The Discussion On Self-Determination Summed Up: The Irish Rebellion of 1916 by V.I.Lenin

Democracy and Class Struggle  says we are revisiting Lenin to reinforce the importance of the right to self determination in Europe as well as the rest of the world.

The 1916 Uprising clearly influenced Lenin's thought on Self Determination and  his views expressed here are different from his pre War views on National Question and Socialism.

Whether it is Lenin or Stalin it is the pre War views that comrades seem to familiar with - and not their criticism of their earlier views.


  Our theses were written before the outbreak of this rebellion, which must be the touchstone of our theoretical views.

  The views of the opponents of self-determination lead to the conclusion that the vitality of small nations oppressed by imperialism has already been sapped, that they cannot play any role against imperialism, that support of their purely national aspirations will lead to nothing, etc. 

The imperialist war of 1914–16 has provided facts which refute such conclusions.

  The war proved to be an epoch of crisis for the West-European nations, and for imperialism as a whole. 

The Irish Rebellion of 1916 crisis discards the conventionalities, tears away the outer   wrappings, sweeps away the obsolete and reveals the underlying springs and forces. 

What has it revealed from the standpoint of the movement of oppressed nations! In the colonies there have been a number of attempts at rebellion, which the oppressor nations, naturally did all they could to hide by means of a military censorship. 

Nevertheless, it is known that in Singapore the British brutally suppressed a mutiny Among their Indian troops; that there were attempts at rebellion in French Annam (see Nashe Slovo) and in the German Cameroons (see the Junius pamphlet[13] ); that in Europe, on the one hand, there was a rebellion in Ireland, which the “freedom-loving” English, who did not dare to extend conscription to Ireland, suppressed by executions, and, on the other, the Austrian Government passed the death sentence on the deputies of the Czech Diet “for treason”, and shot whole Czech regiments for the same “crime”.

  This list is, of course, far from complete. Nevertheless, it proves that, owing to the crisis of imperialism, the flames of national revolt have flared up both in the colonies and in Europe, and that national sympathies and antipathies have manifested themselves in spite of the Draconian threats and measures of repression. 

All this before the crisis of imperialism hit its peak; the power of the imperialist bourgeoisie was yet to be undermined (this may he brought about by a war of “attrition” but has not yet happened) and the proletarian movements in the imperialist countries were still very feeble. What will happen when the war has caused complete exhaustion, or when, in one state at least, the power of the bourgeoisie has been shaken under the blows of proletarian struggle, as that of tsarism in 1905?

  On May 9, 1916, there appeared in Berner Tagwacht the organ of the Zimmerwald group, including some of the Leftists, an article on the Irish rebellion entitled “Their Song Is Over” and signed with the initials K. R.[24] 

It described the Irish rebellion as being nothing more nor less than a “putsch”, for, as the author argued, “the Irish question was an agrarian one”, the peasants had been pacified by reforms, and the nationalist movement remained   only a “purely urban, petty-bourgeois movement, which, notwithstanding the sensation it caused, had not much social backing”.

  It is not surprising that this monstrously doctrinaire and pedantic assessment coincided with that of a Russian national-liberal Cadet, Mr. A. Kulisher (Rech[25]No. 102, April 15, 1916), who also labeled the rebellion “the Dublin putsch”.

  It is to be hoped that, in accordance with the adage, “it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good”, many comrades, who were not aware of the morass they were sinking into by repudiating “self-determination” and by treating the national movements of small nations with disdain, will have their eyes opened by the “accidental” coincidence of opinion held by a Social-Democrat and a representative of the imperialist bourgeoisie!!

  The term “putsch”, in its scientific sense, may be employed only when the attempt at insurrection has revealed nothing but a circle of conspirators or stupid maniacs, and has aroused no sympathy among the masses. 

The centuries-old Irish national movement, having passed through various stages and combinations of class interest, manifested itself, in particular, in a mass Irish National Congress in America Vorworts, March 20, 1916) which called for Irish independence; it also manifested itself in street fighting conducted by a section of the urban petty bourgeoisie and a section of the workers after a long period of mass agitation, demonstrations, suppression of newspapers, etc. 

Whoever calls such a rebellion a “putsch” is either a hardened reactionary, or a doctrinaire hopelessly incapable of envisaging a social revolution as a living phenomenon.

  To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc.-to imagine all this is to repudiate social revolution. So one army lines up in one place and says, “We are   for socialism”, and another, somewhere else and says, “We are for imperialism”, and that will he a social revolution! Only those who hold such a ridiculously pedantic view could vilify the Irish rebellion by calling it a “putsch”.

  Whoever expects a “pure” social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip-service to revolution without understanding what revolution is.

  The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a bourgeois-democratic revolution. It consisted of a series of battles in which all the discontented classes, groups and elements of the population participated. 

Among these there were masses imbued with the crudest prejudices, with the vaguest slid most fantastic aims of struggle; there were small groups which accepted Japanese money, there were speculators and adventurers, etc. But objectively, the mass movement was breaking the hack of tsarism and paving the way for democracy; for this reason the class-conscious workers led it.
  
The socialist revolution in Europe cannot be anything other than an outburst of mass struggle on the part of all and sundry oppressed and discontented elements. 

Inevitably, sections of tile petty bourgeoisie and of the backward workers will participate in it—without such participation, mass struggle is impossible, without it no revolution is possible—and just as inevitably will they bring into the movement their prejudices, their reactionary fantasies, their weaknesses slid errors. 

But objectively they will attack capital, and the class-conscious vanguard of the revolution, the advanced proletariat, expressing this objective truth of a variegated and discordant, motley and outwardly fragmented, mass struggle, will he able to unite and direct it, capture power, seize the banks, expropriate the trusts which all hate (though for difficult reasons!), and introduce other dictatorial measures which in their totality will amount to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the victory of socialism, which, however, will by no means immediately “purge” itself of petty-bourgeois slag.

  Social-Democracy, we road in the Polish theses (I, 4), “must utilise the struggle of the young colonial bourgeoisie against European imperialism in order to sharpen the revolutionary crisis in Europe”. (Authors’ italics.)

