like of.” During his valediction, Crusoe declares that he has since cast off once again, thereby implying that—to our knowledge—he might have committed many of the same moral atrocities on his “new adventure.” And why not? What evidence do we have to the contrary that, after 28 years on a desert island, he is any the wiser since this ten-year voyage opens with his return to the island where (in true capitalistic spirit) he divides “his colony[’s]” land into plots before announcing to its populace that it is not permitted to leave?

[N]ow we are focusing on the mass movement… [N]ow we [can] really practice what we have been preaching. That means the fusion of the strategy of PPW [Protracted People’s War] and the tactic of general insurrection. What we have been doing since 2005 is the path of preparation for general insurrection through our work in the urban areas and our participation in the coalition government.

– Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai, interview with the Britain-based World People’s Resistance Movement, October 26, 2009

Today (November 1) Nepal’s Maoists initiate, with torch rallies in Kathmandu, a mass movement to bring down the regime. This is the regime that succeeded the one their chair Prachanda headed as prime minister from August 2008 to May 2009–a compromise arrangement, always understood to be temporary and transitional, that collapsed when the Nepali Army refused to take orders from the Maoist prime minister.

Prime Minister Prachanda, noting the obvious (that the Maoists’ suspension of the People’s War and participation in parliamentary processes had not really given them state power), might have then ordered the resumption of the war. Instead, the first elected Maoist national leader made a surprising (I think even shrewdly Gandhian) move of resigning his post, while his party, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) redoubled its efforts to organize support among the urban masses of Kathmandu.

The Maoists claimed that acquiring top posts in the government following the toppling of the monarchy in 2008 was less important than two other tasks: achieving goals in the composition of the new constitution and building that mass urban movement. The “Prachanda Path” has always been about combining Mao’s theory of People’s War (surrounding the cities from the countryside) with Lenin’s model of the urban uprising—the October Revolution.

As of November 2005 the Maoists controlled about 80% of the country. They surrounded Kathmandu Valley but felt incapable of taking it militarily. Meanwhile King Gyanendra, deeply unpopular, had made himself even more widely despised by dissolving the parliament and arresting mainstream political leaders. The Maoists cut a deal with the legal political parties to coordinate actions to bring down the king. They agreed to eventually lay down their arms under UN supervision, in return for the other parties’ acceptance of new elections for a Constituent Assembly to author a new constitution. In the April 2008 elections, Maoists won 220 of 575 seats in the assembly, double the figure of their nearest competitors. International observers such as Jimmy Carter verified that the elections were free and fair. There is no question the Maoists have a mass base.

And there’s no question there are real limits to what you can accomplish following the normal rules. Hence “the tactic of general insurrection.”

The U.S. State Department has always seen the Maoists as “terrorists” and even keeps them on the terror list now. That’s not because they’ve used violence to overthrow a social order that inflicts misery in subtle and not so subtle, violent and not so violent ways every day as the Nepali state presides or looks on indifferently. “Terrorism” in the State Department’s lexicon refers to anything that terrifies State Department officials, and the prospect of the red flag flying over Mt. Everest is one of their nightmares. But the fact is they do believe in the violent overthrow of oppressive institutions, they do believe the revolution isn’t by any means over yet, and they do have a program for seizure of power through what Bhattarai terms “the tactic of general insurrection.”

Knowing this, U.S. Charge d’Affaires in Kathmandu Jeffrey Moon called on Prachanda at his home in the city Oct. 28 to express U.S. concern about these upcoming protests. He was apparently told that the Maoists remain committed to the peace process and the drafting of a new constitution. But suspension of the guerrilla war is one thing. General insurrection centered in the city is another. And the People’s War and the urban insurrection may connect at some point in the near future, just as the government of neighboring India undertakes an assault on the Maoist movement that has come to control vast regions of that county.

I have no idea what the outcome may be. But history is clearly not over, Communist movements are clearly not dead, and the ideal of classless society has clearly not vanished in societies where class oppression is most intense.

Obama is a man who has yet to shut down a global gulag, who has yet to end the warring in Iraq, who has yet to oversee the return of the elected president of Haiti (deposed by US, Canadian, and French forces), who stands unflinching on the coup d’etat in Honduras, who runs cover for Israeli massacres of Palestinians and Israeli violations of the Geneva Conventions (i.e., supporting war crimes), who seeks to proliferate military bases in Columbia, who has ramped up the killing in Afghanistan, and who has overseen the spillover of war into Pakistan.

Is this the criteria that is deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize?

The Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjørn Jagland said, “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”

So Nobel Prizes are being handed out for offering hope? Is this an effort to prod Obama along the road toward a peace-making presidency?

Didn’t Norway reward Yitzhak Shamir, Shimon Peres, and Yasser Arafat Nobel Peace Prizes for giving the hope of peace in historical Palestine? Since then Israel has carried out many slaughters of the indigenous Palestinians. And yes, Palestinians have resisted with violence — sometimes lethal.

Wasn’t US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger co-awarded a 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a cease-fire in the US war on Vietnam? Hope was hung around a ceasefire destined to collapse. At least Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho had the integrity to refuse a prize where peace was based on the tokenism of hope.

There are many examples that contradict the notion that Nobel Prizes would spur the US nation toward peace. Yet the leaders of the most warring nation on the planet continue to be rewarded with peace prizes. It defies rationality.

Did Obama offer a mea culpa for US atrocities?

Did Obama seek justice for the perpetrators behind the killing of an estimated 1.3 million Iraqis based upon a concocted casus belli?

To his credit, Obama did something most unusual in acknowledging that the US was behind the 1953 coup d’etat in Iran? Did he offer an apology? Did he offer compensation?

Hoping for peace in a state based on the genocide, dispossession, and marginalization of its Original Peoples, a state whose economy was largely built through slavery, a state built through the expansionism of war with its neighbors, a state built through dominating its hemisphere through self-declared destiny, despite never managing the gumption to apologize for these past grave crimes seems rather dubious.

There are plenty of states deserving of censure. However, when one state with a long history of violence stands supremely powerful and claims itself to be a beacon onto all other states, that is where transformation must first occur in a world whose people long for a just peace.

That will require more than wishful thinking. It will require the audacity to mobilize the masses to a revolution for peace.

Are you really in the bottom 98% if you make under a million, Papi?

— the author’s son

If you’re not into a redistribution of wealth in the U.S., that’s okay. You should read this anyway. If you’re not against U.S. wars overseas or torture, that’s okay. You should read this anyway. Why? In short, because Ban Ki-moon, a relatively conservative Secretary General for the U.N., has asserted that if the world’s nations don’t come to an unprecedented agreement on the environment at Copenhagen this December “it’s all over.” As in end of the world as we know it. And since I can guarantee you that the gathering in Denmark will NOT produce what’s necessary in time, this article — assuming that Ban Ki-moon is “off” by a couple of years respecting deadline — just might provide salvation of a sort.

The proposal below, Plan 98, tries to address multiple issues, but whether or not we embrace this or that particular issue together, you can count on this piece being worth the heartbeats to read because at heart it tries to motivate you — us all — to stop our ecocidal momentum. You’ll pick up on that pulse in the piece if you stick with it to the end. From there you can tweak things as you will, rejecting this, running with that.

There are a number of organizations/citizens who stand to benefit enormously by my proposal below. They include anti-war activists, health care advocates, supporters of immigrants, animal rights people, human rights groups, environmentalists of all (or most) stripes, feminists, sweatshop protesters, ALL groups concerned with the welfare of children, living wage fighters, prison reformers, union members, socially-conscious entrepreneurs, organic farmers, overburdened parents, disgruntled educators, writers, opponents of police brutality, artists, those who hate Monsanto unconditionally, and many others. Many, many others.

If readers can’t immediately connect the dots between Plan 98 and the above, I’ll be happy to go over the synapses.

As per the superrich and wealth and income distribution in America (The figures are worse today!), I recommend that the top 2% of the country’s population (holding almost all of the nation’s “financial wealth”) be forced to release a small portion of their fluid reserves immediately so that the lower 98% of our population benefits at once. The powers that be held emergency sessions to make sure that this and that financial institution did not fail, as they say. They can (They really can!) do the same thing for the purpose of — virtually overnight — ensuring that the bottom 80% of the U.S.. population goes from sharing only 7% of the country’s financial wealth to holding… double that!* Citizens who are in the top 20% at present (in terms of financial wealth) but NOT in the top 2% will also gain somewhat, though not as much.

*Not so that consumerism can be increased. Rents could be paid, mortgages. A tooth pulled.. Sight restored. Funerals financed. That sort of thing. Okay, maybe the purchase of one harmonica. [You don't want to lose your sense of humor here.]

How we will determine who falls into what category — all the devilish details — can be worked out easily enough. Enough with anal-retentive game plans, sphincter tight ordering! The first fun, (loose) order of business is to see who’s on board with what can easily be labeled (and dismissed prematurely) as a socialist idea. [Never mind that many of our major (destructive) corporations and the Pentagon, among other elements in society, are subsidized (and have been for quite a long time) very socialist-like.] With Plan 98 we’re focusing on benefiting the vast majority of our population, but NOT to the same over-the-top degree as corrupt corporations et al. have profited along (hidden) “socialist” lines.

PLEASE don’t worry about some underprivileged person getting something for nothing on occasion. The top 2% that we’re targeting get away with way more — Like murder and unprecedented theft! — on a regular basis, at more of a cost to society than the poor of this nation could possibly drain from our common coffers if they worked at exactly that 24×8.

No immigrant, Mexican or any other, could possibly be as illegal in this country as the U.S. abominations abroad are illegal. And there is no standard by which any immigrant presence in this country can count as remotely comparable to our immoral atrocities conducted abroad. Not just in terms of the wantonly horrific, unnecessary military aggression, but — also — with regard to our dumping of toxic waste into the environments of other nations via routine Pentagon practice.

Like Green Day asks: Do you know your enemy?

The U.S. military is arguably the single greatest polluter on earth. So cutting out what we’re doing in Columbia, what we’re trying to pull off in Africa, what we intend to do further in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan and Iran… well, that would go a long way toward making this a better world. Increasing safety to boot.

The lifestyle of the Super Rich — the upper 2% — is killing the earth. I’m sure I don’t have to delineate how they’re contributing, to what enormous extent. Our wars, war-related prep/experimentation, and Pentagon indiscretions are doing their number on the planet too… and keep the vast majority of the country — unnecessarily — without necessities.

If you can rise above the self-serving fears those two have inculcated in you (through our educational system, media fare, etc.), and come up with your own definition of what being patriotic is, or what life is all about… then perhaps you’ll want to embrace Plan 98.

Now here’s where we get practical, hands on. Here’s where you go to work… beyond what’s your work*… without your present work suffering.

*Even if 50% of the country were doing “good work” individually, it wouldn’t be enough. Something must be done on a large scale in solidarity. And with that 5% or 10% would be enough… if a lot of them were from California.

If you help us to put TOSCA’S twelve unaffiliated, non-politician citizens into the Governor of California’s office (so that they can serve together on an equal basis¹ ) in 2010, I promise you that we’ll take our best shot at dismantling/undermining the electoral system as it stands, our ecocidal environmental momentum as it moves, and abominable U.S. practices on all fronts.

Things are clearly getting worse daily. The only chance we have, I believe, is for everyone to get behind helping us to put a dozen radical citizens into the Sacred Seat in Sacramento, California for the purpose of helping the public to self-educate about the need for a revolution.

It won’t work?

That’s what they always say. But, then, right now there’s 98% (of others) who just might get it. So that it could be made — forced — to work. A 2% California solution giving them time/urging them to get on board too… to see what might happen, could happen.

In spite of the hypnosis going on, I like the disgruntled odds. And I LOVE the potential payoff.

1. In lieu of a single self-serving careerist (once again).

If there’s anyone out there who is not already thoroughly cynical about those on the board of directors of the planet, the latest chapter in the saga of the bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland might just be enough to push them over the edge.

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted for the December 21, 1988 bombing, was released from his Scottish imprisonment August 21 supposedly because of his terminal cancer and sent home to Libya, where he received a hero’s welcome. President Obama said that the jubilant welcome Megrahi received was “highly objectionable”. His White House spokesman Robert Gibbs added that the welcoming scenes in Libya were “outrageous and disgusting”. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was “angry and repulsed”, while his foreign secretary, David Miliband, termed the celebratory images “deeply upsetting.” Miliband warned: “How the Libyan government handles itself in the next few days will be very significant in the way the world views Libya’s reentry into the civilized community of nations.”¹

Ah yes, “the civilized community of nations”, that place we so often hear about but so seldom get to actually see. American officials, British officials, and Scottish officials know that Megrahi is innocent. They know that Iran financed the PFLP-GC, a Palestinian group, to carry out the bombing with the cooperation of Syria, in retaliation for the American naval ship, the Vincennes, shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in July of the same year, which took the lives of more people than did the 103 bombing. And it should be pointed out that the Vincennes captain, plus the officer in command of air warfare, and the crew were all awarded medals or ribbons afterward.² No one in the US government or media found this objectionable or outrageous, or disgusting or repulsive. The United States has always insisted that the shooting down of the Iranian plane was an “accident”. Why then give awards to those responsible?

Today’s oh-so-civilized officials have known of Megrahi’s innocence since 1989. The Scottish judges who found Megrahi guilty know he’s innocent. They admit as much in their written final opinion. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigated Megrahi’s trial, knows it. They stated in 2007 that they had uncovered six separate grounds for believing the conviction may have been a miscarriage of justice, clearing the way for him to file a new appeal of his case.³ The evidence for all this is considerable. And most importantly, there is no evidence that Megrahi was involved in the act of terror.

The first step of the alleged crime, sine qua non — loading the bomb into a suitcase at the Malta airport — for this there was no witness, no video, no document, no fingerprints, nothing to tie Megrahi to the particular brown Samsonite suitcase, no past history of terrorism, no forensic evidence of any kind linking him to such an act.

And the court admitted it: “The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 [Air Malta to Frankfurt] is a major difficulty for the Crown case.”⁴

The scenario implicating Iran, Syria, and the PFLP-GC was the Original Official Version, endorsed by the US, UK, Scotland, even West Germany — guaranteed, sworn to, scout’s honor, case closed — until the buildup to the Gulf War came along in 1990 and the support of Iran and Syria was needed for the broad Middle East coalition the United States was readying for the ouster of Iraq’s troops from Kuwait. Washington was also anxious to achieve the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by groups close to Iran. Thus it was that the scurrying sound of backtracking could be heard in the corridors of the White House. Suddenly, in October 1990, there was a New Official Version: it was Libya — the Arab state least supportive of the US build-up to the Gulf War and the sanctions imposed against Iraq — that was behind the bombing after all, declared Washington.

