After the Trayvon Martin Verdict:

Zimmerman Walks Free

How Long Will This System Continue to Get Away With Murder?

by Carl Dix | July 13, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us 

NOT GUILTY!?! This verdict is an outrage, a punch to the gut, a slap in the face. The facts could not be clearer. George Zimmerman saw a Black youth with a hoodie, decided he was "up to no good," stalked him, confronted him, and shot him through the heart. And, after all that people did to force the authorities to put Zimmerman on trial—the lynching reality of this country remains in effect. The killer walks free. Another Black youth buried.

The real question of this trial was not murder or "self-defense." It was whether the Trayvon Martins of this world have a right to survive, flourish, and to get justice if they’re attacked—or whether the Zimmermans of this world have a supposed right to murder them with impunity. The system has given its answer.

This outrageous verdict of not guilty is an open declaration of placing a target on the backs of a whole generation of Black and Latino youth—under the guise of "letting the system work." This verdict is the system working, and such a system has been exposed through this trial, and in many, many, many other ways as unjust, a horror and illegitimate.

Here we are. Those who are telling people that they have to "accept" the verdict are telling us to accept a modern-day lynching…to accept the police gunning-down of Black and Latino youth…to accept the warehousing of 2.2 million people into prisons. Their message is clear: the system can continually enforce oppressive and murderous relations on the people, but the people cannot stand up. 

No! The murder of Trayvon Martin: unacceptable. 
No! The way this trial was conducted: unacceptable. 
No! The verdict of this trial: unacceptable. 

And people have the right to stand up and express their seething anger, which is deeply felt, which has been just below the surface, in many ways. 

This is a moment to express our outrage. A moment to act together against a howling injustice. A moment for all with a sense of justice in their hearts to stand with the people, to condemn this verdict, and let it be known in all kinds of ways: NO MORE. And if people who take to the streets come under attack, they must be supported. Authorities who criminalize and brutalize people cannot be allowed to beat, corral, pepper-spray people or worse for opposing their brutality.  

Enough! The legacy of slavery continues. The legacy of Jim Crow continues. The reality of a New Jim Crow is lived today, and it kills. Youth like Trayvon are murdered by cops and vigilantes who almost never get punished for their crimes. Tens of thousands of youth are put into prisons every year. It is part of an overall program of brutality and suppression that amounts to a slow genocide that is breaking the bodies and crushing the spirits of countless millions of oppressed people. And as the jury delivered its "not guilty" verdict in Florida, 30,000 prisoners in California are engaged in a heroic strike against inhumane and savage conditions of solitary confinement. This is the reality of this system.

But there is also the reality that Trayvon Martin and youth like him DO NOT have to die or face lives of unending brutality and misery. Any society that does what this country does to oppressed people here and around the world for centuries should not be allowed to continue. A radically different and far better society and world is possible—where the Trayvon Martins and Rachel Jeantels and countless millions like them can flourish, take creative initiative, and contribute everything they have to offer to the whole of society and towards the emancipation of humanity.

This is possible through revolution. A revolution that can end all the horrors this system inflicts on humanity—the oppression of Black people, the degradation faced by women, the wars for empire, the ravaging of the environment and more. This revolution is based on the theory of Bob Avakian. If you want no more of this world and its brutality and misery, get into Bob Avakian's work. Get with the Party that BA leads, the Revolutionary Communist Party. There is a way out of the madness and oppression.

The stakes are high. It’s about right and wrong. It’s about the kind of world we want to live in.  
 
To learn more: revcom.us.

Carl Dix is a revolutionary communist, a national leader in the movement to stop mass incarceration, who co-issued with Cornel West a call for a campaign of civil disobedience to STOP “Stop-and-Frisk."  This campaign changed the discourse in NYC around the racist stop-and-frisk policy.  A veteran revolutionary fighter from the '60s, Carl refused to go to Vietnam in 1970 (he is one of the Fort Lewis 6).

Over the past several weeks, longstanding tensions on the Korean peninsula have intensified. U.S. diplomats, news media, and political leaders have portrayed the small, impoverished nation of North Korea (formally the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) as a belligerent bully, a threat to its neighbors, and a nuclear-armed threat to world peace.

The escalating threats and provocations, and the precarious situation on the border between North and South Korea and the whole tense situation has the potential to break out into a major war, with terrible consequences for the people in both countries, and beyond.

The U.S. claims to be the protector of peace, nuclear disarmament, and sanity. Of economic progress and democracy. To be protectors of the interests of the people of the world.

North Korea is an oppressive, repressive society. But as a source of oppression, repression, and violence in the world, as a nuclear danger to humanity, its impact is microscopic compared to that of the United States.

Over the past 60+ years, the underlying factors driving conflict between the U.S. and North Korea have changed radically. But consistent throughout has been the compulsion on the part of the U.S. to dominate the world, and to impose and enforce a global system of sweatshops, slums, and oppression of every kind. Throughout all this, U.S. moves against North Korea have been those of a global bully dealing with challenges to its domination.

The Korean War

The emergence of North and South Korea—two countries out of what had been a single nation for hundreds of years—was a product of tremendous changes in the world in the aftermath of World War 2.

July 1950: U.S. -backed South Korean soldiers walk among thousands of political prisoners shot by South Korea at Taejon. Photo: AP

A mad scramble ensued on the part of imperial powers to regroup and dig their fangs more deeply into the people of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Overseeing all this, and running the show, U.S. imperialism emerged as the "capo de tutti capi,"—the top godfather—in international capitalism-imperialism.

The other big change was the emergence of a socialist camp. One-third of humanity, in the Soviet Union and China, posed a powerful, living alternative to capitalism, based on the interests of humanity, not capitalist exploitation (See "Everything You've Been Told About Communism Is Wrong: Capitalism Is a Failure, Revolution Is the Solution."). Around the world, radical, revolutionary and nationalist forces in oppressed nations aligned with, and were supported in their struggles for liberation by that socialist camp.

Both of these big changes, but especially the clash between imperialism and socialism set the stage for the Korean War.