  Is it not clear that it is least of all permissible to contrast Europe to the colonies in this respect? The struggle of the   oppressed nations in Europe, a struggle capable of going all the way to insurrection and street fighting, capable of breaking down tile iron discipline of the army and martial law, will “sharpen the revolutionary crisis ill Europe” to an infinitely greater degree than a much more developed rebellion in a remote colony. 

A blow delivered against the power of the English imperialist bourgeoisie by a rebellion in Ireland is a hundred times more significant politically than a blow of equal force delivered in Asia or in Africa.

  The French chauvinist press recently reported the publication in Belgium of the eightieth issue of an illegal journal, Free Belgium.[26] Of course, the chauvinist press of France very often lies, but this piece of news seems to he true. Whereas chauvinist and Kautskyite German Social-Democracy has failed to establish a free press for itself during the two years of war, and has meekly borne the yoke of military censorship (only the Left Radical elements, to their credit be it said, have published pamphlets and manifestos, in spite of the censorship)—an oppressed civilised nation has reacted to a military oppression unparalleled in ferocity by establishing an organ of revolutionary protest! 

The dialectics of history are such that small nations, powerless as an independent factor in the struggle against imperialism, play a part as one of the ferments, one of the bacilli, which help the real anti-imperialist force, the socialist proletariat, to make its appearance on the scene.

  The general staffs in the current war are doing their utmost to utilise any national and revolutionary movement in the enemy camp: the Germans utilise the Irish rebellion, tire French—the Czech movement, etc. 

They are acting quite correctly from their own point of view. A serious war would not be treated seriously if advantage were not taken of the enemy’s slightest weakness and if every opportunity that presented itself were not seized upon, the more, so since it is impossible to know beforehand at what moment, whore, and with what force some powder magazine will “explode”. 

We would be very poor revolutionaries if, in the proletariat’s great war of Liberation for socialism, we did not know how to utilise every popular movement against every single disaster imperialism brings in order to intensify and extend the crisis. 

If we were, on the one   hand, to repeat in a thousand keys the declaration that we are “opposed” to all national oppression and, on the other, to describe the heroic revolt of the most mobile and enlightened section of certain classes in an oppressed nation against its oppressors as a “putsch”, we should be sinking to the same level of stupidity as the Kautskyites.

  It is the misfortune of the Irish that they rose prematurely, before the European revolt of the proletariat had had time to mature. 

Capitalism is not so harmoniously built that the various sources of rebellion can immediately merge of their own accord, without reverses and defeats. 

On the other hand, the very fact that revolts do break out at different times, in different places, and are of different kinds, guarantees wide scope and depth to the general movement; but it is only in premature, individual, sporadic and therefore unsuccessful, revolutionary movements that the masses gain experience, acquire knowledge, gather strength, and get to know their real leaders, the socialist proletarians, and in this way prepare for the general onslaught, just as certain strikes, demonstrations, local and national, mutinies in the army, outbreaks among the peasantry, etc., prepared the way for the general onslaught in 1905

Palestinians Hold Day of Mourning After Protests on Israel-Gaza Border

The Rape of Russia by F. William Engdahl

Few people in the West could grasp the sadness and anger of Russian President Vladimir Putin when he told a select audience of Russian politicians from the Duma in the Kremlin in September 2016, “You know how I feel about the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was unnecessary. We could have introduced reforms, including those of a more democratic nature, without allowing this.”

Putin did not need to describe “this.” Everyone present knew he meant the savage destruction of life, feeling of worth, and pride for most Russians after 1990. If anyone in the US or the EU thought about Putin’s comments—coming amid an unprecedented US and NATO vilification and demonization campaign against the Russian Federation and Putin personally, including economic sanctions—they most likely saw it as confirmation of Washington claims that Putin’s Russia was out to rebuild the Soviet Union.

What was unknown to most in the West was the true background of the destruction of life in Russia and the former member states of the USSR.

The CIA operation began near the end of the 1980s with a network of CIA actors and their corrupted, bought-and-paid-for Soviet KGB generals.

It was called the Yeltsin Era, and it lasted the entire decade of the 1990s until Yeltsin resigned on December 31, 1999.

His resignation had been finally forced by a group of nationalist Russians led by a forty-seven-year-old former KGB officer who briefly headed the successor organization to the KGB known as the SVR, or Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. The SVR man was Putin, by then Yeltsin’s Prime Minister.

The destruction of the Soviet Union was one of the darkest criminal operations ever undertaken by the US government or, more precisely, by a dark, deep state network buried inside that Washington bureaucracy, sometimes referring to themselves as “the Vulcans,” often simply called neoconservatives.

The key roles in the rape of Russia were played by US President George H.W. Bush and later by Bush’s close friend and protégé, William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton. The venom directed from Washington towards Putin personally since his reelection as president in 2012 and even beginning his revitalization of Russia after his ascendancy to the presidency on December 31, 1999, the day Yeltsin was forced to abdicate his imagined throne, would become clear. Slowly details emerged of what crimes Bush, Clinton, and their covert intelligence circles committed against Russia after 1989.

— Bush’s CIA “Old Boys” —

George H.W. Bush

George H.W. Bush, former director of the CIA, ran the entire foreign and national security operations of President Ronald Reagan from the Office of the Vice President. Through Executive Order 12333, a national security directive drafted by then vice president Bush and signed by Reagan, Bush had made sure he was in charge of all Reagan-era US foreign and national security operations after 1981. [Editor Note: This of course presaged an almost identical scenario when his son George W Bush Jr ascended to power in 2001, and handed over on a silver platter foreign and national security policy to Dick Cheney and his mob.]

People close to [Reagan-era] CIA Chief Bill Casey said that as President, Reagan had little interest in foreign policy. The true role of Bush in the Reagan years was well hidden, however. When Bush’s son George W. Bush Jr took office as President in 2001, one of his first acts was to sign Executive Order 13233, an extraordinary act that cited “national security” as grounds to conceal records of past presidents, especially his father’s activities during the 1990 and 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist Eastern Europe states. Consequently, those records are no longer accessible to the public. The truth can be gathered by evidence of participants in Russia, Eastern Europe, and in the USA, deep research, and congressional and other testimonies of those with direct knowledge. The picture of the destruction that resulted is staggering.

