Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Defend Afrin : appeal of TKP/ML TIKKO Rojava
SOURCE: https://www.facebook.com/OCMLVP/photos/a.792454720811723.1073741826.792454634145065/1682406345149885/?type=3&theater
SEE ALSO:
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/afrin-statement-by-tkpml-tikko-rojava.html
U.S. Is Mastermind of Nuclear War by Ra Sol Ha
Democracy and Class Struggle says the struggle for Peace over War and survival is moving fast to the top of global struggle - Trump's State of the Union Address shows that the US is not interested in inter Korean co-operation just nuclear confrontation.
The U.S. imperialists are the root cause of all misfortunes and sufferings of the Korean nation and heinous enemy of peace.
On July 15, 1957 the U.S. declared that it would start to arm its imperialist aggression troops in south Korea with nuclear weapons. On Jan. 29, 1958 it announced that it introduced nuclear weapons into south Korea.
From long ago, the U.S. has turned south Korea into a nuclear advanced base, running amuck to realize its design for aggression on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Northeast Asia.
After the emergence of the Trump administration the moves of the U.S. imperialists to ignite a nuclear war have reached climax.
They try to browbeat the DPRK by sending three nuclear aircraft carrier strike groups to the waters off the Korean Peninsula and its vicinity.
This goes to prove that the U.S. imperialists are frantic with the moves to ignite a nuclear war at any cost on the Korean Peninsula, trampling down the aspiration and demand of the Korean nation for peace and reunification.
The U.S. spawned the nuclear issue of the Korean Peninsula and it is the mastermind of nuclear war.
It is very shameless that such heinous nuclear criminal talks about "dismantlement of nukes," under the pretext of "nuclear threat" from someone.
The harsher nuclear threat and blackmail the U.S. poses, the further the DPRK will bolster up nuclear deterrent for self-defence.
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Gandhi's Horrible Legacy - Time to Start Questioning - Debunking the Gandhi Myth
TET Offensive 30th January 1968 Remembered and Honoured by Harsh Thakor
DIP OUR BLOOD IN MEMORY OF ALL THE PARTICIPANTS OF THE TET OFFENSIVE ON ITS 50TH ANNIVERSARY ON JANUARY 30TH TODAY.
SET THE BASE FOR THE GREATEST MILITARY ACHIEVEMENT OF THE LAST CENTURY AND PROVED THE INVINCIBILITY OF COMRADE MAO'S THEORY OF PROTRACTED PEOPLES WAR.
INSPIRED THE YOUTH ALL OVER THE WORLD LIKE ARGUABLY NO EVENT BEFORE VIRTUALLY WRITING A NEW CHAPTER IN THE COURSE OF MANKIND.
TODAY MARKS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE TET OFFENSIVE IN VIETNAM AN EVENT WHICH SHAPED THE COURSE OF THE POST-WAR HISTORY OF THE LAST CENTURY LIKE NO OTHER ONE.
IT WAS THE TURNING POINT IN VIETNAM OVERCOMING THE MIGHTY UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AGAINST ALL ODDS AND ACHIEVING THE GREATEST MILITARY FEAT AGAINST AN ENEMY EVER IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND.
PUNDITS COULD NOT FORSEE A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY LIKE VIETNAM OVERPOWERING A GIANT LIKE AMERICA.
IT WAS THE MASTERY OF MILITARY STRATEGY APPLYING MAOIST THEORY OF PROTRACTED PEOPLES WAR AND MASS LINE COMBINED WITH THE PHENOMENAL RESERVES OF ENERGY OF THE MASSES THAT WON THE WAR.
IT WAS A VIRTUAL RESSURRECTION OF THE FEATS OF THE LONG MARCH IN CHINA AND STALINGRAD IN RUSSIA .
The manner in which the Tet Offensive was launched 50 years ago is a lesson for every revolutionary cadre in the importance of planning and applying action relevant to the very situation.
It did not mechanically adopt Maoist strategy of protracted peoples war but applied it to the concrete situation prevailing.
The North Vietnamese army and the vietcong did not overestimate or underestimate the strength of the enemy which was a vital factor.
The manner in which the Vietcong and NLF could galvanize villagers to form a red army and overcome a superpower like America is unprecedented in the history of mankind.
The creativity and innovativeness within Marxism-Leninism-Mao thought(now Maoism) was taken to it's highest zenith by the Vietnamese.
The building of underground tunnels is an ideal example.The inherent structure of a workers state and a Socialist base had a great role in the victory
The planning and fortification of weaponry or ammunition in the cities like Saigon was a decisive factor.The experience of the earlier combating the French enemy from 1940 - 1954 was an invaluable lesson.
General Giap
General Giap displayed genius in hardly giving the enemy any inklings of the moves of his forces in the manner of a chess wizard.
Without imbibing lessons from the Chinese revolution Vietnam would never have overcome their adversaries.
The Vietnamese people displayed willpower and resilience at it's supreme height and cultivated the spiritual essence of an inner change to create a Socialist man at it's deepest depth.
Vietnamese military effort welded the organization and skill of a medical surgeon with the wizardry of a magician. .
Only because of Stalinist centralized planing did Vietnam lay the grounds for its victory in the war.
In context of military line Ho Chi Minh was closer to Mao than Stalin if you assesa tactics and strategy adopted against France and then America.
Mastery of morally Marxist-Leninist-Maoist dialectics was the decisive factor.
In spite of making a heroic counter-offensive in similar style Iraq could not overcome America.
The non -existence of a Socialist country today like erstwhile U.S.S.R and China has a great bearing on the Maoist movements worldwide.
Without aid of Socialist China Vietnam would not have triumphed and in turn without Soviet help the Chinese revolution would never have succeeded.
The great effect of the success of the Vietnamese was the arousal of the students and youth all lover the world protesting against capitalist oppression and supporting guerilla struggles.