The two Libyans were formally indicted in the US and Scotland on Nov. 14, 1991. Within the next 20 days, the remaining four American hostages were released in Lebanon along with the most prominent British hostage, Terry Waite.⁵

In order to be returned to Libya, Megrahi had to cancel his appeal. It was the appeal, not his health, that concerned the Brits and the Americans. Dr. Jim Swire of Britain, whose daughter died over Lockerbie, is a member of UK Families Flight 103, which wants a public inquiry into the crash. “If he goes back to Libya,” Swire says, “it will be a bitter pill to swallow, as an appeal would reveal the fallacies in the prosecution case. … I’ve lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system, but if the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive.”⁶

And a reversal of the verdict would mean that the civilized and venerable governments of the United States and the United Kingdom would stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for almost 20 years and imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for eight years.

The Sunday Times (London) recently reported: “American intelligence documents [of 1989, from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)] blaming Iran for the Lockerbie bombing would have been produced in court if the Libyan convicted of Britain’s worst terrorist attack had not dropped his appeal.” Added the Times: “The DIA briefing discounted Libya’s involvement in the bombing on the basis that there was ‘no current credible intelligence’ implicating her.”⁷

If the three governments involved really believed that Megrahi was guilty of murdering 270 of their people, it’s highly unlikely that they would have released their grip on him. Or is even that too much civilized behavior to expect.

One final note: Many people are under the impression that Libyan Leader Moammar Qaddafi has admitted on more than one occasion to Libya’s guilt in the PanAm 103 bombing. This is not so. Instead, he has stated that Libya would take “responsibility” for the crime. He has said this purely to get the heavy international sanctions against his country lifted. At various times, both he and his son have explicitly denied any Libyan role in the bombing.

Humankind shall never fly

All those angry people. Yelling at the president and members of Congress about how the proposed government health plan, and Obama himself, are “socialist”. (See the poster of Obama as the Joker character from Batman with “Socialism” in large letters, as the only word.⁸ ) These good folks wanna get their health care through good ol’ capitalism; better no health care at all than godless-atheist commie health care; better to see your child die than have her saved by a Marxist-Stalinist-collective doctor who works for the government. But these screaming, heckling Americans — like most of their countrymen — might be rather surprised to discover that they don’t really believe what they think they believe. I wrote an essay several years ago, which is still perfectly applicable today, entitled “The United States invades, bombs, and kills for it, but do Americans really believe in free enterprise?”

A common refrain, explicit or implicit, amongst the recent health-care hecklers is that the government can’t do anything better or cheaper than private corporations. Studies, however, have clearly indicated otherwise. In 2003, US federal agencies examined 17,595 federal jobs and found civil servants to be superior to contractors 89 percent of the time. The following year, a study to determine whether 12,573 federal jobs could be done more efficiently by private contractors found in-house workers winning 91 percent of the time, according to an Office of Management and Budget report. And in 2005, a study of tens of thousands of government positions concluded that federal workers had won the job competitions more than 80 percent of the time. All these studies, it should be kept in mind, took place under the administration of George W. Bush, who, upon taking office in 2001, declared it his top management priority that federal workers should compete with contractors for as many as 850,000 government jobs.⁹ Thus, any pressure to influence the outcome of these studies would have been in the opposite direction — putting the outside contractors in the best light.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Boys of Capital have been chortling in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century — without exception — was either overthrown, invaded, corrupted, perverted, subverted, destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States and its allies. Not one socialist government or movement — from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in El Salvador — not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.

It’s as if the Wright brothers’ first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon these catastrophes, nodded their heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Humankind shall never fly.

The continual selling of the Afghanistan war

“But we must never forget,” said President Obama recently, “this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”¹⁰

Obama was speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the ultra-nationalist group whose members would not question such sentiments. Neither would most Americans, including many of those who express opposition to the war when polled. It’s simple — We’re fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. We’re fighting the same people who attacked New York and Washington. Never mind that out of the tens of thousands the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001. Never mind that the “plot to kill Americans” in 2001 was hatched in Germany and the United States at least as much as in Afghanistan. What is needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does “an even larger safe haven” mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.

As to “plotting to do so again” … there’s no reason to assume that the United States has any concrete information of this, anymore than did Bush or Cheney who tried to scare us in the same way for more than seven years to enable them to carry out their agenda.

There are many people in Afghanistan who deeply resent the US presence there and the drones that fly overhead and drop bombs on houses, wedding parties, and funerals. One doesn’t have to be a member of al Qaeda to feel this way. There doesn’t even have to be such a thing as a “member of al Qaeda”. It tells us nothing that some of them can be called “al Qaeda”. Almost every individual or group in that part of the world not in love with US foreign policy, which Washington wishes to stigmatize, is charged with being associated with, or being a member of, al Qaeda, as if there’s a precise and meaningful distinction between people retaliating against American aggression while being a member of al Qaeda and people retaliating against American aggression while NOT being a member of al Qaeda; as if al Qaeda gives out membership cards to fit in your wallet, as if there are chapters of al Qaeda that put out a weekly newsletter and hold a potluck on the first Monday of each month.

In any event, as in Iraq, the American “war on terrorism” in Afghanistan regularly and routinely creates new anti-American terrorists. This is scarcely in dispute even at the Pentagon.

The only “necessity” that draws the United States to Afghanistan is the need for oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea area, the establishment of military bases in this country that is surrounded by the oil-rich Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf regions, and making it easier to watch and pressure next-door Iran. What more could any respectable imperialist nation desire?

But the war against the Taliban can’t be won. Except by killing everyone in Afghanistan. The United States should negotiate the pipelines with the Taliban, as the Clinton administration unsuccessfully tried to do, and then get out.

The revolution was televised

   You will not be able to stay home, brother.
   You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out.
   You will not be able to lose yourself on skag [heroin] and skip out for beer during commercials.
   Because the revolution will not be televised. …

   There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock news
   The revolution will not be right back after a message
   The revolution will not go better with Coke
   The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath
   The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised

These are some of the lines of Gil Scott-Heron’s song that told people in the 1970s (which, I maintain, were just as ‘60ish as the fabled 1960s) that a revolution was coming, that they would no longer be able to live their normal daily life, that they should no longer want to live their normal daily life, that they would have to learn to be more serious about this thing they were always prattling about, this thing they called “revolution”.

Fast Forward to 2009 … Gil Scott-Heron, now a ripe old 60, was recently interviewed by the Washington Post:

WP: In the early 1970s, you came out with “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” about the erosion of democracy in America. You all but predicted that there would be a revolution in which a brainwashed nation would come to its senses. What do you think now? Did we have a revolution?

GS-H: Yes, the election of President Obama was the revolution.¹¹

Oh? So that’s it? That’s what we took clubs over our heads for? Tear gas, jail cells, and permanent police and FBI files? Published a million issues of the underground press? To get a president who doesn’t have a revolutionary bone in his body? Not a muscle or nerve or tissue or organ that seriously questions cherished establishment beliefs concerning terrorism, permanent war, Israel, torture, marijuana, health care, and the primacy of profit over the environment and all else? Karl Marx is surely turning over in his London grave. If the modern counter-revolutionary United States had existed at the time of the American revolution, it would have crushed that revolution. And a colonial (white) Barack Obama would have worked diligently to achieve some sort of bi-partisan compromise with the King of England, telling him we need to look forward, not backward.

Yugoslavia

During 1998-1999, the United States used the Kosovo conflict to reaffirm its hegemonic role in Europe. US officials deliberately undercut a potential diplomatic solution to the Kosovo war; instead of using diplomacy to resolve the conflict, the United States sought a military solution in which NATO power could once again be demonstrated. The resulting air war, in 1999, succeeded in fully establishing the continued relevance of NATO, thus affirming US hegemony in Europe and undercutting European proclivities for foreign policy independence.

– David Gibbs, First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia

There’s no issue of the recent past that has caused more friction internationally amongst those on the left than the question of what really took place in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Gibbs’ new book explores many of the myths surrounding this very complicated and controversial slice of history, particularly those dealing with the supposed humanitarian motivation behind the Western powers intervention and the many alleged Serbian atrocities.

1. Washington Post, August 22 and August 26, 2009.
2. Newsweek magazine, July 13, 1992.
3. Sunday Herald (Scotland), August 17, 2009.
4. ”Opinion of the Court”, Par. 39, issued following the trial in the Hague in 2001.
5. Read many further details about the case.
6. The Independent (London daily), April 26, 2009.
7. Sunday Times (London), August 16, 2009.
8. Washington Post, August 6, 2009, p.C2.
9. Washington Post, June 8, 2005 and March 23, 2006 for this citation plus the three studies mentioned.
10. Talk given at VFW convention in Phoenix, Arizona, August 17, 2009.
11. Washington Post, August 26, 2009.

Rise like lions after slumber
in unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth, like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many, they are few!

– Percy Bysshe Shelley “Mask of Anarchy”

If you don’t know your history it’s as if you were born yesterday.

– Howard Zinn

In a recent article, famed trend forecaster, Gerald Celente, wrote:

The natives are restless. The third shot of the “Second American Revolution” has been fired. History is being made. But just as with the first two shots, the third shot is not being heard. America is seething. Not since the Civil War has anything like this happened. But the protests are either being intentionally downplayed or ignorantly misinterpreted.¹

He cites the more than 700 anti-tax rallies and “Tea Parties” as evidence of a burgeoning period of passion. In a nation bearing arms, the power of the first amendment is waning, the power of a chaotic government is encroaching, and the people are growing restless after four decades of declining wages, the prospect of total economic and societal collapse,and a government that must lie in order to perpetuate itself. In the status quo Machiavellian world of the corporate media, the protests have either been ignored or bastardized, oft in sophomoric light, as references to “tea bagging” attest. The media, by and large, operates at a third grade level. Upon the election of Barack H. Obama many well-meaning Americans congratulated themselves for the eradication of racism in their country. However, persons protesting the presidents policies—either by way of demonstrating or what Alex Jones terms “the Poster Revolution—have been labelled racists.

In August many Senators and House members have hinted at the cancellation of their town hall meetings, as incensed citizens use these forums to voice—rather, shout—their myriad concerns about the direction of the Empire. A strong presence of police and bodyguards were needed to quell the fervor of the natives. An increasing number of congressmen speak out against rumors of possible martial law this fall.

Meanwhile, the corporate media slowly integrates such coverage into their programs. According to Brian Wilson on Fox news, “Northcom has a proposal sitting on the desk of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that would authorize the military to backup FEMA should their be an H1N1 pandemic… One assumes this might be necessary should there be mass quarantines.” (according to WHO there already is a level 6 pandemic, organizing all UN nations under effective UN control)

Protestors have been derided as racist, gun-owning militia members of the conservative variety. In actuality, the irate citizens hail from all facets of the American experience. Outrage over the issue of healthcare—though few grasp the complex 1000 page health care reform document, legislators included—is “clearly real and un-staged.”

The healthcare legislation is piled atop a maelstrom of adventurously genocidal White House policies: “a series of gigantic, unpopular, government-imposed (but taxpayer-financed) bailouts, buyouts, rescue and stimulus packages have been stuffed down the gullet of Americans. With no public platform to voice their oppositions, options for citizens have been limited to fruitless petitions, e-mails and phone calls to Congress…all fielded by anonymous staff underlings,” Celente states. The eugenics approach to science under John Holdren, White House Science Czar, has also stirred many to anger.

Congress is in recess, which means that elected representatives are back in their districts. The public is partially active. Celente, who predicted the crash of 1987 and the fall of the Soviet Union, contends, “Though in its early stages, the ‘Second American Revolution’ is underway. Yet, what we forecast will become the most profound political trend of the century—the trend that will change the world—is still invisible to the same experts, authorities and pundits who didn’t see the financial crisis coming until the bottom fell out of the economy.”

Trend Forecast: Conditions will continue to deteriorate. The global economy is terminally ill. The recession is in a brief remission, not the early stages of recovery. Cheap money, easy credit and unrestrained borrowing brought on an economic crisis that cannot be cured by monetary and fiscal policies that promote more cheap money, easy credit and unrestrained borrowing.

Nevertheless, Washington will continue to intervene, tax and exert control. Protests will escalate and riots will follow.

Fourth Shot of the “Second American Revolution”: While there are many wild cards that could light the fuse, The Trends Research Institute forecasts that if the threat of government-forced Swine Flu vaccinations is realized, it will be the fourth shot. Tens of millions will fight for their right to remain free and unvaccinated.

Celente cites new technologies such as the internet, camera-equipped cell phones, access to YouTube, and twitter, as means rendering the revolutionary spirit nearly impossible to control. It “will prove contagious.” He does acknowledge that the “Second American Revolution” could be “derailed through some false flag event designed to deceive the public, or a genuine event or crisis capable of rallying the entire nation behind the President…Given the pattern of governments to parlay egregious failures into mega-failures, the classic trend they follow, when all else fails, is to take their nation to war…A false flag attempt, a genuine crisis, or a declaration of war, may slow the momentum of the “Second American Revolution,” but nothing will stop it.”

While Celente outlines admirably the multitude of circumstances aligning in the United States, he does miss some key points in his report, such as the U.S. military’s mobilization on domestic soil. As Mathew Rothschild from the Progressive details in the article, “The Pentagon Wants Authority to Post Almost 400,000 Military Personnel in U.S.,” the Pentagon has requested congress to grant the Secretary of Defense the authority to post almost 400,000 military personnel all over the United States in times of emergency or major disaster.²

Mike German, the ACLU’s national security policy counsel, articulated condemnation “that the military would propose such a broad set of authorities and potentially undermine a 100-year-old prohibition against the military in domestic law enforcement with no public debate and seemingly little understanding of the threat to democracy.”

Further, other various legislation lays groundwork which enables the state, in the event of a national emergency, to vertically align power so as to better concentrate certain citizens from the rest. For example, the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act allows Homeland Security to use KBR, a subdivision of Haliburton, to establish at least six national facilities for the concenration of civilians, not criminals, on military installations.³

In the Field Manual 3-19-40 Military Police Internment/Resettlement Field Operations, a civilian internee is labeled as such: “CIVILIAN INTERNEE 1-7. A CI is a person who is interned during armed conflict or occupation if he is considered a security risk or if he needs protection because he committed an offense (insurgent, criminal) against the detaining power. A CI is protected according to the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (GC), 12 August 1949.”

The REX 84 Program outlines procedures for the continuity of government and the internment and processing of internment of dissidents in the event of civil unrest. In the United States of America there are federal plans, geared towards events or non-events of unrest or pandemic, for the implementation of martial law and military dictatorship. The evidence is staggering. For two-thirds of the citizenry in the U.S., the Constitution has already been suspended by “Constitution Free Zones,” set up two hundred miles from all borders and coasts.