George H.W. Bush ran things covertly through his “old boy” CIA networks, often using various private companies they had set up during the Bush’s illegal Iran–Contra operation of the mid-1980s. The Iran–Contra affair was an illegal, top-secret Bush–Colonel Oliver North scheme to sell US weapons to Iran in violation of an official US arms embargo to Iran, then to divert a part of the Iran arms profits to illegally finance the CIA-backed Contras of Nicaragua, who paid for the weapons with cocaine dollars, hence the name Iran–Contra Affair.

All was done without required the US congressional approval, in violation of US law. When President Jimmy Carter forced the early retirement of 800 CIA agents, many of them loyal to former CIA Director Bush, they regrouped as a private intelligence and business network, a kind of covert “deep state,” informally calling itself “the Enterprise.” This network, active for Vice President George H.W. Bush in the Iran–Contra affair, was used by Bush, now as US president, to loot and deform all of communist Eastern Europe and, ultimately, Russia under their asset, Boris Yeltsin.

The companies George H.W. Bush sanctioned under the code name “the Enterprise” were soon to be responsible for the CIA-financed coup that brought down Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union in 1991. But the machinery and organization of the Enterprise was also responsible for bribing or corrupting key KGB generals and creating what came to be called the “Russian oligarchs” to loot the crown jewels of the former Soviet State, now legally known as the Russian Federation. Their looting included the entire gold reserves of the Russian National Bank in the early 1990s. That loot was funneled into the vaults of handpicked CIA-controlled banks in Switzerland, off shore bank havens, and New York.

— The CIA’s Yeltsin “Democracy” Coup —

The rape of Russia—the Russian nation, the Russian state, the Russian people—which began at the end of the 1980s, was a coup d’état engineered by the American CIA’s rogue and not so rogue networks directed by former CIA Director, now President, George H.W. Bush. Western accounts of what took place inside the Russian Federation during the Yeltsin years of the 1990s speak of “Russian mafia” or “Russian organized crime.”

Never do they mention or even hint that those Russians who plundered their own country were organized and paid, or made rich, by the West or, to be more precise, by the old boy CIA networks loyal to former CIA director and then US president George H.W. Bush.

What took place in the 1990s under the Russian presidency of Boris Yeltsin was described by one knowledgeable US insider, Mortimer Zuckerman, himself an establishment member of the Council on Foreign Relations and owner of US News & World Report, as “the largest giveaway of a nation’s wealth in history.” The giveaway, or more precisely “theft,” was done through outright robbery, currency war, and a fraudulent loans-for-company stock shares program that was a precondition demanded by Washington to getting aid and loans from the World Bank and the IMF—aid and loans that “never touched ground in Russia,” as Zuckerman noted.

Washington, covertly working with a circle of very select US and European banks, made it possible for the Yeltsin clan to loot the Russian Treasury of its gold reserves. They then offered desperately needed US money to a privatization scheme that created and installed a kleptocracy regime, and created a cabal of hyper-rich oligarchs under Yeltsin, referred to by some in the Russian media as the “Yeltsin Family,” as in the Mafia. Washington and US mainstream media cynically called it “bringing democracy and free market capitalism” to post-communist Russia.

In 1989, soon after his election, US President George H.W. Bush initiated the operation to loot the Soviet Union. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and covert US government money to Poland’s Solidarno?? had severely weakened Moscow’s control over Poland during the decade of the 1980s and ignited anti-communist protest movements all over communist Eastern Europe.

That Polish success—notably, that it was not suppressed by Soviet Red Army tanks as in 1956 in Hungary or during the Prague Spring of 1968—had given major encouragement to similar underground, anti-regime movements across Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe, from Hungary to Czechoslovakia to East Germany.

In Afghanistan, after ten bloody years, Soviet Red Army troops finally gave up and left the country in 1989, humiliated in defeat from CIA-trained and armed Islamist Mujahedeen terrorists. In Dresden in East Germany–the German Democratic Republic as it was formally called–from the mid-1980s until the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, a young KGB officer named Vladimir Putin was stationed, watching as the power of Moscow evaporated everywhere.

Moscow itself was financially in dire straits, dramatically so ever since a US State Department–Saudi oil price collapse operation was deliberately launched by Washington in 1986. That oil price collapse hit at the heart of the Soviet primary hard currency sources: its oil export; [the oil price collapse also] severely hurt Soviet earnings of badly needed dollars for Western technology purchases, as well as for countering CIA operations in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe. The decade-long covert CIA campaign in Afghanistan, using fanatical Mujahedeen terrorists mostly recruited by a Saudi CIA asset named Osama bin Laden, had given the Soviet Union what President Carter’s national security director, Zbigniew Brzezinski, later called “Russia’s Vietnam.”

Then in 1989, President George H.W. Bush gave the order to launch an all-out takeover and looting of the crown jewels of the largest and most strategic part of the USSR, the formerly communist Russian Federation. The dissolution of the Soviet Union itself rapidly followed the August 1991 Ukrainian declaration of independence from the USSR. 

State-owned oil and gas companies, key raw materials, such as nickel and aluminum, and high-tech Soviet military companies were the prime looting targets of select Western interests trading with insider connections.

Now finally as president, George H.W. Bush decided to go for the kill against a severely weakened Russian Federation. Bush and a CIA network of Western bankers, US government officials, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), together with a cabal of young Harvard University economists—they were dubbed the Harvard Boys—brought into Russia by George Soros in league with a corrupted network of KGB traitors, unleashed one of the greatest criminal looting operations in history.

Confused Russian citizens, fed up with the years of Soviet control and lack of improvement in their daily lives from Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika attempts at reforming the Soviet system, naively and with great hope turned to the West, most especially to Wall Street and Washington.