It also was a great boost to the anti-imperialist movements of workers who took inspiration from the creativity of the common man in fighting American Imperialism.It boosted the progressive anti-war movement in every part of the world and enlightened the broad masses on the true nature of Imperialism.
I can never forget it's impact on the students and youth in the late 1960's and early 70's in the famous Naxalbari movement.
Ironically Ho Chi Minh had adopted a centrist path in the great debate and did not formally uphold the Cultural Revolution of China.
However it was Socialist China's support much more than that of U.S.S.R.that faciltated Vietnam's victory.
Today anti-imperialist movements worldwide whether in North Korea ,Palestine or in the Kurdish areas must take inspiration from the Vietnamese Tet Offensive.
Simlarly these movements do not have Maoist leadership or are not led by Socialist countrie's.
Neverthless they light a spark in extinguishing the flame of Imperialism.
The Iraqi resistance had many similarities with Vietnam against America.
Today in many ways even the peoples wars in Philippines and India are igniting and ressurrecting the spark of the Tet Offensive.
Great anti-imperialist movements even pave the way for the formation of vanguard communist parties.
Maoists must never be sectarian in giving tacit support to all genuine anti-imperialist movements even if not led by Maoist parties.
Struggle of nationality of Kashmir in India is a brilliant example.
RED SALUTE TO THE VIETNAMESE HEROES OF THE TET OFFENSIVE
Stalin and Hitler : Twin Brothers or Mortal Enemies by Domenico Losurdo
If you cannot access the PDF above for any reason access try :
http://crisiscritique.org/ccmarch/losurdo.pdf
If you like the above then proceed to the critique of totalitarianism below
If you have problems accessing this article on totalitarianism there is an alternative site here :
https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-dfBD-isycOcvHvqS/Domenico%20Losurdo%20--%20Towards%20a%20Critique%20of%20the%20Category%20of%20Totalitarianism_djvu.txt
SEE ALSO:
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/losurdo-on-stalin-review-by-roland-boer.html
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/a-review-of-war-and-revolution-by.html
Monday, January 29, 2018
Germany: Jugendwiderstand: Solidarity with the Kurdish people of Afrin!
January 29, 2018
In advance: The “Syrian civil war” is a proxy war between imperialists in the northern area of the Syrian people, where Arabs, Kurds, Syrians, Assyrians, Turkmen and other ethnic groups live.
The main culprit of this bloodbath and genocide is US imperialism and its lackeys in the region (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Israel & co.), who through their interventions, attacks and mercenary gangs set everything in motion. Syria, a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country under the authority and leadership of Russian imperialism, is the central battlefield in the Yankee struggle to reaffirm even more its world hegemony and not to overthrow Russian imperialism but to lift it up again.
Nowadays, there is no relevant and organized faction of armed struggle that represents the international proletariat and the communists in this conflict.
The United States are the main enemy of the peoples of the world and this is clear right there, between the Zionist colonial entity of Israel, the NATO state Turkey, murderer of Kurds, the steadily devastated and occupied Iraq, the artificial monarchies like Saudi Arabia by the grace of the Yankees and the bloodstained Syria.
They are responsible for the bloodshed in this region! Therefore, a “tactical alliance” is no excuse to allow these enemies of the people to build 13 military bases in a foreign country.
All imperialist intervention and interference must be combated and this is the correct slogan that should sound:
Death to the invaders!
The imperialists are beasts, child killers, blood-thirsty, and they do not know loyalty and honor. Their interests are incompatible with the interests of the peoples. And the alleged “tactical alliances” from a weak position will logically lead to a dead end or even to the abyss and betrayal.
Currently, the brave Kurdish fighters have to suffer once again. The sundry imperialists who abused them for their own interests, now let them die again.
Now, land troops from Turkey, a NATO state, parade through Syrian territory, not without the permission of the Yankees and also of Russia, which sells the national interests of Syria.
Abandoned by Americans and Russians, the Kurdish people of Afrin, led by the YPG, resist heroically.
Of course, there are some cases of ethnics evacuations in areas controlled by the YPG. And, of course, there are also, with more intensity, when other armed factions later gain control of an area.
Something like that is what happens in wars, even more when other classes and not the international proletariat are the leaders in these confrontations, and we hope that both the YPG and all the other armed forces in the region will do so.
And with total certainty, there are evacuations for ethnic, political and religious reasons, there are purges and mass murders when the reactionary gangs under the leadership of the fascist Turkey and its army invade the Kurdish areas of Rojava in Syria emulating the great Ottoman myth.
Therefore, the resistance of the Kurds and other ethnic masses on the side of the YPG against Turkish aggression is right and they have no other choice.
Despite criticizing the line and direction of the Kurdish national movement and its haggling with imperialism, our solidarity with indigenous people, Kurds and other fighters against aggression remains in force, as well as with the internationalists fighting on their side.
We condemn Turkey’s interference in Syrian territory.
The Leopard tanks of the imperialist RFA with which Turkey is advancing, our Kurdish brothers and sisters on the streets of our cities and the attacks of the RFA police on them, remind us of our responsibility in this fight. Let’s practice solidarity! Let’s intensify our resistance against the ruling system!
Victory for the resistance of the Kurdish people and other peoples of Afrin against the aggression of the Turkish state!
Death to imperialism!
Death to the invaders!
SOURCE:
http://jugendwiderstand.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/solidaritat-mit-dem-kurdischen-volk-von.html
http://www.redspark.nu/en/national-liberation-struggle/jugendwiderstand-solidarity-with-the-kurdish-people-of-afrin/
Hawaii Joint US/South Korean Meeting sends bolt across North South Dialogue
Democracy and Class Struggle says the joint meeting between South Korean Defense minister and US Defense secretary Mattis in Hawaii triggered off a more tough sanctions implementation from South Korea - and shot or bolt across further North South dialogue.
