Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Kazakhstan: Socialist Movement and Zhanartu denounce the detention of striking oil workers

With a joint statement, the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan and Kazakhstan's Workers Union (Zhanartu) strongly denounce the detention of two oil workers who were on hunger strike. 

On January 20th, the organizers of the hunger strike among oil industry workers in Kazakhstan, the Chairman of the Union «Oil Construction Company» Amin Yeleusinov and public labour inspectors Nurbek Kushakbaev were arrested being accused of embezzlement of trade Union funds. Accusations then followed as “calling of illegal strikes”. The custody will last 2 months and workers say they have already arrived to Astana. 

Monday, January 30, 2017

KKE: Greek and Turkish workers must fight together against the bourgeois classes

The Press Office of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) issued a statement regarding yesterday's violation of the Greek maritime borders by Turkish warships. More specifically, the statement says:

"The KKE denounces the violation of  the Greek maritime borders, in the area of Imia, by Turkish warships in the presence of the heads of the Turkish armed forces, which took place on Sunday 29th of January.

This action- 21 years after the Imia crisis- consists a dangerous development added to the successive violations of the Greek air and maritime space, the challenging of the Treaty of Lausanne which defines the Greek-Turkish borders, the threats which Ankara fired recently, after the decision of the Supreme Court for the non-extradition of the 8 Turkish military officers who asked for protection-asylum in our country.

Philippines: The truth about Rodrigo Duterte's bourgeois government

By Ronalyn V. Olea / Source: Bulatlat.com
MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte’s tirades against the so-called oligarchs are turning out to be mere rhetoric as he pursues the same economic policies that favor the rich.
In a forum, Jan. 13, Rosario Bella Guzman, Ibon executive editor, noted that Duterte’s ten-point socioeconomic agenda and the upcoming Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2017-2022 both aim to increase the profits of foreign corporations and local oligarchs at the expense of the welfare of the people and long-term economic development.
Guzman said the PDP is silent on free land redistribution. She noted that the economic managers of the Duterte administration blocked Agrarian Reform Secretary Rafael Mariano’s proposal for a two-year moratorium on land-use conversion.

Sunday, January 29, 2017

KKE delegation in EU Parliament denounces plans to move US Embassy to Jerusalem

KKE MEP Kostas Papadakis (up) submitted
the Question to EU's Federica Morgherini.
In a Question submitted to the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, the KKE EU Parliament delegation denounces as "provocative" the US government's announcement regarding the beginning of the procedure to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. 

More specifically, the Question submitted by KKE MEP Kostas Papadakis is the following:

"It has been officially announced by the government of the United States that it starts the procedure for the transfer of the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem which, as it was stated, is in "early stages". This move was accompanied by the statements of the israeli occupational forces that they plan:

i) the construction of over 500 new residences for israeli settlers in East Jerusalem

ii) the construction 2,500 new residences for israeli settlers in West Bank.

Saturday, January 28, 2017

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST BULLETIN #2

SYRIZA: Capitalism's social democratic servant

By Nikos Mottas*.

The 25th of January marked the two years since SYRIZA's electoral victory. During these two years the political deception of SYRIZA and Alexis Tsipras was fully exposed. The promises of the “left-wing” SYRIZA- about the supposed “tearing” of the memorandums, the end of austerity, the abolition of unjust taxation, the incrase of wages and pensions- were proved a colossal piece of political knavery. During the last two years, the government of Alexis Tsipras was proved an excellent implementer of capital's anti-people policy, thus walking on the steps of its predecessors, the governments of New Democracy and PASOK.

Since January 2015 and its electoral triumph, the “left-wing” SYRIZA, in governmental alliance with the right-wing, nationalist party “ANEL”, managed to sign and vote a 3rd memorandum of austerity with even harder measures than the previous two; to pass hundreds of harsh anti-people, anti-workers laws; to demolish pension rights; to impose additional heavy taxation to the popular strata; to proceed to further privatizations of state property; to attack social security rights through supposed “reforms” which demolishes whatever has remained from the workers'-people's rights.

Friday, January 27, 2017

Trotsky’s Lies - What They Are, and What They Mean

Trotsky’s Lies - What They Are, and What They Mean
 

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.

Thursday, January 26, 2017

KKE celebrated its 99 years with a large political and cultural event in northern Greece

THESSALONIKI- With a large political and cultural event in the country's second largest city, Thessaloniki, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) honored its 99 years, just a few months before the Party's 20th Congress. The event, organised by the KKE Central Macedonia Party Organisation at Palais des Sports indoor arena, was attended by General Secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas who delivered a speech.