In 1987, in a desperate attempt to calm growing social unrest over the deteriorating Soviet economy, Gorbachev permitted Soviet citizens to own dollars. It was a disaster of untold dimension. Overnight, a huge black market for dollars grew and the ruble became de facto worthless inside the Soviet Union. 

Russians, forbidden to travel to the West, were fed the illusion that everything in America was “bigger and better.” Secret, prohibited shortwave broadcasts from the US State Department’s Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty out of Munich fed those illusions of an American capitalist paradise.

The majority of Russians believed, for the most part, nothing could be worse than life under Soviet communism with the chronic shortages in the shops, endless queues, and lack of basic goods, let alone of luxury goods. 

They were soon to realize they were dreadfully wrong.

It could be worse. The bottom fell out in the daily life for most Russians as Yeltsin’s clan and their Western collaborators proceeded to loot the country following the abolition of a communist state during the 1990s.

Pensions went unpaid and medical insurance ended abruptly, as did daycare for working mothers and most state support.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, Engdahl is the son of F. William Engdahl, Sr., and Ruth Aalund (b. Rishoff). Engdahl grew up in Texas and after earning a degree in engineering and jurisprudence from Princeton University in 1966 (BA) and graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm from 1969 to 1970, he worked as an economist and freelance journalist in New York and in Europe. Engdahl began writing about oil politics with the first oil shock in the early 1970s.

His first book was called A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order and discusses the alleged roles of Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Ball and of the USA in the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran, which was meant to manipulate oil prices and to stop Soviet expansion. Engdahl claims that Brzezinski and Ball used the Islamic Balkanization model proposed by Bernard Lewis. In 2007, he completed Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation. Engdahl is also a contributor to the website of the anti-globalization Centre for Research on Globalization, the Russian website New Eastern Outlook,[2] and the Voltaire Network,[3] and a freelancer for varied newsmagazines such as the Asia Times. William Engdahl has been married since 1987 and has been living for more than two decades near Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

SEE ALSO:
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/putin-documentary-democracy-and-class.html

Putin: The Documentary - Democracy and Class Struggle on Putin

Democracy and Class Struggle's view of Putin is contradictory because Putin himself is contradictory - we might even say he reflects the contradictory character of the reality of our times - the good and the bad - we think that will be the verdict of history.

Putin see's State Capitalism and the market economy as a road to the future - he sees Communism just as a past dream -  we see it as a future reality as Marx said Communism is the real movement in society it is not just an ideal/dream.

We see the future as socialist and the development of a non market economies - in its early transitional form based on self reliance and Russia will have to recognise that real movement to survive.

The historic fact is that Putin has earned his place in history by stabilising and rebuilding Russia on a bourgeois basis -  whether that base will lead to an ultra conservative new Russian Fascism or a new revitalised Communism is still an open question and Putin by triangulating left and right has made it so.

Rectification of the International Communist Movement is underway but proceeds very slowly in Russia which still carries much revisionist baggage.

Russia's investment in revisionist communism was very high - which is why the baggage is so heavy.

Our view is that Putin has passed his sell by date and new leadership from the revolutionary Communist Left needs to emerge in Russia NOW or Russia may even lose its current real gains if a Post Putin Capitalist Russia is left to Russian conservatives, liberals and Atlanticists - the real capitalist lickspittles in Russia.

Democracy and Class Struggle says Putin has an ambiguous relationship to Communism and CPSU for him the revisionist Communist Party was part of the Russian State Structure that needed to be preserved in a retrospective way.

Hence his admiration for Tolstoy the legal scholar and his former teacher who is not a communist but defends revisionist CPSU.

The only person in Soviet History that comes near to Putin's Russian State worship is Lavrentia Beria who thought Marxism Leninism clap trap but believed deeply in the Russian/Soviet  State despite the fact he was a Georgian - Beria was also one of the most competent organisers as his role in Soviet Atom Bomb project showed. 

For Background to Rise of Putin visit:
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-rape-of-russia-by-f-william-engdahl.html

Cambridge Analytica Is Not Alone: i360 and Data Trust Disastrous for Democracy - Interview with Greg Palast

The Ugly Face of Elections

United Nations seeks investigation over Gaza deaths - The March of Return

How Turkey Destroyed its Own Airforce by Warthog

THE FALSE FLAG COUP ?   - MADE BY ERDOGAN ?

Turkish US Relations - Trump announces US Forces Leaving Northern Syria will Turkey fill the Vacuum ?

Democracy and Class Struggle says this video from South Front has become more relevant since the off the cuff announcement by Trump that US forces are leaving Syria - something the US State Department seem to know nothing about.

Suicide attack on American troops in Menbij - two members of "coalition forces" killed, according to Turkish newspaper Yurt. 

Back to the Future - A Unified Neutral Korean Nation and State - Declassified Documents

Around 30 years ago in 1987, North Korea had suggested forming a 'neutral state' on the Korean peninsula to form a buffer zone... according to declassified diplomatic documents. 

The 230-thousand-page documents disclosed by the South Korean Foreign Ministry on Friday revealed this proposal by the North, which was passed on in secret through Mikhail Gorbachev, then leader of the Soviet Union,... to then U.S. President Ronald Reagan, during a summit held at the White House on December 9th, 1987. 

The contents of this proposal include withdrawing all foreign military presence from the Korean peninsula, writing up a peace treaty, and the new 'neutral state' entity joining the United Nations under a single name.

South Korean gov't strongly condemns Japan's revised high school teaching guidelines

Publishers of school textbooks in Japan are now required by law to refer to Dokdo as Japanese territory. The textbooks for elementary schools should include such wrongful territorial claims from 2020,... middle school books from 2021,... and high school textbooks from 2022.

The Nippon Kaigi SOB's encouraged by Shinzo Abe supported  by Trump are creating more conflicts with emergent Japanese Imperialist territorial claims against Korea.

South Korea: Trump and the Art of making an Enemy out of a Friend

Russia China and North Korea have to do nothing - Trump will drive every friend into the enemy camp - buffon of the century - idiot of the millenium - he never stops telling us - he is clever he went to Wharton Business School LOL !