North Korea correctly read the implications of the meeting - the public statement from the meeting belies the behind the scenes attempt to scupper North South co-operation and chill current dialogue between the Korea's by USA
North Korea was not going to ignore not just the South Korean Press but intensification of sanctions by South Korea at prodding by the United States with further military provocations.
The North Korean side explains its move by claiming that the South Korean media is not only undermining the sincere efforts undertaken by the DPRK in connection with the Olympics in Pyeongchang, but is also denouncing the festivities to be held in North Korea.
Under such circumstances, the DPRK could cancel the agreed events.
The Turkish government has proposed a new law which will ban the use of the words and terms 'Kurdistan', 'Kurdish city/cities' and 'Armenian Genocide' in parliament.
The Turkish government has proposed a new law which will ban the use of the words and terms 'Kurdistan', 'Kurdish city/cities' and 'Armenian Genocide' in parliament.
Parliamentarians who use these words or terms will be fined 12,000 Turkish Liras (3000 Euros) and be banned from participating in three sessions in the Grand Assembly.
Carrying placards, which opposition parties regularly do to criticise the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, will also be banned.
The new law is expected to be passed with support from the AKP and ultra-nationalist MHP. The parties entered a de-facto coalition following last year's coup attemp, which has brought about the silencing of all opposition forces in the country, including the media.
The words and terms being banned are only used by the left-wing Kurdish-issue focused Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and the move has been viewed as another step in oppressing the party.
At least 12 HDP lawmakers have been behind bars since Novemeber 2016, including the party's co-leader Selahattin Demirtas. The government has also seized more than 80 Kurdish administered municipalities and imprisoned at least 8,000 Kurdish and pro-Kurdish rights activists.
Source: Agencies
Bella Ciao : YPJ Style - Kurdish Style
This morning I awakened
Bella Ciao Bella Ciao Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao (Good-bye beautiful)
This morning I awakened
And I found the invader
Oh partisan carry me away
Bella Ciao Bella Ciao Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao
Oh partisan carry me away
Because I feel death approaching
And if I die as a partisan
Bella Ciao Bella Ciao Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao
And if I die as a partisan
Then you must bury me
Bury me up in the mountain
Bella Ciao Bella Ciao Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao
Bury me up in the mountain
Under the shade of a beautiful flower
And all those who shall pass
Bella Ciao Bella Ciao Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao
And all those who shall pass
Will tell you what a beautiful flower it is
This is the flower of the partisan
Bella Ciao Bella Ciao Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao
This is the flower of the partisan
Who died for Freedom
This is the flower of the partisan
Who died for Freedom
Turkish Forces Capture Key Mountain In Afrin plus Why is Russia helping Turkey in Afrin?
Democracy and Class Struggle says the Mountain top keeps changing hands last week Turkey took it but then the Kurdish forces retook and it seems to have gone back to Turkey again after a bitter battle.
The Kurdish forces are also in the eye of a geo political storm between rival US and Russian geo political interests - self reliance has never been more important if the Kurdish comrades in Northern Syria are to navigate the treacherous sea of imperialism and inter capitalist and inter imperialist contradictions.
VICTORY TO THE GLORIOUS KURDISH FIGHTERS OF AFRIN
Sunday, January 28, 2018
The Kurdish National Question was not a topic for discussion amongst the leftwing organisations, parties or individuals until Ibrahim Kaypakkaya raised the issue in the early 1970s in breaking with the tradition of the Turkish chauvinism among the Turkish left.
The Kurdish National Question was not a topic for discussion amongst the leftwing organisations, parties or individuals until Ibrahim Kaypakkaya raised the issue in the early 1970s in breaking with the tradition of the Turkish chauvinism among the Turkish left. Kemalist state ideology had so impressed itself upon the Turkish left that when they heard that Ibrahim Kaypakkaya analysis the Kemalist ideology as fascist state ideology, they were shocked and puzzled.
Fortunately, most of the parties who disagreed with Ibrahim’s analysis in the 1970’s have now conceded that he was correct.
The TKP(ML) considers the Kurdish National question under the guidance of MLM, as in all other matters. At the same time we refuse to compromise our position with regard to nationalism of an oppressed nation when that nationalism threatens the unity of all workers. As a result of this we can say that Ibrahim Kaypakkaya’s analysis was a blow to the Turkish chauvinism which had endured throughout the previous 50 years of the Turkish Republic.
The solution to the kurdish National question depends entirely on the outcome of the revolution in Turkey. Today it seems that the independence of the Kurdish people is not possible without revolution.
We know that Turkey’s dominant classes are the enemy of Democracy and Kurdish Inpendence therefore, we are willing to take joint action with any democratic organisations and groups which are themselves suffering national and/or class oppression.
The most important issue for us is ” class unity ” with the Kurdish proletariat and communists. We cannot compromise on this question, as it is one of ourparty’s main principles. Such a class unity will achieve DPR and only then will people attain real freedom.
Having said this, if the Kurdish nation as today struggles to gain its independence, the TKP(ML) will support and express solidarity with this struggle for democracy and freedom. Sometimes contradictions will emerge between the line of the Kurdish struggle and the interests of proletariat and oppressed masses in Turkey and Kurdistan. When that happens we are obliged to criticize them.
Video Tribute to brave Avesta Khabur who sacrificed her life to destroy a tank and several Turkish invaders in the village of Hemmam
Democracy and Class Struggle says not let her sacrifice be in vain - smash the Turkish Invaders
SILENCE IS COMPLICITY IN TURKISH ATTACK - SPEAK OUT NOW !
Trotsky’s Lies - What They Are, and What They Mean by Grover Furr
The personality and the writings of Leon Trotsky have long been a rallying point for anticommunists throughout the world. But during the 1930s Trotsky deliberately lied in his writings about Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. My new book, Trotsky’s ‘Amalgams’, discusses some of Trotsky’s lies that have fooled people, and demoralized honest communists, for decades.
In January 1980 the Trotsky Archive at Harvard University was opened to researchers. Within a few days Pierre Broué, the foremost Trotskyist historian of his time, discovered that Trotsky had lied. Trotsky had always denied that any clandestine “bloc of oppositionists” including Trotskyists, existed in the Soviet Union. Trotsky called this an “amalgam,” meaning a fabrication by Stalin. This “bloc” was the main focus of the second and third Moscow Trials of January 1937 and March 1938. Broué showed, from letters in the Trotsky Archive by Trotsky and by his son Leon Sedov, that the bloc did exist.
In 1985 American historian Arch Getty discovered that the Harvard Trotsky Archive had been purged of incriminating materials, but purged imperfectly. Getty also found evidence that Trotsky had indeed remained in contact with some of his former supporters inside the Soviet Union. Trotsky always strenuously denied this, claiming that he cut off all ties to those who “capitulated” to Stalin and publicly renounced their Trotskyist views. Again, Trotsky was lying. In 2010 Swedish researcher Sven-Eric Holmström published an article on the “Hotel Bristol” question in the First Moscow Trial of August 1936. In it Holmström proves that Trotsky was lying here too.
In 2005 I began to systematically study all the accusations against Stalin and Beria that Nikita Khrushchev made in his infamous “Secret Speech.” I discovered that not a single one of Khrushchev’s so-called “revelations” can be supported from the evidence. But during the 1930s Trotsky had made the same kind of accusations against Stalin that Khrushchev later did. The fact that Khrushchev did nothing but lie suggested that Trotsky might have lied as well. Thanks to Broué and Getty I already knew that Trotsky had lied about some very important matters. Any detective, in any mystery story, knows that if a suspect has lied about some important matters, he should ask himself: What else is this person lying about?
I set about studying his writings in order to determine which of Trotsky’s statements could be tested. Wherever I had independent evidence to check the veracity of any accusation that Trotsky levelled against Stalin, I found that Trotsky was lying -- again. Today I have so much evidence that even a whole book does not come close to holding it all. So there will be two more volumes concerning Trotsky’s lies. The second volume will be published in early 2017.
Between September 2010 and January 2013 I researched and wrote a book on the assassination on December 1, 1934 of Sergei Mironovich Kirov, First Secretary of the Leningrad Party. That book, The Murder of Sergei Kirov, was published in June 2013. The Kirov murder is the key to the Soviet high politics of the rest of the 1930s: the three public Moscow Trials of August 1936, January 1937, and March 1938, often called “Show Trials;” the Military Purge or “Tukhachevsky Affair” of May and June 1937; and the Ezhovshchina of July 1937 to October 1938, which anticommunist scholars call the “Great Terror,” after a dishonest book by Robert Conquest.
Trotsky too wrote about the Kirov murder investigation. He identified the articles in the French communist and Soviet press that he read. I discovered that Trotsky lied about what these articles on the Kirov murder investigation said. Trotsky fabricated a story that Stalin and his men were responsible for Kirov’s death.
Once again, Trotsky lied about what the articles he read in the French communist newspaper Humanité and in Russian-language Soviet papers, to which Trotsky had access within only a couple of days of their publication in Moscow.
Trotsky’s lies would have been immediately apparent to anybody who set Trotsky’s articles side by side with the French and Russian newspaper articles that he had read and which he claimed he was closely studying and analyzing.
It appears that no one ever did that – until now. The result was that Trotsky’s falsified version of the Kirov assassination – that Stalin and the NKVD had killed Kirov – was taken up not only by Trotsky’s followers, but by Nikita Khrushchev.
In his completely fraudulent “Secret Speech” Khrushchev gave additional credibility to the “Stalin killed Kirov” story. Khrushchev and his speechwriters probably took this directly from Trotsky. Trotsky’s tale that “Stalin had Kirov killed” passed from Khrushchev to the professional anticommunist scholar-propagandists like Robert Conquest and many others. In the late 1980s Mikhail Gorbachev’s men tried and failed to find evidence in the Soviet archives to support this story.
Aleksandr Iakovlev, Gorbachev’s chief man for ideology, sent them back to the archives to try again. Once again, the Politburo research team filed to find any evidence to even suggest that Stalin had had Kirov killed.
The history of the “Stalin had Kirov killed” fabrication is a good example of how a number of Trotsky’s deliberate lies were taken up by Soviet anticommunists like Khrushchev and Gorbachev, and by pro-capitalist anticommunists in the West. In my new book Trotsky’s “Amalgams”
I uncover and discuss a number of other deliberate lies by Trotsky about Stalin and the USSR. All of them have been adopted by anticommunists and by Trotskyists. In the second and third volumes of this work I will discuss Trotsky’s conspiracies with saboteurs and fascists inside the USSR, and with the Nazis and the Japanese militarists.
In early 1937 Trotsky succeeded in persuading John Dewey, the famous educator, and a number of others, to hold hearings, supposedly to determine whether the charges leveled against Trotsky in the August 1936 and January 1937 Moscow Show Trials were true. The Commission duly concluded that Trotsky was innocent and the Moscow Trials were all a frame-up. I carefully studied the 1,000 pages of the Dewey Commission materials. I discovered that the Commission was dishonest and shockingly incompetent.
It made error after error in logical reasoning. Of most interest is the fact that Trotsky lied to the Dewey Commission many times. The Dewey Commission could not possibly have declared Trotsky “Not Guilty” if the Commission members had known that Trotsky was lying to them. I wish to briefly mention two more sections of my book. They are: my project to verify – that is, to check -- the Moscow Trials testimony; and my examination of the errors that most readers of Soviet history make, errors which make them unable to understand the significance of the evidence we now have.
The testimony of the defendants in the three public Moscow Trials is universally declared to be false, forced from innocent men by the prosecution, the NKVD, “Stalin.” There has never been a shred of evidence to support this notion.
Nevertheless, it is staunchly affirmed by ALL specialists in Soviet history, as well as by all Trotskyists. Thanks to years of identifying, searching for, locating, obtaining, and studying primary sources, I realized that there now exists enough evidence to test many of the statements made by the Moscow Trials defendants.
I devote the first twelve chapters of Trotsky’s ‘Amalgams’ to a careful verification of many of the statements by the Moscow Trials defendants. I found that, whenever we can double-check a fact-claim made by a Moscow Trials defendant against independent evidence now available, it turns out that the Moscow Trials defendant was telling the truth. Trotsky, Khrushchev and his men, Cold-War Soviet “experts,”
Gorbachev and his men, and today’s academic scholars in Soviet studies, all claimed or claim that the Trials are frame-ups. I prove from the evidence that they are wrong. The Moscow Trials testimony is what it claims to be: statements that the defendants chose to make. I verify this with a great deal of evidence from outside the Trials themselves and even outside the Soviet Union. This is an important conclusion. This result in itself disproves the “anti-Stalin paradigm” of Soviet history. It also contributes to disproving Trotsky’s version of Soviet history, a version that the Trotskyist movement worldwide continues to believe and to propagate today. Those of us -- researchers, activists, and others -- who wish to find the truth about Soviet history of the Stalin period, and not merely attempt to confirm our preconceived ideas about it – we are in possession of a number of results that completely overturn the convention anti-Stalin paradigm of Soviet history. These include the following:
* the fact that Nikita Khrushchev lied about every accusation he made against Stalin (and Lavrentii Beria) in his world-shaking “Secret Speech” to the XX Party Congress of the CPSU in February 1956. This clearly means that Khrushchev’s researchers could not find any true “crimes” that Stalin – or Beria – had committed, and so were reduced to fabrication.
* the fact that, despite a very thorough and time-consuming search of the archives in 1962-1964, Khrushchev’s “Shvernik Commission” could find no evidence at all to suggest that either the Moscow Trials defendants or the “Tukhachevsky Affair” defendants were victims of a “frame-up” or had lied in their confessions in any way.
* the fact that neither Gorbachev’s and Eltsin’s researchers, nor the anticommunist researchers since that time, who have had wide access to the former Soviet archives, have been able to find any evidence at all to challenge the conclusions in the Kirov Assassination, the Moscow Trials, or the Military Purges.
* the fact that the testimony at the Moscow Trials was, in the main, truthful.
* the fact that Ezhov and Ezhov alone, not Stalin and his supporters in the Soviet leadership, were responsible for the mass murders of July 1938 to November 1939 known to scholars as the “Ezhovshchina” and to anticommunist propagandists as “the Great Terror.”
* the fact that, in his writings about the USSR during the period after the Kirov murder, Trotsky lied repeatedly in order to cover up his conspiracies.
* the fact that most of today’s scholars of the Stalin period in the USSR lie in order to deceive their readers. But they do so in a way that can only be discovered by a very close, detailed study of their sources.
Trotskyist scholarship is consistently parasitical on mainstream anticommunist scholarship. Here is one example. In a recent review on the Trotskyist, and ferociously anti-Stalin World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org) of Princeton University historian Stephen Kotkin’s book Stalin, a Trotskyist reviewer refers approvingly to the anti-Stalin statements of Oleg Khlevniuk, who is called the respected Russian historian Oleg Khlevniuk. - https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/04/kot4-j04.html
Khlevniuk is a fanatical anticommunist and also a very blatant liar, in all his writings. Khlevniuk is anti-Stalin; WSWS.ORG, the Trotskyist publication, is anti-Stalin; therefore the Trotskyists “trust” the foremost anticommunist liar in the world today! Meanwhile, mainstream anticommunist scholarship has been drawing upon the writings of Trotsky himself for decades. Trotsky, of course, knew that he was lying:
* about the “bloc of Rights, Trotskyists, Zinovievites, and other Oppositionists;”
* about his own involvement in the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934;
* about his conspiring with the “Tukhachevsky Affair” military conspirators for a coup d’état against the Stalin government and to stab the Red Army in the back during an invasion by Germany or Japan;
* about his conspiring with the Nazis and the Japanese militarists;
* about conspiring with fascists and his own followers within the USSR to sabotage industry, transportation, and mines.
* about the charges against, and the confessions by, the defendants in the Moscow trials, which Trotsky knew were true.
Trotsky knew that he lied, repeatedly, over and over again, in his Bulletin of the Opposition. Trotsky knew that he repeated these lies to the Dewey Commission.
The Spanish Civil War
And Trotsky knew that he lied to his own followers, including his closest followers like Andres Nin, Erwin Wolf, and Kurt Landau. Nin had been one of Trotsky’s closest political assistants. Nin is supposed to have broken with Trotsky in 1931. But in 1930 Nin wrote, in a Trotskyist journal, that Trotsky’s Soviet-based followers who had retracted their Trotskyist views and pledged loyalty to the Communist Party’s line, had done so dishonestly. They had done so in order to remain within the Party so they could continue to recruit others to their secret conspiracies. Therefore, though Nin openly broke with the Trotskyist movement in an organizational sense, his actions in Spain suggest that this was a cover for maintaining a secret connection with Trotsky.
The Spanish communists and the Soviet NKVD in Spain suspected this too. Nin became one of the leaders of the POUM, an anti-Soviet and antiStalin party that was very friendly to Trotsky. Erwin Wolf went to Spain as Trotsky’s political representative. He did so in order to lead a “revolution” against the Spanish Republic – right in the middle of a war with the Spanish fascists, who were aided by Hitler and Mussolini. Nin and Wolf ran these risks because they believed that Trotsky was innocent of the charges that were made against him in the Moscow Trials. They thought that Trotsky, not Stalin, was the true communist and true revolutionary. Consequently, they thought that they were going to Spain to do what Lenin would have wanted done.