The Japanese imperialists colonized Korea in 1910. They banned the teaching of the Korean language in schools, forced Koreans to take Japanese names, and forced them to practice the Japanese Shinto religion. During World War 2, they forced 200,000 Korean women to be sex slaves for their military.

The Japanese empire was defeated in World War 2 by the combined forces of China and the Soviet Union—which worked together with nationalist resistance fighters in Korea—and by the U.S. and other imperialists. The U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan, massacring hundreds of thousands of civilians. When Japanese authority in Korea collapsed, the country was divided between a zone occupied by the Soviet Union in the north and the U.S. in the south.

This was supposed to be a temporary division pending country-wide elections to establish a unified regime. But reunification elections never happened. The U.S. feared elections would put nationalist or communist resistance forces allied with the Soviet Union and China in power. Instead, the U.S. built up a separate regime in South Korea, and made the division of the country a fact on the ground. The U.S. put "strongman" Syngman Rhee in power and imposed intense repression, mass arrests, and massacres of nationalists, radicals, communists, and others.

In 1950, North Korean military forces moved south to come to the aid of uprisings in the south, with the aim of re-unifying the country. North Korean troops advanced rapidly into South Korea.

The U.S. struck back with a vengeance.

Carpet Bombing of North Korea & Nuclear Threats Against China

The U.S. orchestrated a United Nations resolution opposing North Korea, and under that banner sent hundreds of thousands of troops into South Korea. UN-sanctioned joint U.S.-South Korean armed forces were directly commanded by U.S. General MacArthur, and the U.S. also provided 88 percent of the 342,000 "international" soldiers.

The U.S. unleashed incredible devastation. It conducted carpet-bombing of North Korea, dropping more bombs on this one small country than had been used in the entire Pacific Theater during World War 2. Every building higher than one story was destroyed; U.S. General William Dean reported that most of the North Korean cities and villages that he saw were either rubble or snow covered wastelands.

U.S.-led forces drove deep into North Korea toward China. At that point, the People's Republic of China intervened in the war. This was a major sacrifice for the Chinese people, who had just seized nationwide political power and were only beginning the revolutionary transformation of a society wracked by mass poverty, starvation, and backwardness. U.S. forces were driven back across the 38th parallel (roughly the middle of Korea, between what today are North and South Korea).

Throughout the war, the U.S. repeatedly made plans to use nuclear weapons against the North Korean and Chinese forces. General MacArthur, who was not only a general but a major political figure in the U.S. ruling class, demanded authority to invade China and attack it with nuclear weapons. Other forces in the U.S. ruling class felt this it would be too risky. In a tense showdown within the U.S. ruling class, President Truman fired MacArthur, and ultimately the nuclear attack was called off—but the U.S. came very close to launching it.

The war killed millions of Koreans—estimates range from three to five million, overwhelmingly civilians, with a large majority of those killed in the North. Devastation was everywhere, but the North was literally reduced to rubble.

An armistice was signed in 1953, ending hostilities, though no actual peace treaty ending the formal state of war has ever been signed. Korea ever since has been divided into North and South.

On the part of the U.S., the Korean War was a move to consolidate its domination of South Korea, to seize control of the North, and move against communist and nationalist forces in Asia. The U.S. was not able to accomplish those objectives in the Korean War. But after the war, it moved to build up South Korea as a political, economic, and military base from which it could face off against China, and impose its interests in the region.

Changing Global Conflicts—Korea Still in the Crosshairs

Three major global geopolitical conflicts have set the stage for the conflict between the U.S. and North Korea. The first was the clash between the socialist camp and the world revolution on the one hand, and imperialism on the other.

In the mid-1950s, that changed. Forces in the Soviet Union reversed the revolution and restored capitalism. North Korea, which had been aligned with the world revolution but had never been a socialist country, was integrated into the Soviet social-imperialist realm.

And shortly after the death of Mao Tsetung in 1976, capitalist forces within the leadership of the Communist Party of China staged a reactionary coup and brought back capitalism, even as they retain a thin pretense of being communists to the present day. The loss of China was a terrible blow to the people of the world. With that loss, the contradiction between socialist countries and imperialism was no longer an element of global geopolitics.

Roughly from the mid-1950s until the end of the 1980s, the confrontation between the Soviet and U.S.-led imperialist blocs defined the world stage. During that era, the Cold War, the border between North and South Korea remained a tripwire, but now between two reactionary forces. The rulers of North Korea aligned with the Soviets, relied on Soviet economic aid to prop up their economy, and in return served a useful role for the Soviet Union in global contention with the U.S.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 pulled the rug out from under the North Korean rulers. It left them without a global big-power sponsor. This created a desperate situation in a country whose economy was dependent on its integration into the former Soviet Union's camp.

In this context, the U.S. engaged, to some degree, in carrot and (mostly) stick pressure on North Korea. Long standing sanctions that contributed to hunger and lack of medical care in North Korea were tightened, and sometimes slightly loosened. For their part, the North Korean rulers used their nuclear program and nascent nuclear weapons capacity as a bargaining chip for aid and an end to sanctions.

In the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, new and unprecedented challenges emerged as obstacles to the U.S.'s role as the world's sole superpower. Among them: Islamic fundamentalist Jihadis along with the rise of regional and big-power rivals to U.S. dominance. An in-depth analysis of the impact of tensions between the U.S. and China on U.S. moves against North Korea is beyond the scope of this article, but is a significant element in this picture.

U.S. moves against North Korea intensified with George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union address. Framed by continuous references to revenge for 9/11, Bush put Iraq, Iran, and North Korea on the "axis of evil" list. Of course none of those countries had anything to do with 9/11, but the consequences of being put on the list were, and remain, ominous.

In the context of the range of new challenges they face, the rulers of the U.S. find North Korea's small nuclear weapons capacity unacceptable. That technology is not under U.S. command or control, and there is potential for that technology to be exported to other countries and forces that the U.S. sees as serious threats. For their part, the North Korean ruling class sees their nuclear capacity as one of their few bargaining chips. The more the U.S. strangles North Korea economically and intensifies military pressure, the more North Korea's rulers are driven to build up their nuclear weapons capacity.