Trying to put your South Korean running dog back on the leash.

You walking insult to the Korean Nation  Donald J Trump.

三大纪律八项注意 Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention of a People's Army

The eight points were: 

Be polite when speaking 
Be honest when buying and selling 
Return all borrowed articles 
Pay compensation for everything damaged 
Do not hit or swear at others 
Do not damage crops 
Do not harass females 
Do not mistreat prisoners 

The Three Main Rules of Discipline: 

Obey orders in all your actions. 
Do not take a single needle or piece of thread from the masses. 
Turn in everything captured.

The Eight Points for Attention: 

Speak politely. 
Pay fairly for what you buy. 
Return everything you borrow. 
Pay for anything you damage. 
Do not hit or swear at people. 
Do not damage crops. 
Do not take liberties with women. 
Do not ill-treat captives.

RULES FOR A PEOPLE'S ARMY

FOR AN ARMY THAT PRACTICES THESE PRINCIPLES TODAY VISIT:

https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/philippines-on-occasion-of-49th.html?spref=fb

The Paris Commune 70 days - The Soviet Union 70 Years - Anthem of the Commune

Paris Commune 70 days - Soviet Union 70 years ( If count revisionist period).

Revolution and Counter Revolution 

The Storms are coming Revolution is REAL - Revolution is RATIONAL  

PEOPLE'S WAR is the powerful weapon that will defeat coming NUCLEAR WAR.

Singing about Communism is not enough - building it is what is needed

Democracy and Class Struggle says Chinese revisionists singing the International is not building communism however sweet the music..

In Wales we sing the Land of My Fathers but do nothing about the Land - we need action on Land not just songs.

Just singing is not not enough - even if singing transmits the struggles of the past - it is the struggles of the future that count.

Those future struggles will not be guided by revisionism however good the singing but by Marxism Leninism Maoism

Kim Jong Un on The Train from Pyongyang to Beijing and Meetings in Beijing

Democracy and Class Struggle says Kim Jong Un repairing the Bridge before crossing the water - self confident Kim Jong Un handling contradictions like a true master of the dialectic  - strengthening his hand for negotiations with South Korea and United States.

A nation of 25 million people can resist Imperialism in all its 21st Century Manifestations in whatever shape or form they come Kim Jong Un Korean Style.

SEE ALSO:
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/china-and-north-korea-correct-handling.html

Russia's Dilemma ! Top Russian Pundits: Cooperation With West Useless; Russia Needs To Become Self-Reliant

Democracy and Class Struggle says Russophobia has replaced anti Communism in West and places Russia in a dilemma - is there anything Russia  can do to normalize relations with the West ?

The answer is no there is nothing they can do under current global capitalist imperialist system  -  except return to socialism of a more self reliant kind and kick out the liberals and atlanticists and stupid conservatives that fostered illusions about the West and build a strong Russia on a new self reliant socialist revolutionary base.

The Soviet Union was respected in the world despite its revisionist  degeneration - it was also feared.

Before its revisionist phase the Soviet Economy was minimally affected by the world economy.

Respect comes from fear if friendliness does not work.

While the main problem for Russia is Western Russophobia Russia does not always play it cards correctly - there are always those who for money even in the FSB and other security organizations who think their positions are a new capitalist opportunity to make themselves rich.

The only way to bring loyalty is to bring a new socialist culture back to Russia.

Philippines: On the occasion of the 49TH anniversary of the founding of the New People’s Army (NPA)

Democracy and Class Struggle offers a 
Red Salute to the New People's Army on it's 
49th Anniversary

Yr Aflonyddwch Mawr in Wales also salutes the struggle of Philippine comrades and we remember the inspiring article of support for our Red Flag rising in 2013 from comrade Luis G Jalandoni.


The National Democratic Front of the Philippines in Mindanao (NDFP-Mindanao), resonating the collective voice of its allied revolutionary organizations in the island, unites with the Filipino people in celebrating with utmost pride the 49th anniversary of the New People’s Army (NPA), which was founded on the 29th of March 1969.

On this occasion, we salute and applaud all Red commanders, fighters, political officers and members of the People’s Militia, local guerrilla and self-defense units who have rendered invaluable service to the masses of peasants, workers and the national minorities. 

They have effectively carried out their revolutionary tasks of defending the people’s welfare by delivering decisive blows against the fascist forces of the US-Duterte regime. They have taken significant strides to bring the people’s war to a new and higher level with the end in view of ushering in the victory of the national democratic revolution towards the country’s socialist future.

We also take this opportunity to express our profound gratitude to the masses, the weavers of the fabric of history, who have offered their good sons and daughters to take conscious and active part in the undertakings of the true army of the people, the NPA. We thank all our allies as well, who, throughout these years, despite the all-out vain effort by the ruling classes and its reactionary government to malign and crush the revolutionary movement, have not waivered in their support.

We render our highest red salute to all revolutionary martyrs who have lain down their lives for the people and for the victory of the people’s democratic revolution.

The NPA has remained true to its revolutionary tasks and responsibilities and has reaped numerous victories against enemy forces because of the absolute guidance of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), which is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its re-establishment this year. The founding of the NPA in 1969 was a bi-product of the re-birth of the CPP, which launched the First Rectification Movement in 1968 that repudiated the ideological, political and organizational errors of the old party under the revisionist leadership of the Lava-Taruc-Sumulong clique.

From a handful of comrades and fighters armed with a few rifles and hand guns in the 2nd district of Tarlac, the NPA began to expand, spanning the entire archipelago – from Luzon to Visayas to Mindanao. Correctly guided by the CPP through the 2nd rectification movement, the NPA was able to repudiate the right and left opportunist errors of the early 80’s and reaffirmed the basic principles under the guidance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

The Party currently mobilizes the entire structure of the NPA in an all-round way to overcome its conservative tendencies, and to fulfil the requirements necessary in pushing towards a more advanced phase of the people’s war.

