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Revolution #257, January 29, 2012
What is the American Way of War?
The Obscene Acts of Unjust War
In early January, a video went viral on the Internet showing four U.S. Marines in Afghanistan urinating on the bodies of three killed Taliban. The video, which the Pentagon confirmed was authentic and was likely taken between March and September 2011 by another Marine on the scene, immediately drew worldwide condemnation.
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A Call for Mass Action Against the Suppression of the Occupy Movement
These past several months have witnessed something very different in the U.S. People from many different walks of life came together to occupy public space in nearly 1,000 cities in the U.S. They stood up to vicious police violence, they broke through the confines of “protest as usual,” and in the middle of all that, they built community. Even in the face of media attempts to ridicule, distort, and demonize these protests, their basic message began to get through. People throughout the U.S.—and even the world—took notice of and took heart from these brave and creative protesters.
Everything You’ve Been Told About Communism Is Wrong:
Capitalism Is a Failure,
Revolution Is the Solution
Editors’ Note: Beginning with this issue, Revolution is serializing an important speech given by Raymond Lotta during his national campus speaking tour in 2009-10. This version of the speech given at Harvard University in April 2010 has been slightly edited and footnotes have been added for publication.
I am very pleased to be at Harvard to speak with you about communism....
Donate to the BAsics Bus Tour
Imagine buses with eye-catching decorations touring the nation, spreading revolution and Bob Avakian’s voice to those hungry for it in outlying areas. People on a mission rolling through community centers, high schools, Ivy League and community colleges, from mountains to valleys, suburbs to rural areas. Showing the film of Bob Avakian’s talk Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About in classrooms and community centers. Getting Avakian’s memoir, and other key works, out all over the country. Reaching the youth, visiting the Occupy encampments that have sprung up all over, going to where there is outrageous oppression going down, taking a week in an inner city... and then another inner city... “The BA bus is coming to your town.”
“BA Everywhere” Hits the Airways on L.A.’s Hip-Hop Mega Station—Power 106
As an early part of the BA Everywhere Campaign, a one-minute ad for BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, was played repeatedly on the mega station Power 106 in Los Angeles in the days leading up to October 22nd, the National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality. The ad, featuring a dramatic reading by the Reverend Richard “Meri Ka Ra” Byrd, KRST Center of African Spirituality, of the quote from Bob Avakian, “An Appeal to Those the System Has Cast Off,” BAsics 3:16, was played over 30 times during a 3½ day period. It was made possible by donations from contributors around the country.
“...in gratitude to my wonderful Revolutionary Family...”
I saw another prisoner down the run receive a copy of BAsics and I had to smile in gratitude to my wonderful Revolutionary Family: That’s another prisoner who will learn the genuine history and dynamics of the American capitalist-imperialist system.
Of Pendulums, Pits and Getting Free
We are told that the genius of the American political system lies in the pendulum swing. Don't worry... things can't go too far in the wrong direction... because before too long, the pendulum will swing back.
"Sex-Positive" Feminism and Sasha Grey; No Defense for Porn
Recently, two college students (young women) insisted to me that it was wrong to oppose pornography because we should be "sex-positive." They also insisted that many women choose to go into pornography out of their own ambitions and that ought to be respected as a means of "empowerment."
This is bullshit on so many levels...
A Call for Marches and Protests for March 10 & 11 to Mark International Women’s Day 2012
End Pornography and Patriarchy:
the Enslavement and Degradation of Women
We are told that “equality for women has been won” and that “there are no limits to what girls can achieve.” BULLSHIT!
Saturday, February 18, 4 pm at Revolution Books NY
Mass Incarceration Plus Silence Equals Genocide
On Saturday, February 18 at 4 pm at Revolution Books New York, Carl Dix will give an important talk on mass incarceration, where it comes from, where it’s taking things if the current trajectory of U.S. society isn’t radically changed, what needs to be done about this and what all this has to do with the revolution we need.
December 2011 Hunger Strike at Corcoran Prison
Once again there is a hunger strike in California’s barbaric prison system, with heroic prisoners putting their lives on the line to change the torturous conditions they are forced to endure. On December 28, prisoners in the Administrative Segregation Unit (ASU) at Corcoran State Prison began the strike. This was a continuation of the resistance begun in 2011, when more than 12,000 prisoners across the state (with support in other states) participated in two major hunger strikes initiated by prisoners in the Pelican Bay Prison Security Housing Unit (SHU).