60+ Years of Military Pressure and Economic Strangulation

While underlying global forces have shifted over the past 60+ years, U.S. economic and military pressure on North Korea has been non-stop.

The U.S. built up South Korea and continues to maintain that country as a strategic outpost for its interests. From 1953-1974, South Korea received $4 billion in direct U.S. aid—accounting for 60 percent of all investment in South Korea—along with many other forms of indirect aid such as discounted loans. All this was presided over by U.S.-puppet "strongman" rulers. When Syngman Rhee was driven from the country in 1960 by massive protests, the U.S. replaced him with Park Chung-hee who ruled as an unelected fascist dictator for almost two decades (Park's daughter, Park Geun-hye, is the current president of South Korea).

Both North and South Korea are highly militarized societies. The North Korean army is the fifth largest in the world, with more than a million soldiers and millions of reservists. The South Korean army as well has been built up into one of the largest armed forces in the world, consisting of nearly 700,000 active duty soldiers, 4.5 million reservists, and more modern weapons, training, and capacity than North Korean troops.

Today, nearly 30,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea. U.S. naval and air power, including nuclear weapons, are "on call" to move against the North. These forces have regularly conducted joint "war games," including recent ones where U.S. and South Korean forces practiced invading and occupying North Korean territory.

Along with military threats, the U.S. has imposed economic sanctions against North Korea since 1950. Those sanctions isolated North Korea economically and cut off much world trade. And the U.S. orchestrated UN–imposed economic sanctions on North Korea starting in 2006.

The U.S. claims such sanctions are targeted at North Korea's ruling elite. But the history of these kinds of sanctions has been one of massive disease, suffering, famine, and death throughout society, with the worst impact on the poorest people. North Korea was devastated by successive years of floods and droughts in from 1994 to 1998. Estimates of famine deaths are hard to verify, but range from hundreds of thousands to over two million.

Although some of the trade sanctions against North Korea were lifted during the 1990s, those currently in place cripple North Korea's attempt to recover from an ongoing public health crisis that resulted from the floods and droughts in the 1990s. (See "Economic Sanctions Towards North Korea: A violation of the right to health and a call to action," British Medical Journal, BMJ 2009;339:b4069)

Nuclear Threats: from the USA

The U.S. justifies its moves against North Korea by invoking that country's threats to use nuclear weapons if it is attacked.

Who's talking about nuclear threats?!

Until 1991 the U.S. directly stationed nuclear weapons in South Korea—aimed at the North. For that entire time, North Koreans lived under the constant threat of a U.S. nuclear attack. Since 1991, the U.S. and South Korea claim there are no U.S. nukes stationed in South Korea, but in 2010, more than two years before the current crisis, South Korea's Defense Minister hinted publicly that there was a possibility that U.S. nukes would be re-deployed on South Korean territory.

And again, these ongoing threats of nuclear attack were coming from a country that had bombed every inch of North Korea into rubble in the Korean War.

While the U.S. does not currently have nuclear weapons stationed in South Korea, the U.S. has the capacity to strike anywhere in the world with nuclear weapons, millions of times more destructive than anything North Korea could possible develop. And the U.S. holds the whole world, including North Korea, as nuclear hostages. (See "Who's the Real Nuclear Threat?")

Contending Oppressive Agendas… and the Need for a Real Alternative

U.S. sanctions and threats against North Korea have nothing to do with peace, nuclear disarmament, or any of their other claims. North Korea is an oppressive society, not a model for positive or radical change. But as a source of exploitation and oppression, wars to enforce that, and in terms of posing a nuclear threat to the people of the world, it cannot hold a candle to the suffering and violence the United States imposes on the people of this planet.

U.S. moves against North Korea must be opposed most fundamentally because they are all about the USA enforcing its "right" to be an unchallenged global bully. We must oppose U.S. moves against North Korea. The interests of the U.S. imperialists are not our interests. And we need to bring to light the real interests of the people as part of bringing into being a real, revolutionary alternative to the world as it is.

Correction

The article states:

Roughly from the mid-1950s until the end of the 1980s, the confrontation between the Soviet and U.S.-led imperialist blocs defined the world stage.

This is not accurate: The actual nature of this time period is that roughly from the late-1950s until the early 1970s, the global conflict between imperialism, led by US imperialism, and national liberation struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin America against imperialism mainly defined the world stage. From the mid-1970s until the collapse of the Soviet-led imperialist bloc (1989-1991), the conflict between the imperialist bloc headed by the US, and the imperialist bloc headed by the Soviet Union, mainly set the terms for other conflicts in the world.

Send us your comments.

Our Movement of Resistance Needs a Lot of Room for Dialogue and Discussion But NO ROOM FOR ATTACKS AND THREATS OF PHYSICAL VIOLENCE

The fight for Justice for Kimani Gray is part of the fight against a highly repressive state that enforces mass incarceration, the criminalization of a whole generation and discrimination against formerly incarcerated people. All this amounts to a slow genocide targeting Black and Latino people, which must be met with mass determined resistance.

4 Points in Response to Slander in the Media and Other Places About the March 24th Protest for Justice for Kimani Gray

Response to the Village Voice:

People Rose Up in Righteous Protest Against Murder of Kimani Gray—And They Should Be Supported

March 22, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The righteous uprising of the youth of East Flatbush and others from across the city of NY who were outraged by the murder of Kimani Gray has been met with riot-clad, baton-wielding cops and mass arrests. Accompanying these assaults has been a chorus of NYC elected officials, "community leaders" and others in NY and across the country who are "appealing for calm" and "furious" over those from "outside the community" who supposedly are inciting very angry youth to resist. The message? The youth are easily manipulated and NOT actually fed up with the dead end future they are trapped in and seeing and protesting the murder of Kimani as a concentration of that ugly future. And the further message: The youth should refuse to unite with those who are joining them in struggle.