Secretary D.Koutsoumbas called the working class and the popular strata to join the KKE in a large social alliance against the capitalist system and its political representatives. 

Among other things, Koutsoumbas said: "Today, all those who feel that belong to the Left, who voted for SYRIZA in the previous elections, can find their actual position here, within the lines of the labor-people's movement which has as an aim and direction the struggle against the monopolies, against capitalism, against imperialist war, in alignment with the KKE".

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Solidarity with Greece's small farmers in their struggle against the SYRIZA and EU policies

Small farmers in Greece are back on the roads again. With their tractors of work and struggle, on the roadblocks, in order to survive. They are struggling, tooth and nail, in order to keep their fields and animals, so that their remain in their villages, so that we can sustain our families through our work in a decent way.

The struggle is inevitable for poor farmers. If they don’t struggle, they will be driven off their land, if they do not resist, they will be throwed on the bonfire of unemployment and destitution. 

Farmers from Tyrnavos, Central Greece, set the first blockade on Monday noon, while farmers from Karditsa, Trikala, Farsala, Larisa have scheduled to go out on the streets on Thursday. The protests and the blockades are to take place from South on the island of Crete and Peloponnese to the North in Central and East Macedonia and from East mainland like Magnisia to the West like Aitoloakarnania and Epirus.

Monday, January 23, 2017

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST BULLETIN #1

KKE GS Koutsoumbas: "The 21st century will bring the definite overthrow of Capitalism"

KKE General Secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas speaking
at the European Communist Meeting, Monday 23 January 2017.
"The 21st century will bring the definite and- this time- irreversible overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialism-communism. After all, the ice has been broken, the road is open, the way has been shown" said Dimitris Koutsoumbas, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), during the closure of his speech at the European Communist Meeting which took place today in Brussels.

Refering to the 100 years since the 1917 Great Socialist October Revolution, the KKE General Secretary said among other things: "October proved the capacity and capability of the working class to realize its historic mission as the only really revolutionary class, to lead the cosmogony of building socialism-communism. On the same time, October demonstrates the irreplaceable role of the guidance factor of the socialist revolution, the Communist Party, the immense power of proletarian internationalism".

Antonio Gramsci - I hate the indifferent

I hate the indifferent.
By Antonio Gramsci*.

I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

CP of Israel & Hadash: Take action, stop the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands


The Communist Party of Israel (CPI) and the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) have issued a statement in which they assure that the Arab-Bedouin village of Umm Al-Hiran in the Negev will not stand alone in its struggle to resist being uprooted by the far right Israeli government.
In their statement, the CPI and Hadash declare: “The aggressive violence of the Police on early Wednesday morning [January 18] attests to the criminal intent which resulted in the shooting death of Yacoub Mousa Abu al-Qee’an, a resident of Umm Al-Hiran, as well as injuries to tens of others, including Member of the Knesset Ayman Odeh who was scathed in the head by a ‘sponge bullet.’ The CPI and Hadash call upon their cadres to launch a series of militant actions to protest these criminal actions, while working in conjunction with all patriotic political and popular movements to broaden the struggle.”

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Poetry for Lenin - By Vladimir Mayakovsky and Bertolt Brecht

Photo: In Defense of Communism.
On the occasion of the 93rd anniversary of Vladimir I. Lenin's death, we post three major poems by the giants of literature and poetry Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) and Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) dedicated to the great Bolshevik revolutionary and architect of the first socialist state in the world.  

The first one is Vladimir Mayakovsky's legendary poem "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" published in 1924. 

The other twoo are poems by Bertolt Brecht, titled "The Unconquerable Inscription" (1934) and the "Cantata on the Day of Lenin's Death" (1935). 

Friday, January 20, 2017

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: His revolutionary legacy remains alive and timely


It was in the dawn of January 21, 1924, 93 years ago, when the heart of the greatest revolutionary in history, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, stopped beating. Lenin, the leader of the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution and architect of the first socialist state in the world, was 54 years old.

The name of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is identified with two dialectically connected issues. On the one hand, there is his revolutionary activity and practice as the leader of the 20th century's most significant event- the 1917 Great October Socialist Revolution. On the other hand, there is his theoretical work which is the development of the revolutionary theory of Marx and Engels in the era of Imperialism. That extraordinary combination of revolutionary theory and practice makes Lenin a unique personality in history who, 93 years after his death, remains “alive” in the collective memory and hearts of the working class people across the world.