The people suffer from worse forms of exploitation and oppression under the US-Duterte regime 

The US-Duterte regime further deepens the semi-feudal and semi-colonial crisis by completing the implementation of neoliberal policies imposed by US imperialism. Duterte’s grand plan for the economy is to inundate the country with an infrastructure frenzy (Build, Build, Build) of roads, railways, bridges and other structures, whose actual implementation will be fueled by gigantic loans from China, Russia and the US. This will bury the country in insurmountable debt, which only serves to eternally trap us within the stranglehold of servility to US imperialist dictates.

Duterte will also open the country for the entry of more imperialist mining firms and capitalist plantations, which will further denude Mindanao’s remaining forest cover and rapidly deplete its mineral resources. Under Duterte’s “environmental policies,” stringent restrictions will be relaxed as more incentives and protection will be given to these imperialist companies, for them to continue ravaging the environment and rake in super profits from exploiting Mindanao workers and syphoning out non-renewable raw materials, to the detriment of future generations.

The country’s economy is made afloat by OFW remittances, but the level of remittances has gone down. The Duterte regime in the meantime continues with the policy of exporting human labor abroad even as overseas Filipino workers are being subjected to maltreatment and other despicable forms oppression in other countries, similar to what Joanna Demafeliz and Josie Lloren suffered in Kuwait that led to their tragic deaths.

The state of unemployment in the country is at its worst in years at 9%, or between 70,000 to 1.4 million out of work. This will further debilitate the labor sector unless thorough-going national industrialization is implemented. Labor policies imposed by the Duterte regime continue to deprive Filipino workers of job security, totally reneging on its promise to eradicate contractualization. More and more Filipino workers, especially those in Mindanao, are losing their trust of Duterte and are readying themselves to strongly oppose his anti-labor policies .

The US-Duterte regime seethes with fascism as it continues to employ militarism and other draconian measures to suppress any and all forms of opposition and dissent. Duterte seeks to wipe-out the NPA by end of 2018 through his AFP’s bloody Oplan Kapayapaan (OpKap), which employs a smattering of vile military and psywar tactics rehashed from the failed internal security plans of previous regimes.

In his desperation, he has issued Proclamation 347 that tags both the CPP and the NPA as “terrorists.” He has gone to lengths of almost sociopathic proportions as to offer “P25,000-P100,000 for every NPA fighter killed,” or exclaim the even more despicable “shoot a captured woman NPA in her private parts.”

Under the direction of the US-Duterte regime, the AFP/PNP has resorted to the psywar tactic of subterfuge, perfidy and black propaganda. AFP psywar experts employ orchestrating the murder of civilians, make it appear like it was executed by “terrorists,” and impute the crime on the NPA. Then, through their trolls, they poison both social and mainstream media with such fake news. For instance, AFP-sponsored bandit groups beheaded a CAA member in San Miguel, Surigao del Sur, and in another incident, state agents murdered Datu Tiambong, a Mamanwa local chieftain, in Alegria, Surigao del Norte, both treacherous acts aimed at maligning the credibility of the NPA.

This also holds true with “fake surrenders,” with which the AFP uses, but in vain, to paint a portrait of a “weakening NPA.” But, the masses in Mindanao are well aware of the real nature of their own army, a people’s army that adheres to a strict code of discipline and fundamental rules that hold paramount the well-being of the masses and, without second thought, defend them whenever under attack.

OpKap has resulted in some of the gravest manifestations of human rights abuses in Mindanao since the US-Marcos dictatorship, which, from March 2017 to March 2018, has already victimized hundreds of thousands in the island. In particular, extra-judicial killings have snuffed out 127 mass leaders and activists in Mindanao.

Some of the more grisly crimes of the AFP in the past couple of years include: the torture and frustrated murder by setting on fire two young activists on December 6, 2017 by elements of the 71st IBPA in Maco, Compostela Valley; the massacre of eight Lumad villagers in Lake Sebu, South Cotabato on December 3, 2017 by elements of the 33rd and 27th IB; the murder of 19-year old Lumad student Obillo Bay-ao by CAFGU elements on September 5, 2017 in Talaingod, Davao del Norte; and the shooting of a pregnant woman by elements of the 8th IBPA in Bukidnon on July 2016.

The AFP also deploys its attack helicopters, fighter jets and combat-capable drones to conduct bomb runs as well as its 105 mm cannons to launch artillery attacks on areas near or on hinterland Lumad and peasant villages. For instance, the nearly five hour aerial bombing and artillery attack on May 25, 2017 against several barangays in President Roxas, North Cotabato and Damulog, Bukidnon combined with ground operations of the 39th and 72nd IBPA; almost incessant bombings and shelling on areas in close proximity to Lumad schools and communities in the hinterlands of Lianga, Surigao del Sur and Gigaquit, Surigao del Norte; and, the attack of drones with combat capabilities on farms and hinterland communities of peasants and Lumad in several towns in Surigao del Norte.

Drones are being used by AFP units to assist them to either survey the area for their targets or to launch via remote control “rockets” to decimate whatever they consider their “enemy target,” which include civilian communities.

The extension of the implementation of martial law in Mindanao has left leaders and members of open and legitimate mass organizations to brutal attacks by the reactionary state, which employs the filing of trumped up charges, warrantless arrests, imprisonment and torture, surveillance and profiling of targeted individuals, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and other means of psywar and intimidation. The AFP also uses its “recruitment” activities in schools and colleges as a cover to conduct surveillance on students whom they suspect to be “recruiting for the NPA.”

The Duterte regime recently filed a case against more or less 600 individuals whom it claims to be members of the CPP, NPA and NDFP and aims to officially declare the CPP and the NPA as “terrorists.” This is a virtual hit list of the AFP’s targets for arrest, persecution or political assassinations, as many of the names, more than half of which are from Mindanao, include those from legal organizations, human rights workers and activists, prominent individuals and leaves space for those whom they wish to add later. This is also farcical because it also include names of people who are long dead and even some are elements who are now in cahoots with the AFP.

The regime’s Oplan Tokhang/Double barrel has not only been used to capture and kill small-time drug users and peddlers but also to arrest and even murder political activists. Duterte recently revealed his “true colors” when drug charges against drug lords Peter Lim and Peter Co and self-confessed drug kingpin Kerwin Espinosa were dropped by the courts on mere technicality. These big time drug dealers are in fact close buddies of Duterte.

After the five-month brutal siege of Marawi City, no clear and significant rehabilitation effort that serves the needs of the Bangsamoro who evacuated from the city is underway; Bangsamoro civilian leaders/representatives of the people who were deprived of their homes and livelihood have not been consulted by the Task Force Bangon Marawi. Marawi residents now reside in make-shift tents located in the outskirts of the city.

The US-Duterte regime remains unrelenting in its war against the Bangsamoro and continues to intensify it even after the Marawi seige and as it extends martial law in the island. On one hand, it engages in direct attacks against the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF); continuing its bombing/shelling on Moro communities such as the S.K. Pendatun incident, which has resulted in the evacuation of a number of Moro communities.

While on the other, it continues to contain the MILF and the BIAF by dangling the enactment of the BBL into law, as well as the federal form of government as an assurance that the Bangsamaoro will have a “share” in the state’s power. However, the enactment of the BBL into law remains far from being realized and creates a more volatile condition for the rekindling of an even bigger Moro armed resistance against the reactionary government.

The intensified war against the Bangsamoro is part of the Asia-pivot design of US imperialism to buttress its hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region, where China is also increasing its hold. The US Armed Forces has launched Operation Pacific Eagle–Philippines, an all-out US counter-insurgency operation in the country which replaces Operation Enduring Freedom. 

This gives full license to US military forces to directly operate against “terrorists,” establish new military bases with more than 6,000 heactares of land in Marawi City granted to them as military reservation, and use all their deadly hi-tech weaponry against the people of Mindanao. This will also serve as a launch pad for its war against China and North Korea, and establish its claim over the South China Sea.

The NPA in Mindanao continues to surge in an all-round way

Despite the all-out attacks of the US-Duterte regime, the NPA is making headway in 46 guerrilla fronts in Mindanao, where its units are operating in more than 2,500 barrios in over 200 municipalities in 20 provinces in the island. In these areas, hundreds of thousands are directly organized, while tens of thousands are covered by the people’s revolutionary government at the barrio level, and a few at municipal levels.

In the first quarter of the year alone, the combined strength of all NPA units in the five regions of Mindanao have launched a relatively significant number of tactical offensives against enemy troops, which have been inflicted with more casualties.

NPA units are hard at work cooperating alongside revolutionary masses in launching agrarian revolution. Thousands have benefitted from its minimum program of agrarian reform, which include reduction in the rent of land, farm animals and tools and in the levels of usury, while striving to increase wage rates of farm workers, as well as the level of productivity in the base areas. NPA units also provide social services, such as medical services, and conduct revolutionary cultural campaigns which help raise the level of consciousness among the organized masses.

Under the absolute leadership of the CPP, the NPA is imbued with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as its ideological guide. Contrary to the claim that it has veered away from its principles, the NPA is strict in the implementation of its basic education, which is a collection of basic courses under the Pambansang Demokratikong Paaralan (PADEPA). It has made sure that members of the NPA who qualify for Party membership undergo the Basic Party Course (BPC) and the Intermediate Party Course (IC), and for cadres, the Advanced Party Course (AC).

NPA units regularly take stock of statements and articles featured in Ang Bayan, the official national publication of the CPP. At the same time, Red fighters are encouraged to read articles that feature burning issues of the day and, if they are able, to read revolutionary classics to help them strengthen their resolve and sharpen their analytical skills, especially in the midst of ever changing social conditions.

Red fighters are steeled and guided by its 3 Main Rules of Discipline and 8 Points of Attention enshrined in the Basic Rules of the New People’s Army in all their political and military undertakings. 

For instance, the NPA has displayed utmost discipline in the proper handling of prisoners of war and hors d’combat, taking into account the strict adherence to the CARHRIHL, Protocols, the Geneva Conventions and other international laws that govern civil wars.

NPA platoons and companies in Mindanao are now spread all over their base areas, helping the masses to defend themselves from impending attacks of enemy forces, recovering those relatively disrupted by enemy troops and re-invigorating revolutionary mass organizations into launching agrarian revolution campaigns and participating in meaningful activities that help advance the people’s war.

Further strengthen our efforts to reap more victories

Thus, on the occasion of the 49th anniversary of the founding of the New People’s Army, the NDFP–Mindanao resoundingly applauds the accumulated victories in the past year, and calls upon all Red fighter units to redouble efforts in launching more and more tactical offensives against operating enemy troops, utilizing a wide array of tactics and technics in order to achieve our strategic revolutionary goals.

The NPA must also make it a point to pay more attention in the intensification agrarian revolution campaigns, mobilizing the masses in their hundreds of thousands in order to bring about significant victories, both in the minimum and even in the maximum program.

We encourage NPA units in Mindanao to mark their every political and military undertaking this year as a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the re-establishment of the Communist Party of the Philippines. We must take this opportunity to sum-up, learn from past mistakes, and aim ever higher to fulfil the requirements to help usher the people’s war towards the strategic stalemate phase and bring the nation ever closer to its glorious socialist future.

Long live the New People’s Army, the real people’s army!

Long live the Communist Party of the Philippines!

Long live the People’s Democratic Revolution with a Socialist Perspective!

SOURCE: https://www.ndfp.org/on-the-occasion-of-the-49th-anniversary-of-the-founding-of-the-new-peoples-army-npa/

Inter Korean summit to be held on April 27th 2018

John Bolton Is A Madman - Stephen Colbert Speaks

Democracy and Class Struggle say US has fallen so low the only serious political comment is from comedians like Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah.

It is also time for a comedy break.

Stormy Times Ahead : Sailing the seas depends on the helmsman of Marxism Leninism Maoism

Democracy and Class Struggle says stormy times are ahead in 2018 - revolution depends on Marxism Leninism Maoism today the universal application of Mao's thought - not just some local Marxism Leninism applied to China like Mao Zedong Thought.