But this is wrong…this struggle—which is just and not futile or destructive—is most welcome and in the interests of all the people. It is right to stand up and resist.   

Now, this chorus has been joined by the Village Voice, a paper which began as an alternative and progressive paper, but this week joins in on the reactionary attacks on the people who are rising up in East Flatbush. In a major article published in March called "Everybody Wants a Piece of Kimani Gray" the Village Voice characterizes the outraged youth as emotional and basically unthinking in their struggle while at the same time describing the situation with Kimani’s murder as "complicated." It ridicules the struggle: "The rolling protests and unrest that have roiled East Flatbush for the past week have at times felt like a 21st-century Bonfire of the Vanities, a dysfunctional and tragicomic variety show, as postures of rage and ideology, solidarity and self-promotion share the stage, and moments of dark absurdity overlie stark calamity.” Fuck you Village Voice. It’s a fine thing that people are rising up against yet one more outrage perpetrated on the people.

First, ask yourself: In a country where the police murder of a Black youth is so routine that most people are not aware of how often this happens, if there had not been the outpouring of resistance in response to this callous murder, what would be the outcome? Would anyone even know about it? Would this murder and uprising be a subject of discussion on airwaves across the country? Wouldn't the only story out there be the enforcers' picture of Kimani as a gang banger with a gun who deserved to die and the police as heroes? Would there be any hope of justice?

And then think about this: Is it a bad thing or a good thing if youth are joining with each other and others, raising their heads and beginning to go up against those who maintain a boot on their neck? Is it a bad thing or a good thing if, now, the youth are acting on their outrage and hopes for something different? Is it a good thing or a bad thing if people from different backgrounds and from across the city are a part of the struggle to demand justice for Kimani and calling out the continual brutality the police inflict on people?   

Let’s be real: The powers-that-be, including elected officials, like city councilman Jumaane Williams, fear this kind of awakening and rebellion on the part of the people on the bottom. They also fear the unity that is being built between different kinds of people. With such outbreaks of struggle the nature and legitimacy of this whole set-up/system get called into question. People begin to ask big questions. And those defenders of this system also go into high gear, working overtime to shut down the struggle and steer and confine the resistance of broad numbers of people into "acceptable" channels which don't challenge the whole set-up.

So, what's the real deal? What riled up the youth—and broad numbers of people—was the murder of Kimani, and the brutal—and constant—repression the Black and Latino youth face at the hands of the police. People were saying NO MORE! The source of the unrest is the actions of the police, not the actions of people in the community "riled up by outsiders"! And to these mouthpieces for the system (including those who speak in the Village Voice), we say there are no outsiders in the struggle against injustice and oppression. If you didn’t live in Sanford, Florida, should you not have said anything about the murder of Trayvon Martin? If you are the parent of a child killed by the police in a DIFFERENT neighborhood, are you supposed to be silent? Are you an "outsider" stirring up trouble if you speak out against injustice, the thousands of murders of Black and Latino youth by the police, if you join in protest against these crimes which happen every day in this society? 

Actually, we need to squarely face the fact that far too many people have stood aside and been silent when Black, Latino and other youth have been gunned down by the police and/or railroaded to prison. It is a very good thing that people from across the city of New York—from beyond the community of East Flatbush—have joined in the protests and uprising. And many more need to protest this murder and the massive incarceration of over 2 million people in this society, mainly Black and Latino.   

And to the Village Voice we say: NO, IT'S NOT FUCKING COMPLICATED. As Carl Dix said: "There are only 2 sides in this struggle—either you stand with the people against the repression they face or, whatever your intentions, you're siding with those who carry out this repression." TheVillage Voice should be ashamed for giving its backing to those who are condemning these actions and calling for an end to the righteous struggle. The police murdered Kimani Gray as a part of their ongoing terror and brutalization the people—and the people from that neighborhood and across the city rose up in protest and they should be supported. 

Cornel West Interviews Bob Avakian on PRI Smiley & West radio show, October 2012.

"My dear brother Bob Avakian... is the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party.... He is one of the few coming out of the 60's who never sold out, he never caved in, he never gave up, held on to his forging of a rigorous, scientific analysis of the objective realities that are driven by a revolutionary love – because he has such a deep love for poor people, oppressed people, all around the world. Whether you agree or disagree with our brother, one thing you cannot deny: that he is the real thing. No doubt about it." –Cornel West, introducing his interview with Bob Avakian on the Smiley & West radio show (October 5, 2012)

Click here to play or download the audio file.
Transcript available in Spanish HERE.

In early October, the revolution crackled on the airwaves when the Smiley & West radio show on PRI (Public Radio International) across the country aired an interview that Cornel West recently conducted with Bob Avakian.

This interview is sharp and wide-ranging, challenging and inspiring. Cornel West, a prominent public intellectual, engages with Bob Avakian, the leader of a new stage of communist revolution. The importance of getting this exchange out broadly into society, and fundraising as we do so, should not be underestimated—and in fact, the reach and impact of this interview should be maximized in many different ways.

The Michael Slate Show Inteviews Bob Avakian

KPFK (Los Angeles, 90.7 FM and kpfk.org)

This 5-part interview began airing onThe Michael Slate Show on KPFK (Los Angeles, 90.7 FM and kpfk.org) January 11, 2013. Listen to and download Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 here.

What the World Needs Now

February 24, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 Listen to this article, or download

As we write, there are four weeks until the premiere of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!

Let’s start with the basics: what is this film? And why is it important?

Many, many people walk through their lives hurting, or numb, or both. Emergencies cry out all over the place—the massive imprisonment of Black and Latino youth, running like an assembly line... the degradation and horrors visited upon women, from the bedroom to the streets to the state-backed sex trafficking... the drones of war and long-distance murder... the relentless destruction of the environment... and all over the planet, the steady, unending drumbeat of children being ground up by disease, ignorance, exploitation—millions and millions a year dying—as if being fed to a mythological monster.

What is needed is Revolution—Nothing Less!