In a recent Huffington Post article, Larry Flynt called for an agreement on a date on which a general strike would be orchestrated. Music to many of our ears such civil disobedience would be. He also had this to say:

The American government — which we once called our government — has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called “economic royalists,” who choose our elected officials — indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.

In order to avert senseless bloodshed, starvation, the utilization of an already implemented police state, the United States public must organize and accomplish thousands of large-scale regional switches to partially self-sustainable economies in order to organize a successful and fluid general strike. This is not the revolution of reform, only the beginning thereof. Crisis precipitates change through which power is consolidated. Through the usurpation of power resistance is fomented. Through resistance and crisis the common forum of ideas is expanded; people think. Through thought imagination is realized. A general strike is but the first action, and the realization of community will mark the onset of the revolutionary reform we all desire: an intellectual and emotional revolution.

1. Gerald Celente. “The Second American Revolution.”
2. Mathew Rothschild. “The Pentagon Wants the Authority to Post Almost 400,00 Military Personnel in U.S.” Progressive, 12 August 2009.
3. Byron Tripp. “H.R. 645 And The FEMA Concentration Camps,” 23 August 2009.

The crackdown intensified five days after the June 16 demonstration of up to 2 million people in Tehran protesting the disputed re-election claim of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Offices were shut down as large numbers of workers stayed away from their jobs.

This great outpouring recalled the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran, the hated US-backed dictator. Many protesters revived the anti-Shah chant, “Down with the dictator.” Video and photos of the great mobilization inspired people around the world who support democracy and social justice, and set off alarm bells for despots in the Middle East. While the Iranian protests began over a stolen presidential election, their increasing size and intensity raises the possibility of revolutionary change in Iran and beyond.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared during Friday prayers June 19 that there would be “bloodshed and chaos” if the protests continued. “Street challenge is not acceptable,” he declared.

The basij militias, paramilitary groups that patrol the streets for supposedly un-Islamic behavior, such as immodest dress by women, made good on Khamanei’s threats, attacking supporters of reformist presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi the following day.

One killing captured on video — the shooting of 21-year-old Neda Agha Soltan on June 20 — quickly came to symbolize the human toll of the vicious crackdown. But as with previous attacks, protesters fought back, even though their numbers were smaller than previous protests.

As a university professor wrote of his decision to demonstrate that day, along with students:

“After the Supreme Leader’s fierce speech at the Friday prayers, we knew that today we would be different. We feel so vulnerable, more than ever, but at the same time are aware of our power. No matter how strong it is collectively, it will do little to protect us today. We could only take our bones and flesh to the streets and expose them to batons and bullets. Two different feelings fight inside me without mixing with one another. To live or to just be alive, that’s the question.”

He added:

Here’s a true battleground. And this time, it’s huge. Columns of smoke rise to the sky. You can hardly see the asphalt. Only bricks and stones. Here, people have the upper hand. Three lanes, the middle one separated by opaque fences, under construction for the metro.

The workers have climbed up the fences and show the V [for victory] sign. They start throwing stone and timber to the street to supply the armament. I tell myself, “Look at the poor, the ones Ahmadinejad always speaks of.” But the president’s name is no longer in fashion. This time, the slogans address the leader, something unheard of in the past three decades. It’s a beautiful sunset, with rays of light penetrating evening clouds. We feel safe among people moving back forth with the anti-riot police attacks.

That day, using batons, chains, knives and occasionally bullets, the basij injured and arrested hundreds of people. Security personnel also added to the death toll among protesters, which official reports put at 19 as of June 22.

The overwhelming security presence on the street, along with violent attacks on university dormitories and arrests of prominent opposition figures, made protest increasingly difficult the following days — police even prevented a funeral service for Neda Agha Soltan.

Despite the repression, the mass movement that took shape around Mousavi’s election campaign has already been transformed into a broader fight for democracy. It will not dissipate anytime soon, whatever the intention of the candidate and his handlers.

In Tehran, protesters unable to mount street protests have taken to literally shouting from the rooftops at night to show their continued defiance. The mass demonstrations may have subsided owing to the crackdown, but the movement has not been crushed. The movement may be regrouping, but it has not disappeared.

This pressure has pushed Mousavi, a moderate former prime minister, into the unlikely role of champion for democratic reform.

A Facebook page attributed to Mousavi stated that he is “ready for martyrdom” and called on his supporters to carry out a general strike if he is arrested. And in an open letter to supporters issued June 21, Mousavi declared that, if allowed to stand, Iran’s election fraud would validate criticisms that Islam and democracy were incompatible:

If the high volume of cheating and vote manipulation that has put a fire to the foundations of people’s trust is itself introduced as the proof and evidence of the lack of fraud, the republicanism of the regime will be slaughtered and the idea of incompatibility of Islam and republicanism would be practically proven.

Such statements reflect the enormous pressure that the mass movement has put on the reformist leader. “Poor Mousavi, we took the easel away from his hands and gave him a gun,” one supporter joked to the Financial Times, in a reference to the candidate’s turn to painting while he was out of the public eye for most of the last two decades.

Yet it is far from clear that Mousavi is willing to use the “gun” of wider mobilizations and general strikes to force a recount of the stolen election or a rerun vote, let alone thoroughgoing democratic reforms. As an establishment politician and an integral member of the Iranian ruling class, he will be extremely reluctant to call forth the semi-underground labor movement that has waged intermittent strikes and protests since 2004.

Iranian reformers — like, for example, former President Mahmoud Khatami — have always oriented to educated and upper-class liberals while pursuing economic policies detrimental to workers and the poor. As a result, Ahmadinejad was able to strike a populist pose to win the 2005 presidential elections — with the help of vote fraud to get into a runoff election, which he won handily against Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful cleric, former president and one of the richest men in Iran.

In office, Ahmadinejad was anything but a friend to the working class. He pursued policies of privatization to enrich his coterie around the national security apparatus and ruthlessly suppressed efforts at organizing independent unions. He tried to maintain popularity through a nationalist stance, defending Iran’s nuclear energy program against pressure from the West.

And in the run-up to the June 12 vote, Ahmadinejad made much-publicized handouts to the poor and bonuses for government employees to boost turnout for the election. He apparently assumed that middle-class liberals, disillusioned by Khatami’s failure to stand up to attacks on pro-democracy activists, would stay home, as they had in 2005.

By 2009, Ahmadinejad faced a challenge from both Mousavi and Rafsanjani. These former rivals (Rafsanjani had ousted Mousavi by abolishing the post of prime minister in 1989) made common cause to stop Ahmadinejad from consolidating power.

The Iranian president, with the backing of Khamenei, had systematically installed figures from the basij and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) into key positions in government and the national oil company, displacing or squeezing the big capitalists around Rafsanjani, who jealously guard that turf. Beyond personnel questions, however, Iranian capitalists are leery of Ahmadinejad’s half-baked “development” projects that used state oil revenues to consolidate his base among the poor, rather than spending the money on strategic investments.

For his part, Mousavi was seen as an ideal candidate for the power brokers around Rafsanjani as well as the reformists. Having stressed the social justice side of Islam while prime minister during the Iran-Iraq war, he can appeal to workers and the poor in a way that Rafsanjani never could. He also has credentials as a hard-liner: as prime minister, he presided over the execution of as many as 5,000 political prisoners.

Nowadays, though, Mousavi portrays himself as a liberal by championing the rights of women and national minorities, an effort that helped revived an interest in politics among Khatami’s voters.

Mousavi’s support, which surged into the streets of Tehran and other cities in the days before the election, forced Ahmadinejad to resort to massive vote fraud to claim victory.

According to a study by the British think tank Chatham House, the number of votes cast in the provinces of Mazandaran and Yazd exceeds the total number of eligible voters. The authors estimate that if Ahmadinejad really won 62 percent of the vote claimed by the authorities, he would have had to won the votes of all new voters, all the votes of his last centrist rival, plus 44 percent of those who voted for reformist candidates in 2005. This is so unlikely as to be absurd.

As the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani, said on television June 20, “A majority of people are of the opinion that the actual election results are different from what was officially announced,” adding, “Although the Guardian Council is made up of religious individuals, I wish certain members would not side with a certain presidential candidate.”

As popular pressure mounted, the head of the 12-member Guardian Council, the body of clerics that approves election candidates, issued a surprising report June 22 that votes supposedly cast in more than 50 Iranian cities were actually higher than the number of eligible voters.

The Guardian Council’s announcement contradicts the earlier claim by Khamenei that Ahmadinejad had won a “definitive victory,” and marks a retreat from the council’s earlier position that it would only review 10 percent of the ballots.

Now there are even doubts that the council will uphold the election results when it makes its final ruling in the coming days. This vacillation partly reflects the influence of Rafsanjani, one of the most powerful members of the Guardian Council. But if the council reverses course and annuls the election or orders a recall, it will be because the clerics fear a revolutionary upsurge. Having hijacked a workers’ revolution to take power 30 years ago, the clerics understand full well the risks they face.

At the same time, Rafsanjani is rumored to be trying to assemble an emergency meeting of the 86-member Council of Experts, which chooses Iran’s supreme leader. The apparent aim is to remove Khamenei from power, which would decisively weaken Ahmadinejad as well.

Adding fuel to the fire is Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, the country’s senior cleric, who endorsed protests to “claim rights.” According to religious criteria, Montazeri should have been the successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founding leader of the Islamic Republic in 1979, but was shoved aside and later placed under house arrest for several years.

In short, the competing factions of the Iranian ruling class are hesitating before they make irrevocable choices that could shatter the Islamist regime.

For Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, the question is whether a crackdown would succeed in drowning resistance in blood, or provoke a wider revolutionary challenge to their rule. For Mousavi and Rafsanjani, the choice is whether to accept a humiliating deal that would greatly diminish their power, or encourage the rebellion, and try to ride it to victory.

Meanwhile, the potential for far broader struggle for democracy is apparent. The Tehran bus drivers’ union, which has fought to improve wages and conditions, despite the beatings and arrests of union leaders, issued this statement June 20:

The fact that the demands of the vast majority of Iranian society go far beyond those of unions is obvious to all, and in the previous years, we have emphasized that until the principle of the freedom to organize and to elect is not materialized, any talk of social freedom and labor union rights will be a farce.

Given these facts, the Autobus Workers Union places itself alongside all those who are offering themselves in the struggle to build a free and independent civic society. The union condemns any kind of suppression and threats.

To recognize labor union and social rights in Iran, the international labor organizations have declared the Fifth of Tir (June 26) the international day of support for imprisoned Iranian workers as well as for the institution of unions in Iran. We want that this day be viewed as more than a day for the demands of labor unions to make it a day for human rights in Iran and to ask all our fellow workers to struggle for the trampled rights of the majority of the people of Iran.

With hope for the spread of justice and freedom,
Autobus Workers Union

It’s impossible to predict the next turn of events in Iran. But what is clear is that the struggles of the Iranian working class — not the maneuvers at the top of society — are the key to taking the movement forward.

The huge demonstrations of the first week reflected lack of confidence in Iran’s electoral system, not merely because the regime can easily fabricate the result, but also because, at base, this system is far from reflecting the will of the people. Political parties are outlawed, so the choice is among personalities. In order to prevent the election of anyone who is anti-regime, every candidate must be approved by the “Committee for Preservation of the Constitution,” whose task is to ensure fidelity to Islamic rule.

Among 475 initial candidates this time (including 42 women), only three men were permitted to challenge the incumbent. Thus anyone who wanted to depose Ahmadinejad had to vote for one of these. As it turned out, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who had been prime minister under the Ayatollah Khomeini, garnered support from most of those who were fed up with Ahmadinejad and his patron, the supreme religious authority in Iran, Ali Khamenei.

What caused hundreds of thousands to pour into the streets and risk their lives? How did it happen that the Supreme Authority lost his authority? Iran is an enormous exporter of oil, like several other third-world nations, and its economic situation is no better than theirs. It is no accident that the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, came out in support of Ahmadinejad. Both countries produce oil; both suffer from chronic unemployment, rising inflation and poverty that cries to the heavens. Chavez is the idol of the masses. Ahmadinejad too, by his way of dressing and talking, his anti-imperialist positions and his relentless enmity toward the US and Israel, presents himself as a revolutionary and a friend to the poor.

It seems, however, that many Iranians remain unimpressed by Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric. More than anything, they are troubled by the suppression of human freedoms, the cruel subjugation of women, and the imposition of Islamic fundamentalism as a way of life. If we add the economic backwardness of Iran and the religious bureaucracy’s control of its oil revenues, we get a ticking bomb. When the regime uses terror against the Iranian people, this will only speed the moment of explosion.

For the fact is that thirty years since the ousting of the Shah, the Iranian Islamic Republic has not succeeded in providing its people with a decent life. Ahmadinejad plumes himself with the feathers of the poor, but the location of those who vote for him shows Iran’s failure to propel its society beyond the poverty line. According to the meager information we have, it was the urban population — the focus of economic and cultural power in every modern society — that voted against Ahmadinejad. The poor, living in remote villages throughout the country, may form the electoral majority, but their contribution toward building the society is small. What’s more, where there is no freedom of assembly and the regime is all-powerful, nothing is easier than to buy the loyalty of those who live on charity.

The Iranian protest movement is not a foreign import. Nor does it resemble elitist, reactionary protest movements like the orange revolution in Ukraine. Iran’s green movement reflects an authentic will to change an oppressive regime that has impeded the country’s economic, social and cultural development. But this movement has a problem. It lacks leadership. Mousavi has been a channel, to be sure, for expressing revulsion from the regime, but he cannot encompass the unorganized currents that have now begun to flow. For this reason the regime will succeed, temporarily, in suppressing the demonstrations and imposing its will on the people.

Yet the green movement will prove to be a landmark. The division within the regime between the reformists and the conservatives did not first emerge as a result of the demonstrations: rather, it made them possible. That division has existed ever since the death of Khomeini in 1989. It was expressed in the election of reformist candidate Muhammad Khatami to two terms, from 1997 until 2005. But Khatami disappointed his constituents. Against the determined opposition of the Supreme Authority, Ali Khamenei, he failed to implement the reforms he’d promised: to eliminate corruption and bring more democracy.

Within the religious establishment there is division between Khamenei and Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Iran’s wealthiest persons, who is considered an important religious authority. Rafsanjani is influenced by the disappointment of the people, especially the urban middle class. By continuing to alienate them, he knows, Khamenei courts disaster. Rafsanjani holds that the government must express the will of the classes that constitute the society’s economic and cultural base. The conservatives, on the other hand, see any departure from religious law as dangerously corrosive.

All the democratic forces in Iran, including the Communist Party (which is underground), called on the people to support Mousavi in the recent elections. They accurately gauged the mood of the masses: that behind Mousavi a broad movement has gathered, whose strategic aim is to topple the totalitarian regime. This internal division opens a new horizon for the Iranian people after thirty years of arrests and assassinations directed against the leaders and parties that deposed the Shah. Iranians may hope at last to rebuild their parties and trade unions toward the creation of a democratic Iran.