In May 1937 a revolt against the Spanish Republican government broke out in Barcelona. POUM and the Spanish Trotskyists enthusiastically participated in this revolt. It appears that Nin, Wolf, and Landau thought this might be the beginning of a Bolshevik-style revolution, with themselves as Lenin, the POUM as the Bolsheviks, the Republican government as the capitalists, and the Spanish and Soviet communists as the phony socialists like Alexander Kerensky!
The “Barcelona May Days Revolt,” was a vicious stab in the back against the Republic during wartime. It was suppressed in less than a week. After that, the Spanish police and Soviet NKVD hunted down the Trotskyists and the POUM leadership.
Andres Nin was certainly kidnapped, interrogated, and then murdered by the Soviets and Spanish police. The same thing probably happened to Landau and Wolf.
The Soviets knew then what we know today: that Trotsky was conspiring with the Germans, the Japanese, and the “Tukhachevsky Affair’ military men.
But Nin and Wolf certainly did not know this. They believed Trotsky’s professions of innocence. If Andres Nin, Erwin Wolf, and Kurt Landau had known what Trotsky knew, and what we now know, would they have gone to Spain to try to carry out Trotsky’s instructions? Impossible!
Therefore, Trotsky sent these men into an extremely dangerous situation by means of lying to them about his own activities and aims, and about what Stalin was doing.
And it cost them their lives. The same is true for all the Trotskyists who were executed in the Soviet Union itself. Evidently, there were hundreds of them. They all supported Trotsky because they believed his version of Soviet history, and had been convinced by Trotsky’s writings that Stalin was lying, that the Moscow Trials were a frame-up, and that the Stalin regime had abandoned the goal of worldwide socialist revolution. These men and women would not have followed Trotsky if he had not lied to them.
In the first chapter of Trotsky’s “Amalgams” I examine the errors that most students of Soviet history, including academic professionals, make when faced with primary source evidence. The truth is that very few people, including professional historians, know how to examine historical evidence. Very few Marxists know what a materialist examination of evidence looks like, or are capable of recognizing or critiquing an idealist argument when they are confronted with one.
These errors are not only errors of “denial” by persons who do not wish to have their proTrotsky or anti-Stalin preconceptions disproven. Most or all of these same errors are made by pro-Stalin, anti-revisionist people. Anticommunist arguments have been so overwhelming, not only in Cold War pro-capitalist form but especially in supposedly procommunist but in reality anticommunist Khrushchev - and Gorbachev-era writings, that it has degraded the thinking of all of us.
The lies of Trotsky’s that Pierre Broué and Arch Getty discovered 30 years ago have been ignored. This fact itself deserves explanation. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Broué continued to find, and write about, more lies by Trotsky. But all the while he continued to deny that these lies were of any importance. Broué also ignored Getty’s two discoveries.
First, that the Trotsky Archive had been “purged” of incriminating materials. Second, that Trotsky had indeed remained in contact with oppositionists like Radek with whom he swore he had broken all ties. Vadim Rogovin, the leading Trotskyist historian of the Stalin-era Soviet Union, went along with Broué’s cover-up and also introduced some lies of his own. Trotskyists and Cold Warriors continue either to ignore Broué’s discoveries altogether or to echo Broué’s claim that these lies were of little significance. We can understand why they do this.
The fact that Trotsky lied dismantles what I call the “anti-Stalin paradigm”: the Trotskyist and the Cold War anticommunist versions of Soviet history. Trotsky, of course, had to lie. He was running a serious conspiracy to get rid of Stalin, in conjunction with many supporters inside the Soviet Union and the Bolshevik Party and in collusion with Nazi Germany, militarist Japan, England and France. A conspiracy requires secrecy and lying. But who, above all, was Trotsky fooling? Not Stalin and the Soviet government. They knew he was lying. The conclusion is inescapable: Trotsky was lying in order to fool his own supporters! They were the only people who believed whatever Trotsky wrote.
They believed Trotsky was the true, principled Leninist that he claimed to be, and that Stalin was the liar. This cost the lives of most of his supporters inside the Soviet Union, when Trotskyism was outlawed as treason to the Soviet state because of Trotsky’s conspiracy with Germany and Japan. It has led Trotsky’s followers outside the Soviet Union to spend their lives in cult-like devotion to a man who was, in fact, doing just what the Soviet prosecutor and the Moscow Trials defendants claimed he was doing.
The figure of Leon Trotsky casts a giant shadow over the history of the Soviet Union, and therefore over the history of the world in the 20th century. Trotsky was the most significant – in fact, the only outstanding – Opposition figure in the factional disputes that shook the Bolshevik Party during the 1920s. It was during the 20s that Trotsky attracted to himself the group of persons who formed the United Opposition and whose conspiracies did so much irreparable harm to the Party, the Comintern, and the world communist movement.
Conclusions
What does the fact that Trotsky lied, that Khrushchev lied, and that these facts were ignored for so long, mean?
What does it mean for the main question that faces us, and billions of working people in the world, today? I mean the question of why the wonderful international communist movement of the 20th century collapsed, the movement that 70 years ago, triumphant in World War 2, in the Chinese communist revolution, in the anti-colonial movements around the world, seemed to be poised to bring about an end to capitalism and the victory of world socialism?
How do we convince workers, students, and others that we know why the old communist movement failed and that we have learned what we have to do differently to avoid repeating those failures in the future? We must study this question. We also need to discuss it – to entertain and debate different, informed viewpoints.
Therefore we have to defend the legacy of the international communist movement during Lenin’s and, especially, during Stalin’s time. At the same time we must be fearlessly critical of it, so we discover what errors they made and so not make the same errors again. In my judgment – and I hope that it is yours as well – discovering the reasons for the collapse of the magnificent international communist movement of the 20th century is the most important historical and theoretical question for all exploited people today, the vast majority of humankind. To have any hope of solving it, we must think boldly, “go where no one has gone before.” If we pretend that “Marx and Engels had all the answers,” or “Lenin had all the answers” (many Trotskyists, of course, believe that “Trotsky had all the answers”) -- if we believe that, then we are guaranteed, AT BEST, to fall far short of what they achieved. Marx said that great historical events occur twice “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
The tragedy of the international communist movement of the 20th century was that, ultimately, it failed. Unless we figure out where they went wrong then we are doomed to be the “farce.” And that would be a political crime -- OUR crime. So we have to look with a critical eye at ALL of our legacy. Marx's favorite saying was: “De omnibus dubitandum” -- “Question everything.” Marx would be the last person in the world to exclude himself from this questioning.
History can’t teach lessons directly. And history isn’t political theory. But if we ask the right questions, history can help us answer them. Meanwhile, we should all publicize everywhere and in every way we can that, like Khrushchev and Gorbachev, Trotsky lied – provably, demonstrably lied – and, what’s more, that all the anti-Stalin, anticommunist “experts” anointed by capitalist universities and research institutes are lying too.
We need to point out that the only way forward is to build a new communist movement to get rid of capitalism. And that to do that, we need to learn from the heroic successes, as well as from the tragic errors, of the Bolsheviks during the period when the Soviet Union was led by Joseph Stalin. My hope and my goal is to contribute, through my research, to this project which is so vital for the future of working people everywhere. Thank you.
* Professor, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ 07043 USA. The above is a Presentation at the 7th World Socialism Forum, World Socialism Research Center, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), October 22, 2016.
SOURCE:
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/gf_tatalk_bj16.pdf
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/
SEE ALSO:
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/the-russian-revolution-98th-anniversary.html
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/american-professor-grover-furr-told.html
Renewed Fierce Battle for Jabal Barsaya Mountaintop - Glory to the Kurdish Resistance
BEIRUT, LEBANON (11:20 A.M.) – The Turkish Army, alongside the the Euphrates Shield forces, launched a powerful assault at the strategic mountaintop of Jabal Barsaya this morning.
Backed by close air support from their attack choppers, the Turkish Army and their allies stormed the northern axis of Jabal Barsaya in a new bid to enter the northeastern corridor of the Afrin Canton.
No gains have been reported thus far.
Previously, the Turkish Army and their allies attempted to capture Jabal Barsaya; however, they were ultimately driven back by the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG).
Jabal Barsaya is the highest point in the Afrin Canton and control over this mountaintop means that the Turkish Army would have fire control over the northeastern axis of this region.
SPEAK UP FOR KURDISH RESISTANCE FIGHTING TURKISH INVASION - BREAK THE SILENCE
Red Salute to a brave Avesta Khabur who sacrificed her life to destroy a tank and several Turkish invaders in the village of Hemmam
BEIRUT, LEBANON (11:40 A.M.) – A female fighter within the Kurdish People’s Protection Units paramilitary group has blown herself up amid an ongoing offensive by Turkey-led forces in Syria’s Afrin region sources report.
Sources following developments in Afrin are reporting that a Kurdish female fighter by the name of Avesta Khabur has blown herself up to in an attempt to turn back an armored assault by the Turkish Army.
The incident is said to havetaken place in the village of Hemmam and that it resulted in Avesta Khabur taking the lives of several Turkish troops along with her own as well as the destruction of a battle tank.
Sources are vague about the conditions in which Avesta Khabur carried out the suicide bombing.
It is hard to believe that it was a preempted Islamist-style martyrdom operation in the fashion that jihadist factions carry out such attacks.
If the reports are true then rather it is case that Avesta likely found herself surrounded by enemy forces and – seeing no way out – then committed to the suicide attack against the Turkish Army.
SMASH THE FASCIST INVADERS
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Jabhat al-Nusra: History, Capabilities, Role In Syrian War
Democracy and Class Struggle find South Front Military analysis useful but we have a caveat about their politics which is pro Russian and not always objective - for example their recent reporting on Kurdish/Turkish conflict was uncritical of Turkish claims of Kurdish fatalities.
Nevertheless we publish South Front because its is the least worst military analysis we can find on internet.
The Olympics Has Exposed Every US Lie About North Korea by Adam Garrie
Democracy and Class Struggle says we thought our readers maybe interested in this article - even if we do not agree entirely with its evaluation of China and Russia in inter Korean relations
When the US said that North Korea was an unreasonable state wishing to inflict violence upon its neighbours, they were lying. When the US said that Kim Jong-un is a pathological tyrant hell bent on war, they were lying. Most importantly, when the US said they wanted peace on the Korean peninsula, they were lying.
These facts were always clear to those with an understanding of the modern history of the two Korean states, as well as those who actually bothered to listen from the statements coming from the desks of both Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
The election of Moon Jae-in to the office of President was something of a momentous day, not only for scandal ridden South Korean politics, but for the region as a whole. Gone was the arch war monger Park Geun-hye who was subsequently imprisoned on charges relating to corruption and into the picture came Moon, a man who would have become President in 2012 had Park’s intelligence service not meddled in the election.
Moon is often viewed as a compromised figure due to the fact that the US has an inordinate amount of influence on South Korean politics. Nevertheless, Moon’s peace credentials have always been genuine. His recent visit to China has led to Seoul’s relations with Beijing reaching an all-time high with suggestions from unofficial South Korean sources indicating that Moon is as furious with America’s delivery of THAAD missile systems to the Korean peninsula as the Chinese government is.
The fact that for the first time in history, Beijing’s relations with Seoul are warmer than its relations with Pyongyang, is as much testament to Moon’s style of leadership as it is to the personal and policy disputes which for several years have quietly raged between officials in Pyongyang and Beijing.
But the key event in prompting the wide ranging meetings held in early 2018 between officials from the two Korean states was the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. During the meeting in September of 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed a tripartite economic/energy cooperation scheme which would involve both Korean states. At the time Moon, who was present at the summit, embraced Putin’s proposals without reservations while the DPRK delegation stated that they would sign up to the proposals in due course once various regional security concerns were met.
When taken together with statements from the DPRK which always made it clear that Pyongyang will be happy to negotiate with Seoul once nuclear parity with the US is reached, it is self-evident that Putin’s proposal along with subsequent diplomatic visits by Russian politicians and Foreign Ministry officials to the DPRK have paid off.
Now that North Korea and most objective military experts are confident in the fact that Pyongyang can deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere on US territory, Kim Jong-un’s government will be satisfied with the fact that nuclear parity has been reached. In the context of North Korean statements, nuclear parity means that the DPRK will be able to deliver a nuclear weapon to the US with comparative ease vis-à-vis that which the US could deliver to Korea. Because this important threshold has been reached, North Korea is ready to take the preliminary steps towards rapprochement with the South.
As North Korea always stated, its caution with the South has never been out of hostility to fellow Koreans, but due to the overwhelming presence of US military hardware in South Korea. Now that North Korea has achieved nuclear parity, this worry is clearly diminishing.
North Korea’s confidence in its ability to defend itself against US intimidation, Seoul’s revived Sunshine Policy towards the North, Russia’s good relations with both Korean states, combined with Russia’s realistic attitude towards East Asian matters, has resulted in Seoul and Pyongyang agreeing to march under a single ‘unity flag’ at the forthcoming Olympic Games in PyeongChang.
Although symbolic, the united Olympic front may lead to further economic cooperation between the two states in line with Putin’s proposals from September of 2017.
Far from welcoming détente in Korea, the US and its allies have held a Dr. Strangelove style conference in Canada on the subject of North Korea. The eerily Hollywood style summit has been condemned by China as a Cold War relic with no legal relevance. According to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang,
“It is the 21st century, and everyone is concerned about and working towards properly and peacefully resolving the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue. But some parties dusted off the Cold War term of ‘UN Command’ and convened a meeting where major parties to the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue are not represented”.
China, like Russia, is genuinely interested in peace on the Korean peninsula. The Olympic agreement between Seoul and Pyongyang makes it clear that the leadership of each Korean state also desires peace. By contrast, the US is interested in one of two things. Ideally, the US would like to force ‘regime change’ in Pyongyang, in the hopes of creating a western backed regime that would not only be on Russia and China’s borders but whose existence could make life difficult for Seoul, assuming that South Korea were to reunite with a North whose economy is based on principles antithetical to that of the South.
Thus, if regime change were to occur in Pyongyang, it would turn the Korean peninsula into an economic basket case whose value to One Belt—One Road would be reduced for the foreseeable future. At the same time, this would allow the US to move its weapons that much closer to the border with China and Russia, under the guise of whatever outlandish excuse the State Department decides to cook up.
This scenario is considered desirable by many in the US, but it is also seen as unrealistic. The second option for the US and the one it appears to be pursuing at present, involves using the UN as well as unilateral sanctions to punish North Korea in spite of taking clear steps to ease tensions in the region. In doing so, the US hopes to perpetuate conflict between the two Korean states, thus allowing further THAAD missiles to pour into the South while selling more and more overpriced weapons to a wealthy and overly paranoid Japan.
In reality, the events of the last two weeks have vindicated those who have maintained the position that far from being a threat to world peace, North Korea is acting as any country under threat would act.
Despite this reality, the fact that Pyongyang has initiated contact with the South for the sake of peace, is a clear sign that Russian diplomacy, combined with the Sino-Russian ‘double-freeze’ peace proposals have been a more substantial motivating factor for events on the Korean peninsula, vis-à-vis the constant threats from the US.
The US wants to sow conflict and discord on all sides of One Belt—One Road. The Korean peninsula’s long history as a battle ground between the US and the major Communist powers is simply a familiar place from which the US can continue to sow further discord.
The only way out is for China and Russia to diplomatically repudiate the US role in the region.
It is clear that the US is the only major stumbling block towards peace on the Koran peninsula and East Asia more widely, no matter how perversely fashionable it has become to blame North Korea for all of the region’s woes.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has already challenged whether the US actual wants peace in Korea. It is also time for the wider world to concede that the US demands of an immediate abandonment of nuclear weapons on the part of North Korea is both unrealistic and counterproductive.
As it turns out, the confidence North Korea has found due to the advanced stage of development in her nuclear programme, has not created more tension, but has been the proximate cause of North Korea extending an open door to the South, just as DPRK officials have always stated.
It is time for Russia and China to voice this fact in unison and in doing so, give both Korean states the confidence needed to make peace on their own terms—terms which as the Olympic agreement demonstrates, are far more reasonable than anything suggested by Washington.
SOURCE:
http://www.eurasiafuture.com/2018/01/21/olympics-exposed-every-us-lie-north-korea/
Germany : Cologne holds national demonstration against Turkish operations in Afrin
"All our peoples and progressive forces must raise their voices against this occupation, the revolutionaries and the Communists must fight against the occupation with the duty of direct struggle"
MKP Maoist Communist Party of Turkey
This attack, the fascist AKP government's 'Olive Branch' will turn into a rope for the AKP, with the resistance by the people.
TKP ML - TIKKO Rojava Command
The Turkish Workers’ Union (ATÎK) expressed its solidarity with the resistance of the people in Afrin against the Turkish aggression, and appealed to all local and international forces to solidarity with the resistance
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