Yet people don’t see a way out. They don’t see a way forward.

This film challenges that, and powerfully. This film can change that.

For decades, masses of people worldwide fought and sacrificed in their hundreds of millions to build a whole new world. Their achievements were great, but these first heroic attempts were defeated, and for nearly 40 years there has been no country that people could look to as a liberated society. During that time, the movement for revolution largely became disoriented and ebbed.

But fortunately, Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, did NOT. BA set about figuring out how to go forward—because the world still cried out, more desperately than ever, for revolution. He deepened the science of revolution, and applied that to understanding the triumphs, and the shortcomings, of the past. He revived and deepened Marx’s insight that humanity’s suffering was not due to a somehow unchanging and unchangeable human nature, but to real, material causes—fundamentally, to a system, of capitalism-imperialism. And more than that, he broke through on the strategy to actually make a revolution, and to a vision of a whole new world on a higher level than had ever been seen before.

That is huge. Huge. And the heart of it is contained in this film of a speech BA gave last fall. But this is more than just a film, more than even a very good film. As one of the filmmakers said, “This is a daring, substantive, scientific summoning to revolution. 6+ hours that can change how you see the world and what you do with the rest of your life.”

The line in this film—the analysis that BA lays out but just as important, the way he opens up your vision and shows you how to go at things, how to understand and change the world, how we actually could make revolution, and how to deal with everything that stands in the way and the kind of world that we could bring into being if we follow through on all that—is powerful. This line can change people.

Revolution—Nothing Less!

Right now, the premieres of this film are crucially important; but we have to conceive of them as, and make them be part of, something larger. The process of building for and then showing this film has to put revolution on the map in society in a big way and go a lot further in making BA a household word. But important as this is—and it is important—there is a particular mission to develop a growing core of people who are down with this, and broader circles and rungs of other people who are getting into this, engaging it, learning about it, and participating in some way, big or small, in the movement for revolution. The premiere of this film, and the whole process leading up to it, has to do this, and it has to develop the organized strength of this trend, and most of all the party at the core of it. Because you can’t make revolution without a revolutionary party.

To put it another way, through the course of the next four weeks, and then taking a leap at the premieres themselves, this line has to find increasing material expression.

Again... Revolution—Nothing Less!

***

For two weeks now, people have been taking this out into the world. We’ve been changing things and learning things. But at every step of the way, we need to apply science to figure out what we are changing, where we are falling short, and how to do better. We need to make the most of the opportunity posed by this premiere... and we need a massive effort that is guided by, and enriching, the science to do that. It’s not about telling cool stories—it has to be about changing the world, and drawing the lessons to help others change it.

Last week, we pointed to the need, as called for in the RCP’s “On the Strategy for Revolution,” “to be working consistently toaccumulate forces—to prepare minds and organize people in growing numbers—for revolution,” as a key part of the struggle to build these premieres. It’s worth reprinting and reflecting again on the paragraph we cited:

All along the way, both in more “normal times” and especially in times of sharp breaks with the “normal routine,” it is necessary to be working consistently to accumulate forces—to prepare minds and organize people in growing numbers—for revolution, among all those who can be rallied to the revolutionary cause. Among the millions and millions who catch hell in the hardest ways every day under this system. But also among many others who may not, on a daily basis, feel the hardest edge of this system’s oppression but are demeaned and degraded, are alienated and often outraged, by what this system does, the relations among people it promotes and enforces, the brutality this embodies.

One thing: progress has been made, things have been learned, when revolutionaries put out the solid core of this line—Revolution—Nothing Less!... letting people get to know BA through BAsics, or an interview tape, or the Revolution talk... then allowing and enabling people to get into that on many different levels, bringing their aspirations and questions into a whole process... and then challenging them and providing them an immediate way to get with the movement for revolution.

Revolutionaries have to be way out into the world as a solid core around this line: Revolution—Nothing Less! We need to be putting BA in people’s hands, in different ways, letting them know that we have the actual way forward out of this madness and how incredibly important that is! We should call bullshit bullshit when people run their stuff against this line, and we should welcome the controversy. But that’s not enough. You’ve got to give people the ways to engage and actively get into that line, and spread it themselves. If you’re on the campus—“let’s get some coffee... when can we hang out and listen to this interview, or watch this DVD—how about now, for 15 minutes...” If someone’s in a rush to pick up their kids or go to the market, walk with them, give them a hand, but whatever you do, get into this with them. Learn what they think of BAsics, or that quote card, or the radio interview or part of the Revolution Talk they saw. If there’s someone there who’s got a better grasp of the line or knows how to break it down... take the person over to them.

One important thing: we need to reach out more to take people along on these forays that take word of the premieres out broadly. People who are new to things, or who may not be new but aren’t that clear on a lot of stuff, get a whole lot just by going out with the revolutionaries and seeing how they put out revolution and take on the bullshit. And the fact is that they contribute a lot as well, even by just standing with the revolution and being part of the whole scene. Again, it gets back to being serious: giving people a time and a place to be part of this, and then being there, manifesting and representing fully as who we are: revolutionary communists, people who get that what we are supposed to do is LEAD... with the WHOLE thing... the need, the basis, the possibility... the challenge to others to be part of this in some way big or small...the total refusal to accept or allow reactionary views to set the tone or the terms for things. THIS is the solid core we should be projecting... with the confidence of all of material history behind us and the great needs of humanity in mind... and settle for nothing less than what is true and what is necessary to do.

When people begin to relate to that, it is urgent that that goes further; we have to find ways to give that relationship real shape, connected to real organization.

We need it all: deeper engagement with BA, right there on the spot... forms of activity to be part of this and spread it, on all kinds of levels... and then deeper engagement off of that, and so on, scientifically summing up all along the way.

This is the spiral we have to unleash in order to make these premieres be what they have to be.