VISIT :
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/marxism-leninism-maoism-and-mao-tse.html

STUDY MARXISM LENINISM MAOISM HERE :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzf10wybbNM2S0t4Z3JHYXBvOTg/view

China and North Korea : The Correct handling of Contradictions !

Democracy and Class Struggle's view of Chinese and North Korean relations are based on:

The Contradictions between North Korea and China are contradictions amongst friends if handled correctly.

 If incorrectly they can be antagonistic contradictions.

The anti imperialist contradictions are between North Korea and USA.

North Korea also has anti hegemonic contradictions with China.

The antagonistic contradictions of an anti hegemonic and inter imperialist character are between China and USA

TOWARD THE CORRECT HANDLING OF CONTRADICTIONS

Daniel Pinkston, lecturer in international relations with Troy University with his thoughts on the announcement of Kim Jong-un's trip to Beijing.

Democracy and Class Struggle does not have much time for "North Korea experts" in the West but we think the comments of Daniel Pinkston quite measured and thoughtful.

For those of us with memories we can remember the hysterical reaction in 1964 to China's nuclear programme and Taiwan wanting to pre emptively nuke China.

While we still have hysteria around North Korea's nuclear programme we see signs of measured and rational diplomacy from South Korea and China and Russia.

The USA is still the danger.

China and N Korea confirm Kim Jong-un visit: The bridge has been repaired now is time to cross the water

Democracy and Class Struggle says the bridge has been repaired now is time to cross the water.

Inter-Korean summit preparation committee launched in South Korea

The View from the South - not our view but published for information.

Democracy and Class Struggle offers Condolences for the victims of fire at Kemerovo Siberia especially to the families of the 41 children victims

Democracy and Class Struggle opposes the Russophobia in the West - even if we are not entirely happy with Putin.

Humanity links us with Russia and sadly Kemerovo reminds us of our common humanity amd we offer condolences to the family of all the fire victims.

When a large number of children die it is more poignant - it reminds us in Wales of the Aberfan Tragedy.

New Former Black Panther Herman Bell to Be Released After 45 Years in Prison

Repairing the Bridge before crossing the Water : The North Korean Visit to Beijing

Democracy and Class Struggle says the meeting in Beijing is to repair the bridge before crossing the water.

Improved Chinese North Korean relations are important before the summit with South Korea.

South Korea's left-leaning press Hankyoreh also reported Kim had travelled to Beijing for meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday afternoon before leaving for a "third location" on Tuesday. 

It did not cite specific sources.

The Hankyoreh did not specify where the "third location" was but said it could be in China.


Hong Kong's South China Morning Post said Kim was on the train that left Beijing, citing two anonymous sources.

The Political Currency of Mao's Little Red Book

Democracy and Class Struggle says do not confuse revolutionary China of 1960's and 70's with social imperialist China of socialism in words but capitalism in deeds of today. 

Do not push things into a grey area like Professor Fraser in the video above - that is the trick of a crook who does not like things in black or white. 

Ambiguity is not clarity on China.

High Ranking North Korean Official In China - speculation it could be Kim Jong Un

Democracy and Class Struggle says a meeting with China before Thursdays meeting between North and South Korea would be a sensible move to minimise North Korea / Chinese contradictions.

Whether it is high ranking North Korean leader or Kim Jung Un is still a matter of speculation. 

We think it is Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un's sister but we do not know for certain.

Erdogan Ramps up Repression of Kurds and Leftists, Even Outside Turkey

How Psychopaths control your Psychology via Technology... Psychographics ?

THE ABOVE VIDEO IS FROM 2017 BEFORE THE RECENT CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA EXPOSE

Democracy and Class Struggle says this weaponization of social media was began by GCHQ at the beginning of 21st Century  as revealed by the Intercept - it is now rolled out and  GCHQ even teach other friendly intelligence services - psychological analysis of social media data is very advanced and individual and well as social profiling done in depth.Also sub group word triggers developed.

We have studied this for years and are trying to think of counter strategies to preserve our freedom. 

FOR THOSE THAT WANT TO STUDY IN MORE DETAIL :

THE ART OF DECEPTION  IT WAS ISSUED BY GCHQ AND REVEALED BY SNOWDEN AND THE INTERCEPT.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/1021430/the-art-of-deception-training-for-a-new.pdf


SEE ALSO:
https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/cambridge-analytica-whistleblower.html

Russian diplomats expulsions: What message is the US sending to Russia?

Democracy and Class Struggle says it was not difficult to see this coming - Trump has proved to be the liability we said he was all along and those voices in the Russian Foreign Ministry who knew this were ignored. 

Whatever the truth of Putin's role in relation to Trump of late we have noticed much Putin hubris during the election and not the modesty we were used to seeing from him.The blatant carousel voting was hardly hidden from voting booth cameras that even the CPRF had to protest.

The inter capitalist contradictions and inter imperialist and anti hegemonic contradictions are all in play with the most warlike USA  bringing on board Bolton and Pompeo with one aim war - from Iran to North Korea to Syria.

Putin had better play a better game of chess - or simply throw Trump under the Mueller bus and normalize US Russian relations - the consequences of everything going in wrong direction at the wrong time is horrendous and that spells nemesis.

We find the Salisbury incident an incredibly convenient event for the anti Russia lobby irrespective of who carried it out - we find it difficult to believe Russia would be so stupid as to do it - but hubris does make people do stupid things.

Meet Neocon John Bolton, the Most Hawkish National Security Adviser Imaginable

Mike Pompeo: A Koch Brothers Ally Just Became a Global Threat

Spain: At least seven injured in Lleida during protest after Puigdemont arrest

Democracy and Class Struggle says we will continue to educate , agitate and organise until comrades recognise that self determination is part of the democratic struggle for socialism - we are frankly ashamed of so called socialists and communists  in Spain and elsewhere who do not stand up for democracy in Catalonia.

That includes so called "comrades" in British Isles who are as integralist as the Falange.

UPDATED NEWS ON ARREST

https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20180325/world/ex-catalan-leader-puigdemont-arrested-in-germany.674474#.WrfVfap-tbk.facebook