The hesitant support of US President Barack Obama, the cynical pronouncements of Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu (who broadcasts his shock at the firing on protesters in far-off Tehran but never in nearby Bil’in), the crocodile tears of the Shah’s son in Washington – need not mislead us. The Iranian people have no wish to sit again on Uncle Sam’s lap, lining up against the Arab world. The Iranian people have no wish to exchange the present dictator for a new Shah. The Iranian opposition knows what colonialism means. It sees what goes on in the occupied Palestinian territories. It sees what globalization has wrought among the peoples of the world. It will not move backward. Its whole will is to bring the Iranians, schooled in struggle and disappointment, as a free people into the family of peoples.

The revolution of 1979 against the Shah was never intended to usher in a Shiite dictatorship, but the Ayatollahs co-opted it. The lesson has been learned, and the new Iranian movement will know how to guard basic rights and freedoms.

There is a direct connection between what is happening in Iran and what is happening in the US. Until recently, who dreamed that Americans would elect an Afro-American president? The Obama Effect reverberates through the Middle East. He has overthrown the Bush policy, which created abysmal hatred against America — a hatred well exploited by the Iranian regime and its allies.

We should bear in mind, though, that Obama was not elected to make peace in our region, rather to rescue America from the worst economic crisis in eighty years. The American people seek liberation from the free-market fundamentalism of the neo-cons, while the Iranian people seek liberation from religious fundamentalism. The concurrence of these two movements is no coincidence. One process feeds the other and is fed in return. George W. Bush used Iran to frighten Americans, while Ahmadinejad used Bush’s America to strengthen his hold on Iranians. Now both societies have exhausted their political-economic systems. Obama’s election expresses the American will for change, and the outcome of the Iranian election brings hundreds of thousands into the streets. In America the crisis is more purely economic. In Iran it is political and economic. Yet these two very different processes, in two very different societies, belong nonetheless to the same historical moment: it is a moment of systemic change, with societies converging toward democracy and social justice.

The events in Iran are not foreign imports, just as the events in America are anchored in deep internal change. The world is going through a process that will alter an entire system, where predatory capitalism has lived in friction with an Islamic fundamentalism bent on correcting “the evils of the West.” It is not just the free-market system that has reached a dead end. The Islamic “resistance” too has exhausted itself, in Lebanon and Palestine as well as Iran. Events in Iran send shock waves through all the Arab regimes that deny basic rights to their citizens. Iranian women are an example for Arab women, and Iranian workers are an example for Arab workers whose right to form unions is denied. This is the real “Iranian bomb.” Israel must fear it, and America too — for Obama is counting on the old alliances with Arab dictators. The development of this “bomb” will take time, no doubt, but Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Tzippi Livni ought to read the writing on the wall: the years of the Occupation are numbered; it will become increasingly anachronistic as Arab masses take to the streets, challenging their regimes in the name of democracy and human rights. Thirty years ago the Iranian revolution changed the face of the Middle East toward fundamentalism. Today, on the streets of Tehran, appear the first glimmers of real democracy.

This is why the Vatican squashed the Liberation Theology movement in Central America that made the mistake of takings Christ’s teaching about clothing the naked and feeding the poor seriously through its emphasis on Democratic Socialism.

The Sandinistas of Nicaragua, with their blend of Marxism and Christianity, were anathema to successive American administrations until they were finally crushed by Reagan’s Iran-Contra initiative, which returned “God” to his heaven and made the world safe for democracy.

Now, another Christian with dirty fingernails has appeared, Filipino minister Goel Bagundol who works in the Philippine’s Mindanao province with its concentration of the nation’s Muslims.

He believes that it is a Christian’s mission to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

And he has raised this to an art form.

Recently, three young girls were taken from the families to begin a life of prostitution, with the rapes and beatings that would have been an integral part of their vocational training.

Bagundol took his life into his hands, plunged into the back alleys of Manila to rescue the girls and returned them to their families.

For this, and other activities in behalf of the poor, the government has branded him a Communist, and he has received numerous death threats. Given that there have been 900 extrajudicial killings in the Philippines over the past seven years, the threats are real. There have been 200 disappearances, as well. None of these have been solved.

Bagundol is a member of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP). Sixteen of his fellow pastors have been murdered.

He responds to the death threats with cheerful good humor. In his church, there is a wall with photographs of the murdered and disappeared. With a laugh, he muses that next year his photograph might join the others.

His courage in the face of death is an integral part of his faith.

The Muslims of Mindanao have never taken kindly to foreign rule. When the Spanish invaded the Philippines in the sixteenth century, they conquered the northern end of the archipelago and converted the unsuspecting natives to Roman Catholicism, but they couldn’t touch the Muslims of Mindanao who outfought them.

When America took over the islands after the Spanish-American War, the Muslims nearly fought the Americans to a draw, as well. Then, in 1911, General John L. Hansen Jr. decided to apply some American ingenuity to the problem.

He knew Muslims believed that if a pig contaminated them, they would go straight to Hell. So, he took eight Muslim prisoners and sentenced seven of them to be shot. The eighth was to be a witness.

First, he had the seven dig their own graves. Then he tied them to stakes without blindfolds. Before their eyes, he slaughtered a pig and smeared their bodies and clothing with its blood. Then he had the big cut into seven pieces with a piece dropped into each open grave.

According to eyewitnesses, the prisoners all went “blue/black with terror, screaming for Allah to save them,” while the handcuffed eighth prisoner looked on.

Leonard left them like that until sundown when had had them shot and buried with their part of the pig.

The eighth prisoner was released. The story of the American’s methodology for executing Muslims spread rapidly, and the war ended.

(There is no doubt at least one clerk in the War Department bemoaned the loss of a good pig.)

The respite was temporary.

Since the Philippines achieved independence, the Muslims of Mindanao have fought for their independence, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not.

However, since 9/11, this struggle has taken on a new twist with the advent of our Global War on Terror, known to some as the Eternal War of the Empty Policy.

The GWOT has led to the emergence of an unusual natural phenomenon: wherever there is a plot of land that contains a valuable resource beneath its surface, terrorists suddenly sprout.

The hills of Mindanao contain gold and other minerals that have caught they eyes of large mining firms. Nothing mucks up a good mine like an indigenous people occupying the land. So it was that Muslims struggling for independence became terrorists.

As a part of our War on Terror, which is really a War on Resources, America started providing the Philippine government with military aid and technical assistance to clear the land for the mining companies (or to facilitate economic development, as it is euphemistically known.)

We have a lot of expertise in this area, though George Armstrong Custer did hit a slight bump in the road when he tried to clear the Black Hills of Native Americans to make way for gold and silver mining. But in the end, civilization prevailed.

It is in this hothouse of conflict and oppression Bagundol works. He doesn’t care about people’s religion; he only cares about their needs. He raises money to feed the malnourished and to provide tribal people with water buffalo to help with their farming. He provides books for the area’s elementary schools and arranges for scholarships to send student to high school, an opportunity normally denied them.

And as the war between the Philippine government and the newly-minted Muslim terrorists ravages the land, he is there to provide comfort, assistance and, where needed, sanctuary.

For this, he is called a Communist.

For this, he lives under a constant threat of death.

All for an annual salary of $1,600 (US).

Although it is difficult to separate the RAF’s theory from their actions–actions which included murder–if one does so they find an application of left theory that perceived the anti-imperialist resistance in the advanced industrial nations (First World, if you will) as just another part of the worldwide anti-imperialist movement. It was this conclusion that the RAF used to rationalize their attacks on US military installations in 1972 during their anti-imperialist offensive.. They did not believe the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) to be in a revolutionary situation, but justified their attacks via the argument that the US and other imperial forces (German and British) should be attacked wherever they were, not just in Vietnam or another country where they were engaged in overt warfare. This approach echoed the slogan popularized by the Weatherman organization in the US-Bring the War Home.

I lived in Frankfurt am Main, Germany during the period described in this book. I attended protests against the Vietnam War, in support of the burgeoning squatters movement (and against property speculation) in Frankfurt, against the Shah of Iran, in support of Gastarbeiter rights and against the repressive regimes in Turkey and Greece. I also attended concerts and street festivals where the German counterculture mingled flamboyantly with the US servicemen and adolescents that abounded in the country then. When the IG Farben building and Officer’s Club in Frankfurt am Main were attacked by the RAF, a serious security effort became part of our daily lives. School buses taking us to the American High School in Frankfurt were boarded by military police who checked our bags while other GIs used long-handled mirrors to check underneath the buses for explosive devices. German police and military set up shop at airports and train stations, holding automatic weapons. Autobahn exits were the site of roadblocks. Wanted posters featuring the faces of the RAF members appeared everywhere. The Goethe University in Frankfurt came under increased police surveillance, especially after the playing of a tape-recorded message from RAF member Ulrike Meinhof at a national conference there. A protest held against the US mining of northern Vietnamese harbors and intensified bombing of the Vietnamese people was patrolled by police armed with automatic weapons. Nonetheless, many of the protesters chanted “Für den Sieg des VietCong, Bomben auf das Pentagon!” (For the victory of the NLF, bomb the Pentagon). The following day, the Pentagon was bombed by the Weather Underground.

Recently, PM Press in California published the book The Red Army Faction, A Documentary History: Volume 1: Projectiles For The People. This voluminous work includes virtually all of the communiques and theoretical pamphlets published by the RAF from 1970 to 1977. This period is considered the first period of the RAF–an organization that saw its original leadership imprisoned after the aforementioned bombing offensive against US military installations in Germany. These members were followed by another set of individuals drawn to the RAF mostly through support organizations that developed to protest the conditions of the RAF’s imprisonment and their eventual deaths that many still believe were state-sanctioned murders. Over the next two decades , hundreds of others would join the organization to replace those imprisoned and killed. Besides the text written by the RAF, the editors have written an accompanying text that provides a take on the history of post World War Two West Germany that has been mostly unavailable to English readers.

The RAF was an intensely sectarian organization. They saw most of the rest of the German Left as revisionist or opportunist, unwilling to make the commitment armed struggle required. Besides invalidating the gains won by the autonomist squatters’ movement and other independent groupings, this analysis ignored the fact that other approaches might have been more effective in the long term. By positioning itself to the left of all other leftist groups in Germany, the RAF insured its limited effectiveness. Once the State was able to capture its primary membership and literally isolate them in prisons, the RAF’s purpose moved away from challenging the imperialists to one of staying alive inside a draconian and psychologically debilitating prison environment.

Indeed, as this book clearly demarcates, the bulk of the work of the RAF in the 1970s centered around the nature of their existence in prison. In what would become a harbinger of the future we live in, the German prison authority and its departmental ally the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) developed an architecture and series of mechanisms designed to destroy the minds of the RAF prisoners. Isolation cells painted completely in white where the neon light never went off. No contact with any human for months at a time. The use of informers and ultimately a trial held in a specially designed prison courthouse that took place without the defendants or their attorneys. In addition, laws were passed that criminalized not only the act taken by the attorneys to defend their clients but also the acts of any individuals who opposed the actions taken by the State against the RAF prisoners. Of course, this enabled the RAF to point out the unity of purpose between the right wing CDU-CSU West German government and the SPD (with obvious comparisons to the role played by the German Social Democrats after World War I when they used the right-wing militia known as the Freikorps to kill members of the revolutionary Spartacists). The special laws enacted against the RAF and its supporters contained many elements of laws now in existence in the US, realized most fully in the Patriot Act.

While the RAF was certainly successful in exposing the fundamental authoritarianism of the modern capitalist state through their hunger strikes and other actions, they did nothing towards rebuilding the anti-imperialist movement that the 1972 actions were conceived in. This created a situation where their developing analysis of imperialism and the struggle against it became essentially moribund. In other words, the repression by the German government and its allies was successful.

The editors of this work, J. Smith and André Moncourt, have created an intelligently political work that honestly discusses the politics of the Red Army Fraktion during its early years. Their commentary explains the theoretical writings of the RAF from a left perspective and puts their politics and actions in the context of the situation present in Germany and the world at the time. It is an extended work that is worth the commitment required to read and digest it. More than a historical document, The Red Army Faction, A Documentary History: Volume 1: Projectiles For The People provides us with the ability to comprehend the phenomenon that was the RAF in ways not possible thirty years ago.

Diana Block’s recently published book Arm the Spirit: A Woman’s Journey Underground and Back is the personal tale of one such supporter. A white North American women involved in the feminist, lesbian and gay rights and new left movements in the United States of the 1970s primarily as a member of the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC), Ms. Block joined forces with other white North Americans to support the endeavors of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN ) in its endeavor to free Puerto Rico. Her support resulted in several years underground as the result of her partner’s entrapment in an FBI sting operation. The tale she tells in these pages is the story of those years and the decisions and circumstances that brought her to them. It is also the story of her family’s lives underground. For those who were involved in or at least paid attention to the left in the 1970s and 1980s there will be descriptions of moments that jog the memory. For those that didn’t, this will open their eyes to the reality that existed within Ronald Reagan’s morning in America.

This is a very political book. It is also a very personal book. It is about lives determined as much by one’s political beliefs as they are by personal emotions and about the juncture between the two. It is about very political people in an apolitical time. Many of those who had been involved in the antiwar and antiracist moments of the 1960s and 1970s were moving their lives into more conventional arenas that involved making money and buying things. Others, meanwhile, had drifted deeper into the life of the street and poverty, leaving their political personas behind in the daily struggle to survive. Meanwhile, the men and women involved in leftist groups like Prairie Fire Organizing Committee were existing on the fringes of US society trying to figure out how to maintain a political relevance. It may have been that existence on the outside that colored the decisions they made: going underground when they maybe should have involved themselves in a more public type of organizing; adopting immovable positions that alienated them from other groups with similar agendas, to name a couple such decisions.

Block’s memories of that period are consistently evocative and occasionally emotionally wrenching, compelling the reader to stay glued to the text. Her reflections on the thoughts about how the decisions made by her and her partner Claude Marks affected the lives of their children and families reveal caring and thoughtful parents whose politics are motivated by a love as deep as the love they have for those closest to them. They also provide an insight into the difficulties involved in living a life of resistance inside the belly of the imperial beast that is the United States. To put it succinctly, it is safe to say that Arm the Spirit is about the multitude of forms love takes: familial, romantic, comradely and revolutionary. It is also about the difficulties we face trying to meet the ideals these loves represent, especially when they come into conflict with one another.

Besides the aforementioned political and emotional realities revealed in this book, there are the descriptions of daily life on the run. Periods of normalcy when you and your family are as normal as the neighbors next door interrupted by days and weeks of uncertainty tinged with fear after your picture makes the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted. Joy and tears as you wrestle with how much information you should share with your maturing child.