From A World To Win News Service

Why France intervened in Mali and why it can only be bad for the Malian people

February 24, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

February 13, 2013. A World to Win News Service. The French military intervention in Mali—taking the North of the country in a firestorm of imperialist arrogance and air power—has the French rulers and press gloating about easy victories and the apparent support of much of the Malian population and a majority of the French too, arguing "There's no other solution." A small demonstration of Malians in the southern capital city of Bamako disputed this charade of "liberation" with hand-printed signs reading, "Down with imperialist interests, down with ECOWAS." (Economic Community of West African States)

This crisis in Mali reveals a maelstrom of contradictions in the entire region of West and North Africa known as the Sahel-Sahara that no imperialist army or state will even begin to solve. In fact their role is certain to accelerate the contradictions that have spun into a war and a multi-national occupation of Mali spearheaded by French imperialism. It is the imperialists who are largely responsible for the impoverished, very short and crushed lives most Malians lead.

The immediate war was triggered by the descent from the North of an alliance of armed Islamic forces who had seized control of the key northern cities last spring. In early January 2013 they advanced right up to the doorstep of the southern region where Mali's central state is headquartered, 90 percent of the population live and most of its resources are to be found. Yet the crisis is long in the making, with French colonial and imperialist footprints, along with those of many others, all over it.

Last March 2012, just before national elections, junior army officers, some trained and equipped by the U.S., staged a coup d'état and ousted Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré, allegedly because he hadn't taken a strong enough stand against the most recent rebellion by the Tuareg minority in January 2012. Within a short time, the Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), reinforced by a large number of defections from the Malian army itself, including some Tuareg officers, declared the North to be independent, under the name of Azawad. Touré fled to Senegal.

A friend of Muammar Gaddafi who supported the Libyan government and opposed France's intervention there, Touré claims to have warned NATO that overthrowing Gaddafi would have destabilizing effects in the region. The interim government that replaced Touré in Bamako has little legitimacy among the population. The national army, quickly overrun by the offensive in the North, was left weakened, dysfunctional and divided, just like the rest of the Malian state.

The French plan to intervene was already in preparation, but was speeded up when the jihadists descended towards the southern cities of Mali in a stream of 300 pick-up trucks. The French government had got a UN Security Council resolution passed in December 2012 to allow military intervention primarily by West African ECOWAS soldiers that France would command and train. The neighboring countries Niger, Burkina Faso and Nigeria were dragging their boots until the terms of financing this all-African ground-force-for-hire were spelled out. At the January 29, 2013 meeting of the African Union in Addis Ababa, a first sum of $470 USD million was raised, mainly by imperialist powers.

The French enlisted the help of these West African troops under the guise of Africans "settling their own affairs" in order to "peacefully [!] restore the territorial integrity of Mali." This meant, at least for public opinion's sake, driving out the Islamist jihadists from northern Mali who reportedly had cast aside the Tuareg-based MNLA and imposed their authority. The French imperialists also clearly aim to prepare the ground for a reinforced central state apparatus in Mali, in line with strengthening French interests in its historical zone of influence. The alternative press in France is calling out Francois Hollande for his hypocrisy, since less than a year ago, during his successful campaign for the French presidency, he was heard insisting on an end to "FrancAfrique" (France's privileged relationship with its former West African colonies and interference in their affairs).

Thus with U.S. and British intelligence and logistical support and the Algerian government's agreement to let France use its airspace, the French moved into northern Mali on January 11. In what they said was an act of retaliation, jihadist forces attacked a British Petroleum gas production site in southern Algeria, taking some 40 foreign hostages. The Algerian government wasted no time negotiating and brutally ended the operation in its southern desert, bombing the jeeps with hostages on board retreating to Libya and killing some 70 people. Many believe Algeria, which has the largest army in North Africa, is pursuing regional interests of its own.

On February 11, 2013, while French and Malian troops with some West African soldiers' assistance had taken control of the northern cities—mostly through air superiority and little on-the-ground fighting—Islamic Mujao forces re-entered the city of Gao via boats on the Niger River and attacked the police station. The fighting lasted a few hours, backed by French airpower and, significantly, involved suicide bombers for the first time. French and Malian troops have moved into the mountainous areas in the eastern province of Kidal, to where it was assumed the Islamic forces would retreat. Much of the debate around the world has focused on the new "Sahel-istan"—in other words, the potential "bogging down" of the French army in Mali, with Hollande revising the schedule of French troop withdrawal on nearly a daily basis. Sound familiar?

Neo-colonial dependence governed by weak state

Mali—a large country sitting geographically at the heart of the French West African colonial empire and one of the world's poorest—became formally independent from France in 1960 but has continued a dependent (if sometimes strained) relationship since that time, its economy straightjacketed by imperialist domination and international financial institutions. After independence the pro-Soviet "socialist-leaning" Modibo Keita took power. He was a close ally of Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah and Guinea's Sekou Touré, with ties to Cuba and China, and the Algerian and other liberation movements in Africa. Keita was overthrown in 1968 and replaced by a more imperialist-compliant regime in the first of several military coups d'etat over the past 45 years, reflecting the weakness and instability of the Malian state. A multi-party constitution was adopted only in 1992, after student-led rioting against the government, and a Tuareg revolt had been brutally repressed in 1991 by Touré's predecessor.

For the Malian people it's been a story of overwhelming poverty rooted in neo-colonial relations of domination and dependence under the watch of client governments and the IMF. This has kept the development of the country's productive forces at a very low level. Mali's immense territory straddles the Saharan Desert in the North and Sahel grasslands in the South, and is divided by the Niger River Valley. Only 4 percent of the land is arable but 80 percent of the people are involved in agriculture, either growing crops or animal herding and fishing.

One feature of French colonialism was the cash crop policy of monocultures—peanuts in Senegal for example, and in Mali, cotton for France's own textile needs. So instead of varied food crops for mainly local needs, peasant farmers are contracted to grow cotton and even more cotton, in an effort to boost national export earnings, but in the process becoming chained to foreign distributors and volatile imperialist markets like so many countries in Africa and the third world. When world market prices for cotton crashed starting in the late 1990s, caused partly by subsidized dumping of cheaper European and American cotton, Malian farmers were the ones to suffer, and national debts mounted.