Keeping Up the Heat in the Fight to STOP "Stop & Frisk"
Dear Readers of Revolution newspaper,
Happy New Year! The campaign to STOP "Stop & Frisk" is heading into the New Year strong, continuing its efforts to stop this outrageous policy. In New York, the Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy, what police sergeants call "owning the streets," means that police routinely stop people, mostly Black and Latino youth, for things like "furtive motion" (walking in a way that some cop says means you just committed or are about to commit a crime), wearing certain clothes, where you live, or (the second most common reason) "other"....
January 11 Protests Demand: Shut Down Guantánamo!
January 11, 2012 was the 10th anniversary of the opening of the U.S. “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Some prisoners have been detained with no charges for years, and the U.S. has with impunity denied legal and human rights and has committed war crimes of torture against many detainees.
The Land of Blood and Honey...
and Deadly Self-Deception
An Open Letter to Angelina Jolie
Over the holiday, I went to see the movie The Land of Blood and Honey. The movie, directed by Angelina Jolie, is about the “ethnic cleansing” that went on in Bosnia in the early 1990s—in particular, the war waged by the Serbian majority against the Muslim minority to drive them out of Bosnia. This war featured not only the massacre of thousands of civilians by the Serbs, but the mass rape of thousands and thousands of Bosnian Muslim women.
The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.
Bob Avakian,
Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
BAsics 1:3
- Color PDF - 11x17"
- Color JPG for posting on web
From A World to Win News Service:
"Occupy Nigeria" Takes on Nigeria's Occupiers
January 16, 2012. A World to Win News Service. Nigerians, whose country is one of the world's major oil exporters, woke up on January 1 to a brutal new year: Overnight, President Goodluck Jonathan more than doubled the price of fuel. The next two weeks saw the kind of ethnically united nationwide movement against the sgovernment seldom witnessed in recent years.
From A World to Win News Service
"It's not personal," Godfather Michael Corleone explained. "It's just business."
January 16, 2012. A World to Win News Service. You might think that imperialist capital has a special hatred for Africans in general and Nigerians in particular, but that's not necessarily the case. They value Nigerian lives as nothing just because they can.
From A World to Win News Service
Breast Implants: Profit Drive Plus Patriarchy = Women in Peril
Posted Thursday, January 19
January 9, 2012. A World to Win News Service. A breast implant scandal threatens some 300,000-400,000 women worldwide with the possibility of industrial-grade silicone gel leaking into their bodies like melted butter.
BIRDS CANNOT GIVE BIRTH TO CROCODILES, BUT HUMANITY CAN SOAR BEYOND THE HORIZON
We are building a movement for revolution…
That movement needs a website…
We need your help to make it happen
This is a world crying out for revolution. Over a billion people on this planet live on less than $1 a day. The earth’s critically endangered ecosystem is under profit-driven assault. In one form or another, everywhere in this world women are degraded as commodities. Creativity is marginalized, coopted, or squashed. And killer police and unjust wars serve and protect all this…
COMMUNISM: THE BEGINNING OF A NEW STAGE
A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Available in English, Spanish, Turkish, German, and Farsi from RCP Publications, P.O. Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654 $5 + $1 shipping.
A new draft translation in Arabic is now available online at revcom.us
The first Arabic draft translation is still available also.
We envision a movement of people working to produce high-quality accurate translations in many languages which can then be distributed around the world on the Internet and in print. We invite your comments. Send them to RCP Publications, Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654 or rcppubs@hotmail.com.
Some Principles for Building A Movement for Revolution
In each issue of Revolution, you'll find "Some Principles for Building A Movement for Revolution," by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. The events covered in this issue of Revolution demonstrate the critical importance of these principles, and of proceeding from them.
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Support... Sustain... Revolution
In this world of unjust war, unbearable suffering and environmental catastrophe… in these days of discontent, upheaval and questioning… it is critical that this newspaper—Revolution—publish! And that it continue to improve its content and look, and expand its readership.
A Statement from the
Revolutionary Communist Party
ON THE STRATEGY FOR REVOLUTION
Under this system of capitalism, so many in this society and so much of humanity are forced to endure great hardship and suffering, exploitation, injustice and brutality, while wars and the ongoing destruction of the natural environment threaten the very future of humanity. In the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) our Party has set forth an inspiring vision, and concrete measures, for the building of a new society, a socialist society, aiming for the final goal of a communist world, where human beings everywhere would be free of relations of exploitation and oppression and destructive antagonistic conflicts, and could be fit caretakers of the earth. But to make this a reality, we need revolution.
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THERE IS NO "PERMANENT NECESSITY" FOR THINGS TO BE THIS WAY
A RADICALLY DIFFERENT AND BETTER WORLD CAN BE BROUGHT INTO BEING THROUGH REVOLUTION
One of the more important statements in the Manifesto from our Party (Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage) is the quote from Marx: "Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions breaks down before their collapse in practice." This is not just a matter of abstract theory—it has a broader effect. That belief weighs heavily on people who don't like the way things are—they are weighed down by a belief in the "permanent necessity of existing conditions." Over and over we are confronted by the fact that people can't see beyond the way things are now.
What Is Communist Revolution?
It is this system that has got us in the situation we’re in today, and keeps us there. And it is through revolution to get rid of this system that we ourselves can bring a much better system into being. The ultimate goal of this revolution is communism: A world where people work and struggle together for the common good…Where everyone contributes whatever they can to society and gets back what they need to live a life worthy of human beings…Where there are no more divisions among people in which some rule over and oppress others, robbing them not only of the means to a decent life but also of knowledge and a means for really understanding, and acting to change, the world.
This revolution is both necessary and possible.
Who Is Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party?
In Bob Avakian, the Chairman of our Party, we have the kind of rare and precious leader who does not come along very often. A leader who has given his heart, and all his knowledge, skills and abilities to serving the cause of revolution and the emancipation of humanity. Bob Avakian came alive as a revolutionary in the 1960s—taking part in the great movements of those days, and especially working and struggling closely with the most advanced revolutionary force in the U.S. at that time, the Black Panther Party. Since then, and while many others have given up, Bob Avakian has worked and struggled tirelessly to find the way to go forward, having learned crucial lessons and built lasting organization that could continue the struggle, and aim to take it higher, while uniting with the same struggle throughout the world. He has kept on developing the theory and strategy for making revolution. He played the key role in founding our Party in 1975, and since then he has continued the battle to keep the Party on the revolutionary road, to carry out work with a strong revolutionary orientation. He has deeply studied the experience of revolution—the shortcomings as well as the great achievements—and many different fields of human endeavor, through history and throughout the world—and he has brought the science and method of revolution to a whole new level, so that we can not only fight but really fight to win. Bob Avakian has developed the scientific theory and strategic orientation for how to actually make the kind of revolution we need, and he is leading our Party as an advanced force of this revolution. He is a great champion and a great resource for people here, and indeed people all over the world. The possibility for revolution, right here, and for the advance of the revolution everywhere, is greatly heightened because of Bob Avakian and the leadership he is providing. And it is up to us to get with this leadership…to find out more about Bob Avakian and the Party he heads…to learn from his scientific method and approach to changing the world…to build this revolutionary movement with our Party at the core…to defend this leadership as the precious thing it is…and, at the same time, to bring our own experience and understanding to help strengthen the process of revolution and enable the leadership we have to keep on learning more and leading even better.
Works by Bob Avakian (PDF)
Now available
The Ascendancy of Obama
and the Continued Need
for Resistance and Liberation
A Dialogue between
Cornel West and Carl Dix
This historic event took place in Harlem, N.Y. on July 14, 2009
$20.00 per copy
15% discount for 10 or more copies
Add $5.00 shipping for 1-5 copies
For shipping costs for 6 or more copies contact Revolution Books.
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Video Available!
- Rough cut of the video without the audience Q&A
- Rough cut of the of the Q&A that followed the dialogue
- Click here for the audio only of the July 14 dialogue (mp3)
- Watch the Youtube video announcement of the July 14 dialogue
- Response to Obama's "No Excuses" speech at NAACP convention by Carl Dix (Part 1 / Part 2)
Go to YouTube for these must-see videos:
Inaugural issue now online! demarcations-journal.org
Demarcations
A Journal of Communist Theory and Polemic
Demarcations: A Journal of Communist Theory and Polemic seeks to set forth, defend, and further advance the theoretical framework for the beginning of a new stage of communist revolution in the contemporary world. This journal will promote the perspectives of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
¡FUERA CON TODOS LOS DIOSES! Desencadenando la mente y cambiando radicalmente el mundo
AWAY WITH ALL GODS! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World
Is believing in gods actually harmful? How has Christianity for centuries served as an ideology of conquest and subjugation? Why is the "Bible Belt" in the U.S. also the "lynching belt"? Why is there a rise of religious fundamentalism throughout the world? In the intensifying conflict between U.S. imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism, is the only choice to take one side or the other? Why is patriarchy and the oppression of women foundational to so many religions? Can people be good without god? These are just some of the questions explored in this provocative work by Bob Avakian.