Genuine friendships made under assumed names that must be broken when the presence of the law gets too near. The frustrations felt because your political self can not speak out when the Empire attacks for fear you will be recognized and taken away in chains. The decision to finally give up your underground status and face the courts. The period of adjustment to once again using your family name and living as the person you couldn’t be while underground.

Politically, Block’s experiences as a revolutionary and a woman lead her to a conclusion perhaps best expressed by the writer and revolutionary Margaret Randall: that the inability of almost all twentieth-century revolutionary movements to develop a feminist agenda contributed to their failure to evolve new and equitable forms of power sharing that might have helped keep them alive. The period of adjustment mentioned in the previous paragraph provokes some other interesting observations by Block. Foremost among them are her observations regarding the changes in the progressive movement in the 1970s and the movement today, especially her remarks that much of the work formerly done by organizations with no financial portfolio now being done by what she calls the nonprofit industrial complex.

The shortcomings of this movement are even more apparent today as funding for these nonprofits dries up in the wake of the economic shocks throughout the capitalist world. This factor doesn’t even touch the political timidity of many of today’s organizations–a timidity certainly influenced by their need to gather money from beneficiaries of the very system whose excesses and wrongs they hope to remedy.

One other insightful observation is that, despite the multitude of single issue movements and organizations, many of the groups and individuals involved have no underlying philosophy to bind these issues together and present a systemic analysis that would propel the struggle for economic and social justice forward. Although Block does not examine this much further, it is clear that she sees the need to develop and provide that analysis as part of the role of her and others involved in the struggles of the latter half of the twentieth century. After all, the fundamentals of that analysis are the same as those the left has always referred to. The economic crisis of capitalism and the wars of Washington make that clear.

The new documentary Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas proves that democracy can and should be more than casting a ballot every four years. This empowering film gives hopeful and concrete examples from around the Americas of people taking back the reigns of power and governing their own communities. Beyond Elections is a road map for social change, drawing from communal councils in Venezuela and social movements in Bolivia to participatory budgeting in Brazil and worker cooperatives in Argentina. The film gracefully succeeds in demonstrating that these grassroots examples of people’s power can be applied anywhere. Particularly as activists in the US face the challenges of an Obama administration and an economic crisis, this timely documentary shows that the revolution can start today right in your own living room or neighborhood.

In this interview, Michael Fox, Co-Producer of Beyond Elections, talks about how the film was created, what its aims were and what the films impact has had among viewers in the US.

Benjamin Dangl: How did you decide on the focus and message of Beyond Elections?

Michael Fox: I’ve been living and working in Latin America for many years, studying and reporting on, above all else, the experiences in participatory democracy- cooperatives, communal councils, participatory budgeting, social movements, community radio, etc… Sílvia (my wife, who grew up in Southern Brazil, and who is also Co-director of the film) and I were living in Venezuela in 2006 when the communal councils law was passed, and local communities all across the country began to come together and take on this new form of organizing. You could see how it was empowering people on an individual and local level.

In March of 2007, Sílvia and I found ourselves in Porto Alegre, Brazil — where we now live — at the same time that the 2007 Participatory Budgeting cycle was about to begin. We realized that although there have been many local videos on the experiences of participatory budgeting, cooperatives, social movements and even some on the recently-formed communal councils, there was no documentary film that tried to give both the big and local picture of these new participatory concepts of democracy across the hemisphere.

This concept is almost completely absent in the United States, and yet, it is absolutely necessarily for people to understand what is going on across Latin America, and also extremely important for activists and people in the United States to understand the failures of our own system and the lack of participation and input from everyday citizens.

We originally planned the film to focus only on participatory democracy, but quickly realized that the only people who would want to see it would be activists that are already doing this type of work. We needed to open it up to the very concept of democracy itself.

This was important to us, because time and again in the United States, pundits, elected officials, everyday folks and even journalists use the word “democracy” as an excuse to de-legitimize extremely democratic groups and governments. They say, “Venezuela is threatening democracy in the region”, and yet depending on your definition, Venezuela is perhaps the most democratic country in the region — much more so than the United States. But these realities are very subtle, and if you have never been to Venezuela, or Brazil or Bolivia or Ecuador (or if you go and only stay at the resorts and the upper-class part of town), then you’re never going to know what to believe because the mainstream media is quick to repeat the manipulations.

There are some mainstream media that actually call Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a dictator, despite the fact that during his ten years in office there have been more than a dozen free and fair elections in Venezuela legitimately-recognized by international observers from around the world, and that he has always respected the Venezuelan Constitution and the laws. He may be a very charismatic, domineering, and powerful figure, but he’s not a dictator.

Then the real question is, “What is democracy?” And that’s where we wanted to focus our attention – giving people the space to tell their stories across the Hemisphere.

As the Portuguese Sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos says, (and you can find the link to more of his work on our website, www.beyondelections.com), the United States has created a monopoly on the definition of democracy — U.S. style hegemonic representative politics.

But Sousa Santos points out that in reality, democracy is a work in progress. As he says, “democracy without end.”

His colleague, Leonardo Avritzer, professor from Brazilian Federal University of Minas Gerais, points out in our film, “What we’ve tried to stress, is the idea that democracy is an open concept and the frontiers of democracy are always imprecise. For instance, in the 19th century you could say that it’s democratic to expand suffrage. And that’s true. It was democratic at the end of the 19th century to expand suffrage to women. Or at the beginning of the 20th century it could appear democratic to expand democracy to the countries of the global South. So the question today in the Southern countries is how to think about the democratization of things like the budget, health policies, education policies, urban policies, the democratization of life where you live.”

Of course, it’s not always easy. Especially when you are trying to make a film for not one audience, but audiences in various languages all across the Hemisphere. But that’s what we set out to do, and I think we succeeded.

BD: Could you talk a bit about the process of making your documentary?

MF: This is very important, because we wanted the making of the film to reflect as much as possible the “democracy” that we are trying to portray. We used very little narration- only about two and a half minutes worth — because we wanted people to tell the stories in their own words. We tried not to change the scenery where we were filming. We only used music from local musicians, and tried to only use it when it was part of the scene. It is also a testament to what two people can do without any external resources or really expensive equipment.

The entire budget came out of our own pockets and Silvia and I filmed nearly the entire film with our Panasonic 3CCD handycam, and edited it all on our aging G4 Powerbook.

Of course, we had more than a half a dozen individuals and groups that supported with b-roll, and either shot for us, or allowed us to use footage they had already filmed in areas that we couldn’t make it to like Ecuador, Bolivia, and the Bay Area.

The SF-based musician and sound editor, Ben Bernstein, donated his time to post-produce our audio, which came out great. The Venezuela-based film group, Panafilms was a huge support, as were hundreds of folks all across the region.

BD: What was the response among viewers during your tour in the US?

MF: We did our tour last fall from mid September straight through till two days before the 2008 Presidential elections. We drove from the East Coast to the West Coast and back, covering our costs with donations from the nearly two-dozen showings all across the U.S.. It was an amazing experience. Of course, we were organizing the tour ourselves, so our audiences varied from a couple hundred people at some Universities all the way down to a living room showing with a few people in Oklahoma City. But really, the response was the best we could have hoped for, and both Silvia and I were impressed with the diversity of opinions. Some viewers were struck by the amount of local democracy and participation in Venezuela specifically, especially with the negative press that it gets in the United States. Many viewers were impressed with the democratic experiences, and the fact that people all across the region are all participating in similar ways. Others were shocked because so little of this is happening in the U.S. Others felt the movie really put things in to a perspective that they had rarely seen or heard of before. This was the case of one gentleman in the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans where we showed Beyond Elections with a projector on the side of a building. He said, “Wow, I’ve always known all of this, but I had never understood that everything was connected. I feel like I have a new perspective on things.”

Without a doubt, the biggest and only major critique was that it was, and remains, a long documentary- just under two hours, which we’ll keep in mind for our next documentary. The DVD version of the movie is divided in to chapters, which can each stand alone, so it can easily be used in university and high school classrooms according to theme. The right hand side of the website, www.beyondelections.com has dozens of links to additional information, all also sorted according to the chapter and the theme.

We tried to build the film in order to give people an understanding of the realities, and also leave them with a sense of hope. Because these experiences anywhere; be it in Latin America or the United States, in the local government, the community, the office, the school or the home can only happen if we take the steps to open the democratic spaces of participation. This is the exciting thing about the film and I believe that people could feel it. The film gave people an idea about some of the things that are being done, and some of the things that they can also do. As Sílvia often said in our after-film discussions, “the best thing you can do to support these democratic experiences abroad is to make change in your own communities, attempt to open democracy in your own community.” As a Brazilian, she knows the affect that this can have.

In our discussions after nearly all of our showings, we tried to stress this point; how we can open up these democratic experiences in our own lives. After numerous requests, we actually developed a “Beyond Elections Democracy Discussion Guide,” which attempts to help people to do just that, Bring Democracy Home. It is also available to download halfway down the right-hand side of our website, under “Beyond Elections Materials.”

And that is our job now — to spread the word about the film, and open up the space for democracy where wherever you are. As we wrote shortly after the 2008 US Presidential elections, “We can no longer leave important local, regional or national decisions in the hands of our elected representatives alone. They should be held accountable, not to their campaign contributors, but to the citizens who they are supposed to represent.” (See this link)

Please let us know if you are interested in supporting Beyond Elections, finding out more, or setting up a showing in your own community. We would love to be able to support your local efforts.

Ron Jacobs: Hello Tariq. To begin, can you give the readers an idea of what is transpiring in Pakistan? In your description, can you identify the parties and prominent individuals involved?

Farooq Tariq: What is transpiring in Pakistan is mass power. A real sense of victory after the restoration of the chief justice Iftikhar Choudry is one of the main features of this movement. It will be difficult for any government in the future here in Pakistan not to implement what was promised. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was forced to accept a demand only and only with the emergence of mass power in the streets.

It is a victory of the people against the traditional power brokers of Pakistan. It is a victory of hope against cynicism. There were many saying that Iftikhar Choudry would never be reinstated because President Zardari will never change his mind. The sheer expression of mass uprising frightened all the major actors of the movement. They rushed to accept the initial demand of restoration even before the long march reached Islamabad. Had it (the long march) not been called off by the lawyers’ leaders after the acceptance of the first demand, the list of demands would (probably) have been expanded from the political to the economic area. This movement showed that the people of Pakistan can make a difference. Pakistan has changed and changed for ever.

The Long March of the lawyer’s movement proved that a consistent struggle and militant actions can be fruitful. The tactics and strategy of the lawyers movement were a combination of the united mass action of political parties and civil society organizations and a successful propaganda campaign through the electronic and print media. Had the lawyers movement gone alone, they could not have won the battle. The main political parties that were in the forefront of this struggle are Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz, Tehreek Insaaf, Jamaat Islami, Pukhtoonkhawa Mili Awami Party, Awami Tehreek, National Party, Labour Party Pakistan, Khaksar Tehreek, Baluchistan National Party, Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party, National Workers Party, Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party and a majority of Pakistan social organizations. Of these Jamaat Islami is a religious party and rest are Left, liberal and progressive parties.

Anyhow, the most consistent political parties that were part of the lawyers movement since it started on 9 March 2007 are Tehreek Insaf of Imran Khan, an emerging party of the middle classes, Jamaat Islami, a religious fundamentalist party and the Labour Party of Pakistan (LPP), a socialist party. The rest of the parties were of and are part of the movement. The most prominent figures of the lawyers movement were Ali Ahmad Kurd, president Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), and three SCBA presidents including Aitezaz Ahsan, Hamid Khan and Munir A Malik. They were all arrested but stood firm. From the political parties, Imran Khan, a former Pakistan cricket team captain has emerged as the most popular personality of the movement. His party was not very well known or active by movement standards , but because of the participation of Tehreek Insaaf (Justice Party) in this movement, it has become a household name in Pakistan.

From the Left parties, Labour Party Pakistan has gained to some extent. Also, the LPP is now better nationally known with a very militant position. The party that got the most advantage from this movement is the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN). It won the February election arguing for the reinstatement of the top judges. It used clever tactics after the elections. It left the Alliance at the Center with PPP on this question. The PMLN leaders and the Sharif brothers made very radical speeches before and during the long march. The party (PMLN) was ready to take risks and loose the provincial government in Punjab on the issue. If there was an election today, this right wing bourgeoisie party would have a national land slide victory.

RJ: Does your party (the Labour Party of Pakistan) support any of the figures involved? If so why? If not, why?

FT: LPP supported the leaders of the lawyer’s movement all the time but with a critical attitude. Our literature produced during the movement helped to expand the nature of the movement. Our first poster read, “on the footsteps of the lawyers, till the end of dictatorship”. We linked the restoration of the judges with the end of military dictatorship. We saw the potential of this movement to expand on a national level from the very beginning. We supported them because the nature of the movement was very progressive. It was not a religious movement of any kind although the religious parties tried to take it over. However, the demand of an independent judiciary could never be termed as an Islamic demand.

We supported them (the movement) because it was producing an anti-militarist political tendency among a significant section of the middle class and was producing a new layer of young political activists who were not religious fundamentalist. We helped the movement and the movement helped the Left ideas to grow in both the political and organizational arenas. Those who were associated with the lawyers movement got a national identity and were heard everywhere.

RJ: Do the events occurring in Pakistan open an avenue for the Left? Will the PPP cease to exist as a party or will it return closer to its leftist roots?

FT: It is a very complex political situation. The ideas of religious fundamentalism have a natural ally here. That ally is the presence of the NATO forces in Afghanistan. The objective situation is very favorable for the right wing ideas to grow. The nature of the Pakistan state is another help to them. (After all) It is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and not a people’s republic. Yet, the ideas of the Left are growing as well. Our help from the international scene comes from the development of Left governments in Latin America and social movements in the advanced capitalist countries.

Internally, we are growing because of our tactics of helping and developing the mass movements of the workers, peasant women and the lawyers. The association with the movement is a key to our recent growth. Over 5000 have joined the Labour Party during our “peoples contact movement (drive)” in December and January 2009. Incidentally, our best growth was in North West Frontier Province, where over 2000 have joined during this time.

But our most stable basis is still the trade unions and peasant organizations. We have not left our work in this class base to join the lawyer’s movement. It was possible for our comrades in Faisalabad, the third largest city of Pakistan, to lead over 100,000 against the shortages of electricity in January 2009. Twenty of them were arrested on 14 March 2009 and we had given a call for a general strike on 16 March, the day lawyers won. I was told by the comrade that the call has been supported by the traders as well. It would have been a total success if the lawyer’s movement would have continued on the day (March 16). The success of the lawyer’s movement has opened a new avenue for the growth of Left ideas. For the first time, we are witnessing the educated youth joining our party. Earlier, we were a handful of comrades within the party who had university degrees.

The PPP is the main loser of this whole episode. It has politically moved much towards the right since it came in power a year ago. It has tried to implement the neo-liberal agenda that was initiated by General Musharraf. It is seen as a party allowing the American imperialists to attack Pakistan directly without any state resistance. It failed to implement the promises of reinstatement of the judges despite written agreements three times. The leader Asif Zardari is probably the most hated politician among the mainstream leaders. He is seen as a liar, deceiver, swindler, trickster, charlatan, quack and cheater. A day after the reinstatement of the top judges, he made a statement that he wanted to reinstate the judges. This was after he was seen as the main hurdle in the path of reinstatement.

The PPP is distributing sweets all over Pakistan after the reinstatement claiming that they have fulfilled the promise of Benazir Bhutto. Yet for over eight months, their entire leadership was arguing that Benazir Bhutto never promised to reinstate them. They were saying that Iftikhar Choudry is a politicized judge. Their argument was that he should take a new oath like some other judges have taken. They were making a point that Iftikhar Choudry is just one person. They were using all sorts of arguments against the judges in all the television and print media debates. Yet only a day later (after the reinstatement), they wanted the Pakistani people to believe that it was the PPP who had reinstated and fulfilled a promise of Benazir Bhutto. They believe the memory of the people is very short. They believe that we should forget our jails, arrests, tortures, ungrounded life, the barricades in the road to stop the long march and whatever else. The PPP leaders have become real hypocrites.

The party is not finished but is losing its support rapidly. It will remain as a major party unless another party replaces them with a revolutionary programme. The PMLN can never replace the PPP. It can win an election for the time being but it can never have the permanent support of the people because the nature of PMLN is almost the same as PPP. Both are right wing bourgeoisie parties with populist appeal at some times.

There is no possibility of the PPP taking a Left route. The reason is very simple, PPP leadership from top to bottom is committed to power and to (certain) people. They have proved again and again that they will serve the interests of the ruling class and imperialism and are not for the (majority of) the people. They have even abandoned the gesture of leftist ideas. It will remain in the political scene as a party of the capitalists and feudalists. All the time it is losing support. Benazir Bhutto’s death gave it a breathing space but that is lost already.

RJ: What about the conflicts in Swat and other parts of the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP)? How are they affected by what occurs in Islamabad?

FT: In Swat, the government signed a surrender pact with the religious fundamentalists. Under their pressure, so-called Sharia courts have been established and the normal judicial structure has ceased to exist at present. It is a victory of the extreme religious fundamentalists in the area. They now control at least major parts of NWFP including the Malakanad division. There is a peace in Swat at present at the cost of abandoning all sort of normal democratic institutions and ideas. The public girls schools are now open with a totally different character. They have become the public Madrassa. The girls have to read what the student girls are reading in (mosque-run) Madrassa.

The Islamabad answer to all this is to accept the Predator drone attacks by the Americans. On one side, they are signing surrender agreements with religious forces and on the other side (they are) helping American imperialism to fashion their air attacks. This entire situation is paving the way for the growth of extreme religious ideas in all parts of the NWFP. The government of the Awami National Party is unable to mobilize the mass support they had enjoyed only one year earlier on the question of peace in the region. The religious fanatics got less than three percent of the votes in the February 2009 general elections as compared to 15 percent in 2002. The Islamabad government seems paralyzed in this situation. They are waiting for miracles to happen. They are still acting like it is “business as usual”. There is no thought out strategy by Islamabad to handle the conflict with religious forces.

RJ: From your perspective, what role do you think Washington is playing in the struggle between the forces represented by Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif?

FT: Washington is trying to bring them together and asking them to resolve their conflicts. The American ambassador in Pakistan is very busy between Raiwind, the residence of Nawaz Sharif, and Islamabad. They are asking both sides to come together to fight effectively the “war on terror”. They always frighten both of them as to the consequences of the conflict between them. The best option (as Washington sees it, would be) that the both should form an alliance at (the) center and in other areas. Nawaz Sharif has been saying all the time that he was forced to go for the Long March. It was not his choice. He did not want the masses to come on the roads but the sheer bull-headedness of Zardari forced them to this situation. The feudal ego of Zardari has meant that the Sharif brothers are out of power for the time being. A day after the success of the movement, Nawaz Sharif told his supporters to behave and that he respects Zardari and Gilani of the PPP. His brother Shahbaz Sharif told a television that those who make a mistake in the morning and then come back home in the evening must be forgiven.

RJ: The last time I spoke with you (November 2007), I asked the following questions. I am hoping you can respond to them with your country’s history since that time in mind: What, in your opinion, is the cause of the unrest in Pakistan? How much of a role do religious extremists play? How much of a role does the Army play?

FT: There are multiple reasons for the constant unrest in Pakistan. The foremost reason is the inability of the ruling classes in Pakistan to solve all the basic problems faced by the masses. There exists a feudalistic relationship and land is not distributed to peasants. This brings a very feudal culture and atmosphere in Pakistan. Both the main bourgeois parties, PPP and PMLN, do not speak about it anymore. The major parts of the main leadership in both parties are from the feudal class. They use the ownership of land for political purposes and to win the elections. Sixty-one years of independence have brought no real independence for the majority of the people. This is the real crisis of leadership in Pakistan. Both main parties rely on the military generals. Even in this (most recent) crisis over the days from 12-16 March 2009, the army chief was mediating between the president, prime minister and the Nawaz brothers. The Nawaz brothers (said they) were very thankful to the “positive” role of the army chief.

The failure of reformist parties like the PPP paved the way for the growth of religious extremism. The extremists were and are supported by a major section of the army. It is a very complex relationship between the rich, the army and religious extremists. It changes and adjusts all the time. 9/11 made an indispensable difference to this relationship. The fact is that the support of the ruling class for religious extremism is not open as was the case in the past, but the presence of the American forces in the region has given a real momentum for the growth of the religious fundamentalists.

The military is out of power in public but not in real terms. No military general has faced any truth commission after their unconstitutional rule. General Musharraf was given a guard of honor when he resigned on 17 August 2008. He still lives in an army house and enjoys all the privileges. The military power in the budget allocated to “defense”, is a defense of the ruling class in real terms. Over 30 percent of national income goes to defense budget. The whole society is militarized. (There are) a lot of weapons everywhere and it is not decreasing.

RJ: Mr. Sharif was quoted after the crackdown by Pakistani police failed to stop the protests earlier this week as saying what happened was the “beginning of a revolution.” Is this true? If so, would it be a revolution for the majority of the Pakistani people or merely the elites who seem to take turns ruling the country?

FT: Mr. Sharif has used the words of revolution, rebellion and upsurge several times after his government dissolved in Punjab and governor rule was imposed. He told a gathering that he is flying a flag of revolution and to side with him. His brother Shahbaz Sharif has recited Jalib and Faiz Ahmad Fiaz several times in public– both poets are known for their revolutionary poems all over Pakistan. The word revolution to Nawaz Sharif means nothing and only comes out of his mouth when he is in the opposition. The revolution means for them, their power and that is it. The Nawaz brothers economic priorities are absolutely the same as those of the PPP. They both are for the neo-liberal agenda and both are happy to work with American imperialism.

This poem, written by a long standing member of the Maoist Cultural Front, states clearly and simply what has happened to the revolution in Nepal. The poet, who must remain nameless for the time being, sent the poem to the Red Star just after the CA elections. It could not be published in the Red Star, but I believe it is worth publishing. The poem stands alone, and there is scarcely any need to mention such details such as the Peoples Liberation Army, in UN monitored cantonments, getting paid by the World Bank, nor the agreement to set up four to six SEZs (Special Economic Zones) etc. etc.

2) We don’t have souls and don’t go anywhere but into the ground to be eaten by worms when we die. Let’s bravely acknowledge that fact.

3) Quit contending that global warming isn’t real. Except for discredited, charlatan “scientists” of the kind who promote Intelligent Design, the overwhelming majority of truly qualified experts agree that manmade greenhouse gases are dangerously heating the planet. Conservatives can’t bring themselves to admit that “liberals” and United Nations types could ever be correct about anything, so they nay-say, sit on their hands, and would allow their grandchildren (and ours) to ultimately perish, fearfully gasping for precious breath.

4) Nationalism sucks. Belief that one’s own country is better or more important than all others has generated massively destructive jingoism and xenophobia through the ages. Combined with religion, it’s been the chief cause of war for bloody centuries. Join me in pledging to never take up arms against anyone on bogus pretexts — or to imagine them inferior, “evil,” etc. — just because they live beyond the ocean, look strange, and have unfamiliar customs.

5) Let’s jettison monopoly capitalism, which is so parasitically harmful that it makes a starving vampire bat seem benign. If we the people took over the economy, democratically controlling it for public profit and common gain, we’d never get robbed at the gas pump again, pay an arm and a leg for medical care or prescription drugs, lose our homes to usurious mortgage thieves, or get sent off to die in meddling neocons’ criminal invasions abroad. Fire the boss! Become a fair-minded owner of America, along with your fellow workers and neighbors!

6) Stop bashing immigrants. Each of our own arriving ethnic groups was accused by existing nativists of stealing jobs, being a societal drain, having criminal and otherwise unsavory tendencies, or spreading disease, just as mostly Hispanic immigrants are condemned today. Such successive discrimination plainly benefited divide-and-conquer corporate profiteers. It was only when ethnicities, races, and genders united — understanding that an injury to one is an injury to all — that the overall U.S. working class made decisive advances and acquired a mutually better living standard.

7) Admit that nothing worthwhile comes from conservatism. It’s abject selfishness masquerading as a valid ideology. Its sole purpose is to perpetuate minority privilege attained through illegitimate power wielded against consequently suffering masses. Conservatives will never utter the word “justice,” for it’s a shattering indictment of their consistently exploitative role in human affairs. Everything good has been fiercely resisted by the political Right: abolishing slavery and child labor, gaining women’s suffrage, struggling to achieve racial equality, raising the minimum wage, implementing progressive taxation, establishing health and safety standards in the workplace and the community at large, just to name a few.

8) Accept that, while abortion isn’t pretty, it’s often necessary. Furthermore, only each female in each specific, unique circumstance has the right to determine what constitutes a legitimate abortion need. No male, or male-dominated institution, should interfere in this most personal and difficult choice. Before guys say one word about the supposed impropriety of terminating an unacceptable pregnancy, they should produce ironclad guarantees about controlling their reckless libidos and keeping their penises in their pants, if that’s where they’re told they should remain.

9) Repeat after me: “Better gay than grumpy.” The only problem with homosexuality is that some straights, insecure about their own orientation, get uptight over it. Most animal species engage in same-sex contact on a minority basis. Therefore it isn’t “unnatural,” just different, and entirely involuntary, like being left-handed rather than right. Besides, aren’t the last six words of the Pledge of Allegiance “with liberty and justice for all”? Quit being hypocrites and get aboard the freedom train!

10) To nurture the collective human spirit, which is quite different than a religious “soul,” think less about what you can personally acquire, in a material sense. Instead, join struggles for shared prosperity. Know that the greatest reward is giving a deprived child reason to laugh. Honor and guard our earthly home. Lie down beside a blade of grass and contemplate its simple magnificence. Then, when relentless age takes its final toll, buy the farm with a contented smile. You lived well. You did the right thing.

Feed those worms and help make that grass grow!

Three Republican Senators voted against the bill, including Senate Majority Assistant Whip Gregory Bell. “I’m not comfortable with home brewing,” Bell said to the Deseret News. “It seems fraught with mischief to me. Maybe I don’t understand it.”

Why doesn’t Bell understand this delicious and empowering craft? Perhaps because corporations have taken over an industry that used to be rooted in the kitchens of the world.

It was in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, where first emerged the trade of beer and barley, according to Fermenting Revolution: How To Drink Beer and Save the World by Christopher O’Brien. The need to cultivate crops for this important product may have been the initial reason for the settlement of the world’s first large-scale community. In Babylonia, where beer was safer to drink than the canal water, barley and beer were used as a form of currency. The foundations of modern society appear to be built on, well, beer.

At the time of the American Revolution, rebels encouraged boycotts against English beer, chanting the phrase, “Homebrewed Is Best.” George Washington brewed his own beer in a house designated for the craft in his backyard. At Monticello, Thomas Jefferson gave his friends beer-brewing lessons. In 1872, there were 3,421 breweries in the US. According to the New Yorker, during the Civil War, a member of the United States Sanitary Commission said beer was a “valuable substitute for vegetables.” Now there are more than 1,400 breweries, and over one million homebrewers in the US.

Yet during Prohibition, home brewers naturally took a hit. After Prohibition was lifted, wine was allowed to be produced legally at home, but beer was not. In 1978, NY Congressman Barbar Conable sponsored a bill that would legalize homebrewing. When introducing the bill to Congress, Conable said that Americans should not have to “rely on the beer barons” for their brew. It wasn’t until 1979, when President Jimmy Carter signed the Cranston Act, that home brewing was legalized in many states. At the time of the law’s passage, only forty-four breweries were in operation in the US.

However, the Cranston Act still allowed individual states to prohibit the production. Before the Utah Senate legalized homebrewing a few days ago, those who brewed at home had to get a license and post a $10,000 bond. Utah Senator Steve Urquhart said of the new law’s passage, “We’re dealing with adults and this simply isn’t a big deal. That’s the argument that persuades me.” Utah Governor Jon Huntsman now needs to sign the bill into law for it to be applied. Pending this passage, homebrewers will be able to brew legally starting on May 12.

This homebrewers’ victory in Utah is in part thanks to two years of grassroots activism and lobbying on the part of the American Homebrewers Association and Gary Glass, the Association’s director. Glass spoke to the Beer Examiner about the process. “Much thanks to all of the Utah craft brewers who have helped us in the effort to legalize homebrewing over the past couple of years . . . The huge response we’ve had from Utah homebrewers and beer enthusiasts contacting their legislators had a major impact. I was present and testified at the legislative committee hearings and was encouraged to hear from many legislators that they were surprised at the number of contacts from voters urging them to support the measure.”

Homebrewing is a wonderful pastime that can also help build community. In Burlington, Vermont my friends and I recently pooled our money together to buy brewing equipment, and started a collective that shares the equipment, recipes and the beer with other locals around town. In this way, homebrewing has built community and allows us to cut out the corporate middleman.

Similarly, the homebrewers’ victory in Utah is one step close to enabling the beer drinkers of the world to take back their brew from the corporations of the world.

The IMF calls for devaluation of the currencies of these “economies”, which are not really economies at all after their deindustrialization over the past two decades, but the euro-agreements prevent this. And even if they could do the IMF number, their huge mortgage debts contracted in euros and Swiss francs over the past decade would still be unrepayable.

Latvia’s government was trying to comply with IMF-imposed measures to qualify for an emergency loan, much like Argentina in 2001, when brutal cuts to education and social programs sparked a general strike and radicalized the entire nation (except, or course, those responsible for the crisis). The riots in Lativa brought the government down and its credit rating was just lowered to junk status.

It’s no better inside euroland. Q: What’s the difference between Ireland and Iceland ? A1: The letter “c”. A2: Six months.

We haven’t even mentioned Greece, which is already considered a failed state, virtually in a state of civil war since last September. And now the very pillars of the European Union are crumbling. In January, hundreds of thousands marched in French cities in the biggest protest in two decades. An ongoing month-long strike in France’s far-flung Guadeloupe is now full-scale urban warfare, with the dead including a trade union leader. The ruling white elite and tourists are at this very moment fleeing in panic. Martinique and Reunion have joined in.

In Britain demos are breaking out across the country protesting unemployment and the bank bailouts. The British National Party shocked the establishment by winning a council seat in Kent, “penetrating” the south of England, and are expecting major gains in the EU elections in June. Spain lost a million jobs in 2008 and the unemployment rate is expected to reach 25 percent this year. Spain’s (and Ireland’s) so-called wage inflation now requires wage deflation, workers are told. With Spain’s high debt levels, this is impossible. Even if it were possible, wage deflation is a recipe for revolution.

Marches protesting the economic plight of the people are expected to grow and lead to further violence throughout Europe, with Greece as the prequel. Suddenly, the specter of the end of the EU, certainly the end of the common currency, is being raised. Coined to convince the “free world” of the dangers of Communism, the domino effect is back with a vengeance.

The string pullers over the past two decades managed to transform the face of Europe, destroying the Soviet Union and expanding the EU and NATO rapidly eastward. But just as Napoleon and Hitler before them, the over-confident conquerors moved too far too fast, and now face the prospect of losing everything. The marvel of the euro zone is now derided as the Völker-Kerker (prison of nations) recalling the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Italian journalists have begun to talk of Europe’s “Tequila Crisis,” referring to the collapse of Mexico’s peso in 1993 when the elite took their money to the US. A similar capital flight from Club Med could set off an unstoppable process and even bring the euro down.

What is the euro, except a fixed exchange rate agreement among members? Skeptics have always dismissed it as a dangerous straightjacket, since Europe is far from uniform. It means national governments are highly restricted in their monetary and fiscal policies to deal with crises. It also means that ripples in Europe become tidal waves, as all the countries’ economic successes or failures happen together.

This is fine if governments are united in pursuing a common agenda to promote stability and prosperity for the common Europeans, but neoliberalism allows for no such political will. The common economic space has merely allowed large companies and banks to take control of the whole market, supposedly to be equal competitors to their big brothers in the US, China and elsewhere. But riding the wave of privatization and euro-expansion, they threw caution to the winds, with no strong national governments to clip their wings. The EU “government” is exposed as worse than useless, a rubber stamp for this Thatcherite mania, fooling Europeans into thinking there was someone controlling the private chaos.

As the euro begins to slide against the worthless dollar (that’s right), no one is seriously preparing for the possibility of its immanent collapse and what to do about it. Instead, incredibly, a Financial Times columnist calls on the EU to drop its euro-entry requirements for the “economies” of eastern Europe and quickly shepherd them into the “safe” euro-fold. Just as mad as this strategy may seem is the one presently being implemented: to pump endless cash into the banks that have recklessly moved into this economic wasteland.

It is vital to keep the edifice afloat, after all. Virtually all of Eastern Europe is in hock to Western banks and as they go bankrupt, or for the “lucky” ones, their exchange rates plummet with respect to the euro, they represent bargain-basement fire sales for the West. The Polish zloty plunged 50 percent in the past six months, making it impossible to repay the countless euro-Swiss loans contracted by unwitting Poles, lured by low interest rates.

The banks have lent Eastern Europe about $1.7 trillion, since “independence” and this must be saved from disappearing at all costs. The currently proposed $31 billion to be pumped into the banks is peanuts — as long as national governments (that is, the people) pay it, of course.

If the steely-nerved bankers can stay the course, the pay-off is potentially immense. Lured into euro-clutches, these orphan nations can now be squeezed. Integration with a vengeance, on a par with their WWII and post-WWII occupations. At least under post-WWII socialism (which many Eastern Europeans remember fondly), the common people were provided for and the ruling party’s privileges circumscribed. But if today’s unsupervised elites keep sending their money abroad, the pit becomes bottomless. Riots turn into revolutions.

France will no doubt lead the way. Students occupied the Sorbonne recently in a long-running battle against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s education reforms, supported by 70 percent of the population. French radical politicians Jose Bove and the popular New Anti-Capitalist Party leader Olivier Besancenot have already traveled to Guadeloupe in solidarity with the strikers. “Their fight is our fight — against capitalism, exploitation, the big supermarkets,” exhorted a newly radicalized Bastille district activist.

Sarkozy’s popularity is at its lowest at 36 percent, with a similar number of French saying they would welcome strikes “on a huge scale.” The pollster Dabi said, “There is a sense of incoherence and a sense that Sarkozy does not really know where he is taking France. But that’s largely because there is an incoherence and Sarkozy doesn’t know here he is taking France.”

The same can surely be said of all Western leaders these days. United States President Barack Obama has it easy. He at least has a clear agenda to tear up — the Reagan-Bush one. But the only common policy of Western leaders so far is one dictated by the banking elite: “Bail us out, but leave us alone.” If anything, they are demanding coordinated bailing out and calling for a new international banking institution, which of course they will control, and which, we are supposed to believe, will avert any further unpleasantness. Such an institution may well act to avert capitalism’s collapse, but there will be lots of “unpleasantness”, evenly distributed among the common people.

The sunny euro-vistas of yesterday are no longer. Eastern Europe risks being eaten alive by Western banks. Western Europe risks mere stagnation and endless political unrest. All indications are that this is a dead-end; that the only way forward is to break the hold that the economic system has on both East and West. The upheavals have begun and the real domino effect will spread throughout Europe this summer. That the European parliament elections in June will take place in a hostile atmosphere is an understatement.

Using a crisis to push through unpopular measures doesn’t work anymore, as Greek and Latvian politicians have discovered. The streets are already ringing with the cry: “We won’t pay for your crisis!”

Friday had been established as the final day of the referendum campaign for both camps, el Sí — supporters of the enmienda — and el No. Amelia and I had first become acquainted with the terms of the struggle 10 days earlier, when we crossed from Colombia into Venezuela during a hitchhiking expedition originating in Quito. From the Venezuelan frontier onward, competing slogans such as “Vota Sí” and “No es No” monopolized the sides of buildings and the rear windshields of cars. The competition sometimes assumed even more straightforward forms, such as “Sí Sí Sí Sí” and “No No No No,” with the Sí campaign enjoying a decided aesthetic advantage based on the fact that the “I” could be dotted with a star.

Amelia and I met our first representative of the No campaign when he picked us up hitchhiking a few hundred meters after passport control. Diego was a 25 year old from the nearby city of San Cristobal who had just purchased a sofa on the Colombian side of the border at a favorable exchange rate. As we had just very unfavorably exchanged dollars into bolivars — due to a refusal to comprehend that the rate on the Venezuelan street was more than twice as favorable as the official rate — Amelia and I congratulated him on his enterprising nature.

Diego denied that opportunities for enterprise existed in a country whose leader insisted on declaring every other day a national holiday. As evidence he explained that the previous day (2 February) had been the 17th anniversary of Chávez’ attempted golpe de estado and that the following day (4 February) was the 10th anniversary of his ascension to power. He failed, however, to address opportunities for enterprise in forced holidays that were financially compensated; his subsequent announcement that chavismo was undemocratic was then slightly contradicted by his declaration that the enmienda would not pass due to the democratic character of the Venezuelan political system. Diego dropped us off in San Cristobal, wagering that Chávez’ conception of George Bush as the devil was slightly contradicted by the fact that the US was the primary recipient of Venezuelan oil.

Having learned while hitchhiking through Colombia that military officials could be tasked with procuring rides for us, Amelia and I approached a checkpoint of the Venezuelan Guardia Nacional outside the city, where the Guardia addressed us in a conspiratorial whisper:

GUARDIA: We are voting for el No.

The Guardia acknowledged that they had at one point been convinced that only el Sí could be associated with el Comandante but had been won over when the Venezuelan opposition — supported by the United States — co-opted a quote by Simón Bolívar regarding the dangers of leaving the same man in power forever. (Not taken into consideration by proponents of the unchanging applicability of historical ideals was whether George Washington had ever been of the opinion that countries should be allowed to govern themselves.)

At the Guardia checkpoint a truck driver named Benjamín was conscripted to transport Amelia and me as far as the state of Barinas, homeland of Chávez. Benjamín began by asserting that Barinas ranches belonging to the Chávez family were not examples of equitable property distribution, but over the course of our six hour drive became increasingly boastful of the fact that it cost him less than a dollar to purchase 83 liters of diesel fuel for his truck. He then moved on to gleefully quizzing us on the price of vegetable oil and flour in our own país.

Amelia and I enjoyed our first personal encounter with supporters of the enmienda at another Guardia checkpoint in the state of Guárico in central Venezuela. Upon our arrival at their desk the Guardia offered us not only the greeting “¿Cómo va la revolución?” but also two cantaloupes and the monetary denomination required to use the bathroom at a nearby gas station. They outlined their political stance by pointing across the street to a billboard featuring multicolored repetitions of the word Sí, and did not object when Amelia and I utilized their official stamp on our upper arms.

After reaching the coastal city of Barcelona east of Caracas, we were joined by our Lebanese-Palestinian friend Hassan, whose choice of countries in which to vacation was determined in part by Chávez’ willingness to expel representatives of the state of Israel. The three of us were hosted at the Barcelona home of Hassan’s friend Ali, whose insistence that Chávez was his second father was determined in part by the ease with which Ali had acquired Venezuelan residencia; he nonetheless continued to assure his Venezuelan girlfriend that he would be voting no in the referendum.

Most of our time in Barcelona was spent on a street in the center of town with a high concentration of clothing stores and markets run by Lebanese and Syrian immigrants. On this street we acquired such knowledge as that:

1. tahini was also produced in Venezuela, presumably as part of Chávez’ quest to achieve autonomia alimentaria and to combat the notion that Venezuela’s only resource was oil.

2. a great deal of noise was caused by puntos rojos, the innumerable red tents in charge of disseminating information in favor of el Sí.

Three days prior to the referendum, Amelia, Hassan, and I visited one of the local puntos rojos with the intention of acquiring red T-shirts bearing the slogan “¡Uh! ¡Ah! Chávez con el pueblo sí va” — on which the outline of a military beret functioned as the accent over the “A” on Chávez. Although it was at first claimed that there was a national shortage of T-shirts, we eventually persevered thanks to the intervention of a woman with several missing teeth who introduced herself as Del Valle.

Del Valle proclaimed it an absolute necessity that Amelia and I learn to wear our shirts like real chavistas, who had apparently learned to deal with oversized attire by tying the T-shirts in a 1980s-style knot. Once our appearance had been rendered satisfactory, Del Valle commandeered the microphone belonging to the punto rojo and announced with tears in her eyes that three foreign visitors had joined the revolución bolivariana. It was then decided that the next step in our revolutionary education would be flier distribution the following day, a decision which we were forced to review several times given that the punto rojo’s resident DJ did not skimp on decibel levels.

The soundtrack of the punto rojo covered Chávez-related themes in a variety of Latin beats, some of the numbers apparently performed by Chávez himself. The music enabled flier distributors to simultaneously distribute and dance, a combination we were instructed in upon returning to the punto rojo on 13 February, the final day of the referendum campaign.

Most passersby were receptive to our handouts, which stressed different aspects of the proposed enmienda such as that Venezuelans should vote Sí on account of the fact that Chávez loved them. Only a few intended recipients responded with phrases involving the word mierda or implications that the receptive passersby were simply being receptive in order to avoid blacklisting; the DJ meanwhile periodically paused his soundtrack so that punto rojo attendants could perform karaoke to Spanish pop songs.

When we ran out of fliers, we were supplied with business card-size photos of Chávez featuring the referendum question and the advised answer. One of the card recipients was a man who came to be known as “the Communist” based on his membership in the PCV and the fact that we forgot to ask his name; he greeted us with a “¿Como va la revolución?” and accepted a card despite being in the process of distributing a stack of the same cards himself.

The Communist invited Amelia, Hassan, and me to join a section of the PCV in the back of a pickup truck for a quick tour of Barcelona. The itinerary of the quick tour turned out to be as follows:

1. Drive five minutes from center of town. Stop so that Communist can address traffic jam on dangers of being tricked by opposition into staying at home on voting day.

2. Drive five more minutes to barrio Rómulo Gallegos. Stop so that Communist can spend next two hours alternately dancing salsa on side of road and branding passing cars with variations on the word “Sí” in white marker.

3. Listen to same three songs emitted on repeat from pickup truck loudspeakers.

The first song in the cycle somewhat resembled a nursery rhyme and began: “Qué buena, qué buena, qué buena está la enmienda,” before going on to explain that the enmienda had been requested by the pueblo. The other two tunes incorporated the “¡Uh! ¡Ah!” theme, with the catchier of the two stipulating: “Y todos con la enmienda, ¡uh ah! Y Chavez con el pueblo, ¡sí va!”

After the first dozen cycles, Hassan had mastered relevant portions of the Spanish language and Amelia and I had choreographed a simple dance routine in the back of the pickup truck, which we then performed for the next dozen cycles while Amelia intermittently flung Chávez cards through the windows of passing cars. As for the Communist, he and other supporters of the PSUV in possession of white markers continued to hinder the flow of vehicles through Rómulo Gallegos, in confirmation of Barack Obama’s contention that Hugo Chávez constituted an impediment to progress in the region. Freedom of expression was nonetheless upheld, and the driver of one hindered vehicle made a show of wiping the fresh “Sí” from his rear windshield.

Amelia’s and my dance choreography was rendered more difficult when the Communist and half a dozen new cohorts suddenly appeared in the back of the pickup and the truck joined a lengthy caravan of motorcycles, cars, and buses draped in red. As we wound through the barrio, we were cheered on from doorsteps and balconies; aside from a group of spitting children, displays of opposition generally consisted of finger-wagging and amicable declarations of “No.” Non-spitting children meanwhile rushed into the street to collect the Chávez cards that the Communist tossed over the side of the pickup truck.

By the end of the evening, the activity in the back of the pickup had effectively been reduced to limp waves of a red hat by the Communist and the occasional “Allahu Akbar” shouted by Hassan in time with the three-song cycle. When Amelia and I requested the symbolism of this act, he explained that Hezbollah caravans were also repetitive.

Once the caravan had dispersed, we extracted ourselves from the pickup truck and were unable for the rest of the night to speak or comprehend anything that:

1. was not a shout.
2. did not somehow involve the words “uh” and “ah.”

The next morning, the day before the referendum, I went to one of the Arab-run markets in the center of town, now cleared of puntos rojos. The Syrian cashier offered me a papaya shake on the house and informed me that all Venezuelans were “por el no” but that their orientation was masked out of fear. I asked the Syrian if he had gotten this idea from the Diario Región on the counter in front of him — the headline of which read: “¡No voten con miedo!” — and if dancing was a common symptom of fear in Venezuela. He responded that people were liable to do anything under duress, just as Lebanese civilians had been known on occasion to throw flowers and rice at invading Israeli armies.

The Syrian had just returned from a visit to Damascus, where he had noted the prevalence of a certain key chain depicting Bashar al-Assad on one side and Chávez on the other, an arrangement which, according to his analysis, indicated inherent similarities between Bolivarian republics and Syrian Arab republics. In response I brought up a recent hitchhiking incident in which Bolivarianism had been compared to Italian fascism by a truck driver from Napoli.

Further exploration of the wealth of historical analogies made possible by the sizable immigrant population of Venezuela was cut short when a man entered the market from the street and greeted the Syrian with “¿Cómo va la revolución?” before requesting a charitable donation. The Syrian promptly consumed himself with the straightening of a sign on the wall prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages from Friday to Monday in honor of the referendum; the question of the status of la revolución was thus deflected to me.

My principal recommendation was that the revolution be accompanied by more than three songs — a proposal that was largely fulfilled the following evening when el Sí triumphed over el No and Chávez sang through part of his celebratory address to the people.

And so it was, thirty years ago, during these very months past, that we stormed ministries, prisons and government buildings, sat down in school yards, refused to go to or teach classes, went on strike in factories, oil refineries and petrochemical plants, marched in the streets in hundreds, then thousands, and soon in hundreds of thousands.

The revolution had such a force that even in the most laid back towns, like Shiraz, people started taking to the streets in the tens and hundreds of thousands. In the famously mellow town of our beloved poets Sadi and Haafez, where martial law was declared last and lifted first, I saw hundreds of thousands in the streets and it was a sight to behold.

Back in those days thirty years ago, we were storming SAVAK buildings after pitch battles, some lasting hours some days, finding instruments of torture and files, files and more files. All those files that our rulers had indeed been keeping: on us, on our friends and classmates, our fathers, brothers, sisters, cousins and more. Those files, the cumulative result of diligent work, of years of training by the Israeli Mossad agents bringing the Shah’s ability for secret information gathering up to par.

All those files that, just as swiftly as they were being unearthed, were trucked away to the mosques. For safe keeping they said. But, some knew better. Soon, those files would be added to. Soon, those files would be swallowed up by a far greater secret service that the theocrats had in mind.

Yes, truckloads of those files were quickly hurried to the mosques. A regime we did not see clearly — or rather, a state of affairs we refused to believe was forming right in front of our very eyes — was creeping slowly into formation, moving steady, gleeful and quietly smirking, ready to make the final leap, which it did soon enough.

Must hand it to them; the mullahs, these ruling class ideologues with a resume of sharing power running longer than a thousand years, successfully blind-sighted much of the left.

In Iran, we have a very telling and popular expression for ‘being cheated’ or ‘burned’, in cases where something honestly and deservedly belonging to someone gets stolen or taken away in an unfair fashion. The expression is: it [the stolen item] was ‘eaten by the mullah’ (’mollah-khor shod’). Popular street language that has traveled through the ages and generations more often than not carries lessons bitterly learned.

Our generation, by force of necessity, came to learn this socio-linguistic lesson bitterly, painfully and at a huge cost. No shame in saying it. We carried out a revolution with everybody else in the country. We became humans just like everybody else. We did our fighting and got our butts kicked. The fight is not over, though, and will not be any time soon. We are still here and still doing what we can, and the next generation of socialists inside the country has picked up beautifully where we got beat, imprisoned, executed or driven out of the country.

But, we learned and proved something that cannot be taken away. It is a lesson that puts the deepest fears in any dictatorial regime. We proved that it is possible to get rid of tyrants. Sure, it’s easy when the armed forces step aside. True, but there is a lesson there, too: befriend the armed forces and make them your own! We proved how hollow Government was without the armed forces standing on its side to back up its lies, its bullying and irrationalities.

Thirty years ago right around these past months and the months to come, we didn’t just take to the street. We took the street.

We turned the sidewalks into abundant libraries of literature previously banned. No longer were we bound by dictatorial rules banning books, a form of stupidity verging on insanity, dictating that reading a book like Bread and Wine (by Ignazio Silone) should land you in jail, served up with harsh interrogation methods available for the imbibers of such an extreme revolutionary manual.

I finally read the book in English when I was a student in England, not quite getting its full significance since I didn’t know the historical background (a condition shared by all those millions who were banned from reading the same book during the Shah’s dictatorship). I did not see all the fuss. Surely, a dictator should have been far more worried by really significant problems shaking the foundations of his little ‘kingdom’!

* * *

After shaking off the Shah, we the Iranian people, everybody, had the streets. For a while.

It started to be take away soon enough, though, and by large chunks. First attacks targeted minority nationalities in Turkmenistan and particularly in Kurdistan. Then came the attacks on women, in the form of introduction of mandatory hejab (Islamic cover) and the backward ‘reform’ (legal regression to early 20th century Iranian laws) of family laws that eradicated a whole host of rights previously granted to women; social rights such as voting, and rights as married spouses and mothers in cases of divorce. These regressive reforms by the new regime set the women’s rights back many decades, and were naturally opposed by a majority of women especially in urban areas. Their fight continues to this day, and will do so for a long time to come.

After the overthrow of the monarchy, there was naturally a public arena opened up by the revolutionary leap made by the people. The old-timers knew and warned that a fiercer dictatorship was in the offing, and perhaps had foreseen hints of it in more detailed horror, I am sure, but somewhere in the back of everybody’s mind there were suspicions that what we were experiencing in that one-year between the overthrow of the Shah and the total consolidation of the new regime — a period of what I would call absolute political freedom — was just too good to last long.

The attacks started to widen in scope. At the time the attacks started picking up, I was a first year university student in Shiraz, and was a supporter of the Marxist left organization, Fedayeen Khalq. Soon, we faced a situation where our demonstrations were disrupted and attacked by Hezbollahi vigilantes, already in formation. Whereas previously, in the forward leap to overthrow the monarchy, people had indulged greedily and joyously in absolute unity of purpose and will, the deep abyss and walls separating the secularists and the religionists were being chiseled out in front of us, and, as our demonstrations would witness, those attacks would become more frequent, more violent.

This war of beating back the left and dispersing our forces, and not letting us gain any deep roots, started early, only a few months into the new revolutionary government, a wide coalition of religionists, nationalists and religious-oriented liberals. Leftists like myself can surely remember many an occasion, when peddling leftist papers in working class neighborhoods, while setting up sidewalk shop, being shown the way out of the neighborhood after being relieved of our newspapers, not to be read but all torn up or burned right in front of us. The beating was optional and dependent mostly on how cooperative we were in leaving.

As leftist demonstrators, we soon found that along our rally routes, we should expect to face well organized contingents of very energetic, very hard looking, mostly lumpen proletarian vigilantes, backed with deliveries of truck loads of bricks to be thrown at us and at our banners for nationality rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights, freedom of expression and against new laws banning one after another of our newly gained rights.

These skirmishes would widen and broaden until there was the final assault, which was inaugurated by the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran, an event whose importance in the consolidation of the theocracy cannot be over-emphasized.

Some months after that, in March of 1980, about two weeks after I, pushed persistently by parental foresight, had left the country, the new regime shut down all universities, strongholds of leftist organizing. They would remain closed for two years, during which all leftists were systematically pursued and silenced one way or another. The arrests, tortures and summary executions followed.

The final plank in the consolidation of the new regime came as a gift from Saddam Hussein, whose armies invaded Iran in September 1980. Imam Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of the religionists, in fact, declared the war as a gift from god. The Iran-Iraq war was on, and any opposition to the new regime could be branded as treason. More arrests, tortures and summary executions would follow.

The circle of the new religious state’s intrusive authorities kept widening until every form of a civil society’s daily and hourly behavior had a sanctioned manual issued for it. In the words of Shamloo (1925-2000), our greatest contemporary poet, writer and journalist, in a poem on the intrusiveness of the religionists’ rules of conduct, which look into every private space they shouldn’t: “They smell your breath, lest you have said, ‘I love you!’”

* * *

The crimes committed by the Islamic Republic against the people of Iran started from the earliest stages of the regime’s life. It started with the graveyard-shift kangaroo ‘courts’ that tried, and executed by the next morning, the civilian and military leaders of the previous regime. This was a crime since it is the people (not just a posse of religious vigilantes headed by a mullah) who had the right, the fundamental right in any revolution, to try previous leaders for accountability.

People, not a posse deputized by the neighborhood mullah or Imam, had the sovereign right to try the leaders of Shah’s regime, overthrown by the people. The real and meaningful objective of any such trial is not, and must not be, revenge. The objective is to get a detailed account of all the crimes committed by the previous regime, so as to make sure no future government can repeat those crimes. But, the way the new regime dealt with those ‘trials’, no enlightenment came of them. Only blood.

The Islamic Republic’s crimes against the people continued when it started its campaign of terror against all opposition in all spheres, imprisoning thousands based purely on political affiliations; torturing people with impunity, executing hundreds after phony ‘trials’, in which no right of attorney was ever considered. Those imprisoned and executed included people who did not even directly oppose the new religious state. The Tudeh Pary, for example, the most rightwing of the leftist parties, stayed loyal to the new state and even collaborated with its security forces, identifying other leftists. But, even they, after their services were no longer needed, came under the blade.

The persecuted thoughts were not limited to the realm of politics. Members of the Bahai faith, a minority sect of Islam created in the 19th century in Iran, were likewise pursued.

Other crimes of the regime includes the constant and systematic attack on women’s rights and freedoms, including the suspension of their right to initiate divorce or have child custody, the suspension of their right to travel (regardless of their father, husband or some other male relative having given them permission), halving of the worth of women’s court testimony, halving of damages permitted in a law suit, halving of a woman’s inheritance, and the barbaric introduction of stoning to death in cases of adultery.

The Islamic Republic’s crimes against our people includes also a most ghastly case of an en-masse execution of hundreds of political prisoners in the summer of 1988, and the mass burial of the bodies in Khavaran grave site, in south Tehran. Ever since the summer of 1988, the families of political prisoners who were summarily killed extra-judicially have been demanding to be given exact details of the executions and places of burial of their loved ones. To no avail.

Not only has the Iranian government not pursued any legal actions against those involved in the mass killings of the political prisoners in the summer of 1988, starting in January of this year, the government has started a project even more ominous and sinister. According to Iranian human rights activists inside and outside Iran, and according to Amnesty International, starting in early-to-mid-January 2009, the government began moving tons of earth onto the Khavaran grave site, covering the graves with a thick layer of earth, with trees being planted every two or three meters. In other words, the Iranian government is now attempting to literally cover up a key site (evidence) of one of its most heinous crimes. This is the mullahs’ gift, on this thirtieth anniversary of the revolution, to the families of all political prisoners.

That is sadly one of the legacies of the national uprising that took place in Iran thirty years ago, the legacy of how a revolution was stolen, and how a new dictatorship has been attempting to bury the gains of a popular revolution.

Thirty years ago these past months and for several more to come, we were free. We were free to read whatever we wanted. We were free to write and say whatever we wanted. We freely printed and handed out fliers with whatever message or information about a gathering we wished to announce to the world, unafraid of a secretive police that would snatch us in the middle of the night to dark dungeons to torture us. In the aftermath of the overthrow of the Shah, we held impromptu street discussions on social subjects that mattered to us, we deliberated on social forces affecting us. We held street parliaments, debating those willing to give us an argument.

In those days, we did not feel fearful facing the religionists, because, unlike now, back then we were equals, both equally human, equally rightful to have our opinions and political thoughts, both equally justified to have a say in the political matters of our lives. Certain religious-minded thugs would attack our demonstrations, but in presenting our ideas and thoughts and in an argument we were unafraid. We had just carried out a revolution and kicked out a most arrogant state, exactly to assert our right to free speech, to freedom of assembly and to form our political organizations, to freedom from state harassment based purely on our political ideas. Who was anybody to want to drive us back to the same fearful corner, just because of our political thoughts? We were righteous and we were free.

Thirty years ago we had a moment. An opening. Universities were used by political organizations to hold free classes, in which we learned about any ideas we had been denied the right to even study. We were learning. We were growing.

Building democracy and democratic institutions requires not only the absolute freedoms we had just gained. But such an immense social task requires time, too. Time that we thought we would have plenty of. Or, rather, time that we wished we had plenty of.

To a lot of Iranians it became clear soon that we were not to be given much time to develop much of anything resembling democracy.

A vote-producing machinery, a purely perfunctory facade, was soon erected by the new regime, one in which the public would be given vote-casting opportunities, with tightly narrow political range limited to the religious right; but absolutely no real democracy. The parliament (or, majlis) may pass laws, but those laws are subject to review by two other extra-parliamentary bodies (Guardian Council and Expediency Council), and finally by the Supreme Leader (the faqhih), rendering the parliament a farce. To make parliament a further farce, numerous ideological requirements, including explicitly stated requirements for holding a very narrow definition of Islam as your guiding ideology, are applied to determine eligibility and the right to run as the representative of a community. And this fraud is sold internationally as holding ‘elections’.

So, we had a moment, but the moment was stolen. The thieves are still in possession of our jewels. We, however, have not died out. Worse for the mullahs, those who hate their rule constitute an absolute majority of the Iranian population. Yes, indeed, we have not gone away. The thieves may be in power, but everybody knows they are thieves. They have no credibility, and that is why they have to employ vast networks of terror against any existing or potential opposition, even if the opposition is merely in thought.

As Iranians, we have had strands of socialist thinking in our own local, historical consciousness in the form of Mazdak (died c. 525), a popular and true maverick leader of old who advocated for the equality of all and for fair distribution of all wealth. This is simply a positive affirmation that socialist desires are historically just and have existed in different forms and expressions throughout the ages in different regions of the world, expressed by people wishing to establish societies without the horrible destructions associated with class-based societies.

And so, on this thirtieth anniversary of an immense uprising that was suppressed, we look forward to a future when we the Iranian people will be free from all dictatorship, when we have gender equality, when we have social justice, when our thoughts will not be subject to persecution, when our mouths will not be smelled by religious police in search of evidence of sin. And we look forward to a time when clerical tyranny can be looked back at, with rejoicing sighs of relief at the passing of that horror.

The Iranian Revolution of 1978 is not dead. Long Live the Revolution!