In the 1990s under IMF structural readjustment plans, Mali was assigned to the category of Highly Indebted Poor Countries, which after six years of belt tightening supposedly in exchange for debt relief—but in reality to cut the rich countries' losses—ended up with even higher debt service payments than before. The 2006 independent film Bamako by Abderrahmane Sissako stages a mock courtyard trial of the IMF, World Bank and Western interests, showing the devastating effects of structural adjustment on Mali. (http://artthreat.net/2007/04/bamako-film-puts-the-world-bank-on-trial-and-wins/).

A relatively small bourgeoisie in and around the state has grown wealthy from gold mine profits in the eastern part of the country (although 80 percent are siphoned off, mainly by South African and Canadian multinationals, Mali is Africa's third largest gold producer). They also benefit from the extensive donor aid and skim off profits from the vast networks trafficking drugs and other commodities. Yet the state itself has carried out very little infrastructural and other development in either the North or the South and has never had much support from the population. Of the some 15,000 kilometers of roads, less than 2,000 km are paved, for example. Healthcare is abysmal and life expectancy only 49 years (with only 2 percent living past the age of 65).

In the main, the tiny educated elite travel to Dakar, Abidjan or Paris for their studies and few new schools have been built over the decades, resulting in an astonishingly low literacy rate, especially among women. Less than 30 percent of the population votes in national elections. Keeping the masses illiterate and ignorant is partly a political strategy too, scholars argue: the state fears the rise of politically astute students and educated strata that are more likely to expose and challenge it.

So while many Malians at first welcomed the "rescue" by French forces from the reactionary and intolerable exactions, amputations and suppressions of basic freedoms under jihadist rule in the northern cities, it is important to understand the heavy hand of imperialism in Mali's highly distorted economic development that has been long opposed and exposed by revolutionary and nationalist political movements against the regime and in the region.

Ethnic groups, the national question and Islam

The Tuareg minority, related to the Berbers of North Africa's coastal mountains, is itself composed of several different tribal groupings. Together with people of Arab origin, Tuaregs are estimated to make up 10 percent of the 15 million total population and live primarily in the North. Since 1960 Tuaregs have led four separate rebellions against the central Malian government and its neglect of the northern region, centered around the demand for autonomy there. Mostly nomadic herders, they are spread across a more or less contiguous area in several countries—Algeria, Libya and Niger as well as Mali.

With significant investments in Mali and ties to both the Malian state and the movement for autonomy in the North, Gaddafi had also incorporated Tuaregs into the Libyan army. Thus after the imperialists invaded, led by then French president Nicolas Sarkozy's Mirage jets in March 2011, and Gaddafi's government eventually collapsed, Tuaregs seized modern Libyan weapons and headed for northern Mali, according to numerous reports. Although this is likely only one reason for the plentiful supply of guns and equipment in Mali, it begins to explain why the poorly organized Malian army was easily defeated when the Tuareg movement took over northern cities and declared Azawad independent.

Then also heavily-armed and well-equipped jihadist forces, organized into groups such as Ansar-al-Dine, Mujao and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQMI), took over militarily as the MNLA pulled back and reportedly offered to negotiate. The French maintain they are bombing only the jihadist groups (with numerous civilian casualties) and many within French political circles are arguing for talks with the MNLA, while others say they are only a political cover for the jihadists who settled in the main town of Timbuktu as well as Gao and others along the Niger River. Competing heads of clans still figure heavily in the social structures of the northern territory and are said to be another factor in what appears to be constant reshaping of alliances and splits between Islamic armed groups. Local residents apparently told reporters that the armed group who invaded and took over Konna last April 2012 was composed of lighter-skinned Tuaregs and Arabs as well as blacks speaking several different languages from Mali and from the neighboring countries of Niger and Nigeria. According to press accounts, Canadian and French citizens also were involved in the militias.

As soon as the French launched their air strikes in mid-January, driving the Islamic forces further into the desert areas, some emboldened Malian army soldiers carried out retaliatory acts against people they suspected of supporting the Islamists (perhaps this was not unrelated to the army's having been routed by them a year ago). This helped fuel press reports that ethnic conflicts were behind the war. In addition, local residents furiously targeted mainly Arab businesses, many run by merchants from neighboring Mauritania with a long history in Mali. When these stores were ransacked, large caches of ammunition were found in some of them that merchants had either stocked willingly or under pressure for the Islamic forces. This increased suspicion that Arab merchants had supported the Islamists during the 10-month occupation.

In fact imperialist meddling does stir up the possibilities for these divisions to take nasty forms among the people. The African Arab slave trade predating colonization also left its mark on ethnic divisions between North and South. Many Malians are quick to say that they have lived for centuries with numerous different languages and tribal groupings, mostly black-skinned, but also mixed (Peul) and lighter skinned peoples, and that these ethnic differences are not the main factor driving this crisis as the media has sometimes implied.

Ninety percent of the Malian people are Sunni Moslems, the remaining 10 percent mostly animist. Thus much of the local population in the northern cities initially did not see a strong distinction between themselves and the Islamists, and did not put up much resistance to them. However, reports say most people quickly turned against the fundamentalists who made life miserable for them by banning radio and television (including televised football events!), beating women, cutting off hands for "blasphemy" or "loose moral behavior," and carrying out executions under the new and much harsher version of Islamic law they rapidly imposed on the population.

In the process of the foreign grab for Africa's land, resources and zones of influence that has also benefited small parasitic ruling classes and elites, imperialist relations of domination and organized dependence become mixed with remaining pre-capitalist social relations. In Mali, this includes a not-so-distant past of slavery, not legally abolished until 1905. Scholars describe a caste-like system in which some tribal/ethnic groups were vassals (often referred to as slaves) of others, including among the Tuaregs. There are reports that the current war has also created the social terrain for "masters" in the North to recuperate their former vassals, or their children, still recognized as belonging to inferior castes, thus stirring up further resentment.

Under Islam, the traditional social code of polygamy and child marriages as well as female genital mutilation represents a huge oppressive burden on Malian women. On top of this, when Islamic fundamentalists occupied the northern cities they began flogging women in public for not fully covering themselves with the newly-imposed veil, reportedly whether they were young girls, grandmothers or pregnant mothers. Suddenly women were not even allowed to talk to their own brothers in public.

Scholars argue that the Islamization of the Malian state has in fact already been well underway for some time and that Moslem law in the form of shariah is already mixed in practice with "modern jurisprudence." The absence of the state from the daily lives of most of the population, heightened by the 2012 coup d’etat, created a vacuum that "moderate" Islamic forces in the High Islamic Council have stepped into more vigorously, both providing services to the people and taking up a cabinet post in the government. The New York Timesreports that they oppose the jihadists and have already played an important political role for the Malian government by negotiating the multimillion-euro ransoms paid for the release of hostages taken in the North by AQMI over the past decade.

Trafficking hub with state complicity fuels parasitism, warlords, and jihadis

In a word, the North is awash in money and guns, but has no paved roads or electricity. In addition to not developing the region, the deposed central government in Bamako is accused of tolerating organized criminal trafficking networks, from which it profited nicely. Customs officials are apparently generously compensated or rare in the porous border area that Mali shares with Mauritania, Algeria and Niger and some Bamako bureaucrats are said to have become rich on sources other than government salaries.

Centuries-old trading routes have become conduits for cigarettes, drugs and other forms of trafficking in the northern region, at the vortex of the southern Algerian and Libyan Sahara, Niger and west from Mauritania. In addition to cocaine, Moroccan cannabis resin and a significant amount of ransom "business" through hostage-taking in the past several years, trade has expanded into guns, through the changing political situation in North Africa. The control of smuggling also appears to be intertwined in the Tuareg political rebellions. At stake are large profits both from trafficking and from taxes numerous networks controlling the routes impose on each other as goods are moved through the region. To try to maintain its authority and keep control over the north, in 2006 the Malian government utilized these rivalries by pitting one group of Tuareg rebels against others.

Geopolitical stakes being played out in Mali

Mali shares borders with seven West and North African countries, all former French colonies and the dynamics of the conflict are clearly regional in nature. Stretching from Senegal on the western coast across the Sahel to Sudan and Chad, Islam is historically the main religion, and most countries have radicalized Islamic movements.

Whatever France's stated immediate aim and belligerent means of achieving it, clearly France has been accelerating its efforts to shore up its influence in the Sahara-Sahel. Contrary to its image after refusing to join the war against Iraq initiated by former president G.W. Bush, the French state has not been idle militarily. Far from it. Sarkozy dispatched troops to Afghanistan and into the conflict in Ivory Coast, and recently special forces into Somalia. Deploying 2,000 Chadian mercenary soldiers in Mali's North, who are not part of ECOWAS but have plenty of experience in previous conflicts in Central African Republic on France's behalf, also figures into its strategic plans, experts point out. Despite the talk of ending "Francafrique," the business daily Les Echos wrote that in Mali the stakes for France are its future presence in Africa.

A new political order and the role of the imperialist powers within it are being fought out and recast in the region. The crumbling of the old order of post-independence states in the Sahel-Sahara has been accelerated by the mass uprisings against the U.S.'s Mubarak in Egypt and France's Ben Ali in Tunisia. There is also the instability and opening that Gaddafi's fall in Libya created, together with other armed conflicts in the Sahel, notably Sudan. And the antagonism between Western imperialism and the political Islam shaping many developments in the Middle East is influencing the internal dynamics and struggle over this recasting of political configurations in West and North Africa as well.

Algeria, also a French colony until France lost a bitter war of independence, is considered by many a key player in the machinations behind the crisis in Mali. In worrying that France may finds itself bogged down in Mali like the U.S. in Afghanistan, Le Monde writes that it must rely on the Algerian army. At the same time Algeria's links with the U.S. have grown steadily stronger in the "fight against terrorism" since the 1990s when the Algerian army carried out massacres of both civilians and armed jihadists following the Islamist electoral victory. This has included significant provisions of arms.

The U.S. is increasingly a major player in this geopolitical recasting of the region, through active intelligence bases in several countries, training soldiers and solidifying ties with the leadership of a number of West African armed forces. The U.S.-Africa Command, or Africom, was set up under George W. Bush in 2008 expressly for the purpose of monitoring Islamist forces and preventing their implantation in a West African state where they could find a haven. According to Rudolph Atallah, former U.S. director of counterterrorism for Africa, the Sahel is a "destabilized region with ethnic conflict that if not dealt with quickly many disgruntled groups will be recruited by Al Qaida." He said that military intervention is one approach the U.S. is considering in Mali, while assisting France and helping to pay the bill. U.S. drones are already flying in Malian skies. In fact it appears that the imperialists are actively destabilizing the region for an outcome more to their liking, sometimes cooperating and sometimes acting on their own. Already huge camps of Malian refugees fleeing the fighting sprawl along the borders and are causing tensions with neighboring states.

Economic interests and particularly exploring new energy sources also underpin the scramble to reshape states and political configurations in the Sahel. France is heavily dependent upon uranium deposits in Niger for its nuclear power. Several imperialist countries, together with Algeria, Qatar and China (a rising aggressive presence throughout Africa) have their eye on the untapped gas fields, oil and uranium deposits apparently lying under the northern desert sands in Mali. China recently constructed a third bridge in Bamako and in many African countries it has combined commercial penetration with infrastructure development.

For the people of Mali nothing good can come out of French imperialist military intervention, with or without West African or UN troops to project a different image, or out of religious rule. In fact, imperialist domination has provided the conditions for obscurantism to persist and grow in new forms. Both imperialism and Islamic rule maintain the Malian people in a position of continued subordination to dominant interests and the whole ensemble of economic and social relations they need to break out of to build a radically different society.

A World to Win News Service is put out by A World to Win magazine, a political and theoretical review inspired by the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the embryonic center of the world's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations.