World People's Resistance Movement - Winnipeg

WPRM-Winnipeg is dead.

2008-01-25T18:08:00.001-08:00

The WPRM Winnipeg is no more. It's not a sad occasion, but it is a time for reflection. The WPRM Winnipeg brought a breath of fresh air to politics in Winnipeg, infusing it with some much needed youthfulness and a radical, uncompromising spirit of internationalism. It helped train a new generation of activists in this city with this outlook, and those effects will last for many years to come. Overall, there is much to be proud of, and little to regret.

There is much to mull over and sum up. Questions of what was done right, and errors made. It's unlikely that there will ever be a neat and tidy verdict from an experience that was so rich and contradictory. For its activists, the WPRM Winnipeg was like a university of struggle, and like any university, some students have dropped out, and some have graduated - ready for the next challenge.

It is for this reason that although we will close up the Winnipeg chapter, we do not feel defeated. Movements come, movements go. What is important is that we learn from each period of struggle to better prepare ourselves for what comes next.

Today, new forms organization, new thinking, and new styles need to be developed to help blaze the path ahead. And there's lots of us around that will be working hard to blaze this path. We encourage all of our friends and supporters who continue to be fed up with this system to hook up and get down for what comes next. After all, imperialism hasn't given up, so why would we, and why should you?

See you at the barricades.

With love,

The (former) WPRM - Winnipeg.

New Document Now Out!

2007-05-19T20:06:00.000-07:00

Our new document is now on the web.

Notes on Afghanistan is the WPRM-Winnipeg's new document on the topic of Afghanistan and Canada's involvement in the Caspian Sea Region in general. One article is more broadly based on the history of Canada's so-called 'peacekeeping', while other articles discuss Afghanistan more directly.

Check it out for yourself & let us know what you think.

[Link is back to working again. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. Downloading may take a few minutes. You may have to save the file to your computer first in order to be able to open the document.]

Click here to download the PDF.

If you are having trouble with that link, try here:

http://parisar.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/notes_on_afghanistan4.pdf

Need Acrobat reader? Download it here.

2007-03-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

We received the following message. We encourage all of our readers and supporters to attend this event. The war on Iraq remains the fulcrum for much of the struggle against imperialism, and all those opposed to the current global offensive led by the US, opposed to Canada's occupation of Afghanistan, or opposed to the fucked-up state of things in general should be out, loud and in numbers. - WPRM-Winnipeg
____________________________________________________________________________________
March 17 Rally

On the Fourth Anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq the Peace Alliance Winnipeg participates in the Cross Canada Day of Action with two events:
· 12:30 p.m. Legislature: March Against the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - Canadian Troops Out Now!
· 2 p.m. Broadway Disciples United Church (Broadway and Kennedy): Following the march there will be a panel discussion with Lesley Hughes (journalist), Cindy McCallum (National Director, Prairie Region Canadian Union of Postal Workers) and Dr. Khelil Assil

END the wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan.
BRING Canadian and US troops home immediately.
REJECT the Canada-US military partnership

Does the World Need More Canada?

2007-02-02T13:40:00.000-08:00

[We received the following from the winnipeg chapter of the New Socialist Group - WPRM (Winnipeg)]

Does the World Need More Canada?

Was Bono right? Does the world need "more Canada"?

Join us for panel presentations followed by discussion on Canada's role in Afghanistan, Palestine, Haiti and beyond -- and about what supporters of peace and social justice can do about it.

Thursday, February 8th
7PM
Mondragon Bookstore and Coffeehouse
91 Albert St (in the Exchange District)

Panelists:
Esland Osland (Canada Palestine Support Network and International Solidarity Movement)
A speaker from Winnipeg Canada Haiti Action Network
A speaker from the New Socialist Group.

Organized by the Winnipeg branch of the New Socialist Group.

For more information, contact winnipeg@newsociali st.org
Childcare subsidy available with advance notice.

PLEASE FORWARD TO OTHER INTERESTED FOLKS!

2007-01-14T10:24:00.000-08:00

[We received the following release on this upcoming action. This is an extremely important issue and we encourage our supporters to attend - WPRM(Winnipeg)]

Winnipeg Public Vigil:
Monday, January 15 - 12:15 p.m.
391 York Ave, Winnipeg
(Citizenship & Immigration Canada
between Kennedy & Edmonton)

* Wear orange to symbolize persons unfairly detained
* All invited to join a 24-hour solidarity fast
* Dress WARMLY!

www.scmcanada. org/manitoba

WINNIPEG - Join us on January 15, Martin Luther
King Day, to show solidarity with Canada's secret
trial detainees and the demand the closure of
'Guantanamo North' prison in Kingston, Ontario.

January 15 marks day 51 of a hunger strike by
secret trial detainee Mohammad Mahjoub, currently
being denied medical care at Kingston, Ontario's
Guantanamo North facility. Fellow detainees
Mahmoud Jaballah and Hassan Almrei will mark 40
days of their hunger strike, protesting their
conditions of detention under Canada's draconian
"anti-terror" legislation. (See background info on page 2).

Winnipeg's vigil is part of a national day of
action calling for an end to indefinite detention
and deportation to torture faced by the detainees
and by many in our flawed immigration system.
Join us in the loving spirit of radical,
transformative justice that served as a
cornerstone of the nonviolent civil rights movement!

Contact David Ball (SCM Manitoba) 204.779.9176

In solidarity with the Campaign to End Secret
Trials & vigils in BC, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick & Newfoundland

A Message to the Canadian Revolutionary Congress

2006-12-02T12:01:00.001-08:00

The world situation is being shaped by the furthering of already acute contradictions and conflicts. On the one hand, the imperialists have launched an offensive against the world’s poor and oppressed, through their ‘war on terror.’ On the other, the world’s people have resiliently stood up to confront imperialism, and deal it heavy blows.

In the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, Bush and company, with the support of Canada , declared the right to attack whoever they want, for whatever reasons they concoct, and however they choose to do so. This has led to the increased normalization of atrocities, such as the use of torture, arbitrary detentions, and gross human rights violations in the wars they’ve unleashed. They have launched a crusade, spreading “democracy” in the tradition of brutal imperialist foreign policy. First was Afghanistan , then Iraq , and now they are preparing for Iran .

The ‘war on terror’ has caused incredible hardships and misery for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq . Additionally, through the U.S. ’s regional attack force, Israel , the imperialists have committed terrible massacres in Lebanon and Gaza . While the murders in Afghanistan , Iraq , Lebanon , Palestine are deplorable enough, the U.S. led offensive continues to increase this global rampage. It is within the context of this new phase of world imperialism that the U.S. and its allies like Canada have struck out so viciously.

Far from accepting the new world order – the world’s people have defiantly raised their heads to fight back – to demand an alternative to the McSweatshop world and Jihadist polarization taking place. In France , only a year ago, tens of thousands of youth rebelled justly against the discrimination and hardships imposed upon them by the racist rulers of that country. In Iraq and Afghanistan , although led by Islamic fundamentalist forces, the armed resistance has dealt devastating blows to the imperialist occupations.

In Nepal , a ‘third pole’ has emerged, a genuine liberating alternative to imperialism and reaction in the rural base areas, compromising 80% of the countryside. In these areas gender oppression and oppression of poor peasants are being destroyed while new liberating institutions and forms of government are being created.

These contradictions are burning more fiercely in Canada as they are around the world. First Nations continue to openly rebel – demanding their right to self-determination and land, in some cases defiant to intimidation and violence of police and RCMP. This is a major thorn in the side of Canadian imperialists, who thought they had taken care of the “Native problem” with their assimilation efforts, land thefts, residential schools, and armed force.

Canada ’s participation in the occupations of Haiti and Afghanistan has not been spared the discontent of the people in Canada either, as more and more are demanding Canada Leave Now from both countries! There is a real basis for this to lead to further and determined resistance.

Standing in solidarity with resistance movements worldwide, World People’s Resistance Movement – Winnipeg sends greetings to the formation of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada, and to the efforts of its activists to increase opposition to the world system of imperialism. We especially warmly welcome the RCP’s opposition to Canadian involvement in Afghanistan and Haiti , as well as its support for revolution in Nepal .

We look forward to a bright future of resistance and rebellion, and anticipate the time when common dreams shared by so many for a world without oppression and exploitation can become real.

North, East, South, West,
UNITE THE PEOPLE’S STRUGGLES!

World People’s Resistance Movement – Winnipeg

2006-12-02T11:59:00.000-08:00

La situation internationale est marquée par l’approfondissement des contradictions et conflits qui étaient pourtant déjà aiguisés. D’une part, sous le couvert de la « guerre au terrorisme », les impérialistes ont déclenché une grande offensive contre les pauvres et les oppriméEs. D’autre part, les peuples du monde se lèvent sans cesse et confrontent l’impérialisme en lui infligeant de durs coups.

Au lendemain des événements du 11 septembre 2001 et avec l’appui du Canada, George Bush et ses acolytes se sont arrogés le droit d’attaquer qui ils veulent, pour quelque raison que ce soit, et de la manière qui leur convient. Depuis, les pires atrocités comme la torture, les détentions arbitraires et d’autres violations grossières des droits de la personne se sont accrues. Bush et ses alliés ont lancé une véritable croisade visant supposément à répandre la « démocratie » dans la plus pure tradition de la politique étrangère impérialiste la plus brutale. Ils ont d’abord attaqué l’Afghanistan ; puis, ce fut l’Irak ; et maintenant, c’est l’Iran qui est dans leur ligne de mire.

La « guerre au terrorisme » a causé d’incroyables difficultés et accentué la misère pour les peuples de l’Irak et de l’Afghanistan. En outre, par l’intermédiaire de cette force d’attaque états-unienne qu’est l’État d’Israël, les impérialistes ont commis de terribles massacres au Liban et dans la Bande de Gaza. Comme si les assassinats massifs qu’ils ont commis en Afghanistan, en Irak, au Liban et en Palestine n’étaient pas suffisants, les États-Unis poursuivent leur offensive, aggravant d’autant ce saccage global. C’est dans le contexte de cette nouvelle phase de l’impérialisme mondial que les États-Unis et leurs alliés comme le Canada ont choisi de frapper de manière encore plus vicieuse.

Loin d’accepter ce nouvel ordre mondial, les peuples du monde ont levé la tête avec défi et contre-attaqué ; les peuples exigent une alternative à la polarisation qui se développe entre les « McSweatshop » d’un côté, et les partisans du djihad de l’autre. En France, il y a à peine un an, des dizaines de milliers de jeunes se sont révoltéEs contre la discrimination et les difficultés de tous ordres que les dirigeants racistes leur imposent. Bien qu’elle soit dirigée par des fondamentalistes islamistes, la résistance armée en Irak et en Afghanistan a su porter des coups dévastateurs aux occupants impérialistes.

Au Népal, un « troisième pôle » a commencé à émerger dans les bases d’appui rurales, qui s’étendent sur près de 80% du pays ; ce pôle représente une alternative authentiquement libératrice à l’impérialisme et la réaction. Dans ces régions, l’oppression de genre et celle des paysans et paysannes pauvres sont mises en déroute, au fur et à mesure que de nouvelles institutions et de nouvelles formes de gouvernement sont mises en place.

Ces contradictions, qui caractérisent le monde actuel, brûlent de plus en plus férocement au Canada. Les Premières nations se révoltent de plus en plus ouvertement, exigeant le droit à la terre et à l’autodétermination, et elles n’hésitent pas à confronter l’intimidation et la violence de la GRC et des autres corps de police. Il s’agit là d’une épine importante dans le pied des impérialistes canadiens, qui croyaient s’être débarrassés du « problème autochtone » grâce à leur politique d’assimilation, au vol des terres autochtones, à la mise sur pied des pensionnats indiens et au recours à la force armée.

La participation du Canada à l’occupation d’Haïti et à celle de l’Afghanistan n’a pas été épargnée elle non plus. Le mécontentement de la population canadienne ressort de plus en plus fortement, alors que monte l’exigence du retrait immédiat des forces canadiennes de ces deux pays. Il existe une base réelle pour que se développe une résistance solide et déterminée.

En solidarité avec l’ensemble des mouvements de résistance à l’échelle internationale, le Mouvement de résistance des peuples du monde – Winnipeg (World People’s Resistance Movement) transmet ses salutations à l’occasion de la formation du Parti communiste révolutionnaire du Canada, et salue ses militantes et militants qui œuvrent à renforcer l’opposition au système impérialiste mondial. Nous tenons à souligner plus particulièrement l’opposition du PCR à l’implication canadienne en Afghanistan et en Haïti, de même que son soutien à la révolution au Népal.

Nous prévoyons avec vous un brillant avenir de résistance et de révolte et anticipons déjà le jour où nos rêves communs, qui sont partagés par tant de gens souhaitant vivre dans un monde sans oppression ni exploitation, deviendront enfin réalité.

Nord, Est, Sud, Ouest,
UNISSONS LES LUTTES POPULAIRES !

Mouvement de résistance des peuples du monde (World People’s Resistance Movement) – Winnipeg

Comrades Gaurav and Kiran released from prison!

2006-12-02T11:54:00.000-08:00

We received the following from WPRM Europe

Dear Comrades and Friends,

We have received the following additional information about the release of Comrades Gaurav and Kiran.

According to press reports they were released from theJalpaiguri Central Jail in India at 7.45 pm onThursday (30 Nov.). In addition it is being reportedthat 13 other people who were arrested along with themwere also released. Press reports further state thatthey were met by "jubilant crowd" of "hundreds ofpeople" (Reuters) "shouting 'Down with Nepal'smonarchy'" as they left the jail.

It is being reported that "The West Bengal StateGovernment had Tuesday ordered the local authoritiesto expedite the release. Following the order, policewithdrew the cases filed at three different policestations in Jalpaiguri and Matigarha police station ofSiliguri against them." This once again showing thatthe cases against them were politically motivated fromthe start and not based on any "violation of the law".

After leaving the jail they traveled to Kakarvitta, onthe Nepalese side of the border with India. Accordingto the Hindustan Times, "hundreds of people waited fortheir 'national heroes'" as they arrived in the town.Upon arriving in Kathmandu on Friday they were greetedby CPN(M) Chairman Prachanda at a public gathering andreceived "extended applause" from a crowd of "2,000people" (AFP News) in attendence.

Both comrades have stated their intentions ofreturning to active revolutionary politics and thankedthose who supported them during their period ofimprisonment.

Welcome Back Comrades Gaurav and Kiran!Free All Nepali Political Prisoners Still Held inIndia and China!Imperialists and Reactionaries: Hands Off Nepal!

“The chain of violence against women goes back thousands of years and is long enough to cross every border and encircle the world”

2006-12-02T11:53:00.001-08:00

27 November 2006. A World to Win News Service.

A very wide range of forces in a growing list of countries marked 24 November as International Stop Violence Against Women Day. The Women’s 8 March organization (Iran-Afghanistan) put out the following leaflet on that occasion:

Just as US soldiers gang-raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl named Abeer and then burned her alive, in Neka, a small village in northern Iran, the heart of Atefeh’s aunt burned too. Atefeh was only 15 when the Islamic murderers hanged her after raping her.

At a time when Islamic warlords in Afghanistan stoned Amina to death, the horror of the rain of stones made Hajieh’s heart tremble in Jolfa prison in Iran. In another Iranian prison, Khyrieh cried, “Don’t stone me, just hang me”.

At the same time as patriarchal young men in a Paris suburb set 18-year-old Sohane on fire, 16-year-old Marjan in Iran burned herself alive to avoid marrying a man as old as her grandfather. A little later Sumara in Pakistan died because she had been burned over most of her body. She died without saying that it was her husband who had done this.

At a time when Kolsum, a 7-year-old girl from Somali was circumcised, her cry was intertwined with the sorrowful cries of 9-year-old Maryam on her wedding night, when her doll was taken away from her and she became a bride.

Sindisou has AIDS. Men have raped her many times. When she was 3 years old, her grandfather raped her. At the same time, Fadima in Sweden was killed by her father and brother.

Marie Trintignant died after being beaten by her boyfriend, a famous French singer. A little later, Nadia, an Afghani poet, was murdered by her husband. Around the same time Lisa and Joyce in the US were raped and then murdered by unknown men.

As Natalie was waiting for a client in an Amsterdam brothel window, a ship carrying a regiment of sex slaves was harbored in Hamburg.

At a time when hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women lost their lives during the years as the US and its allies imposed sanctions, millions of women in Africa lost their lives due to war or the consequences of war, and their sisters were raped in the thousands by soldiers in Bosnia.

The international chain of violence has joined together millions of women. The violence that more than three billion women in all corners of the globe experience daily. In cities, in villages, at home or at work, in the streets… A chain that is welded at one end to the state and at the other to domestic violence.

The chain of violence against women goes back thousands of years and is long enough to cross every border and encircle the world.

If the struggle and resistance of the women all over the world has shaken the shackles of violence, the uncontrolled belligerence of capital and the new world order has increased their reach and intensity. Poverty, death, sickness, hunger, illiteracy, slavery and unemployment in the present world have ever more tightened the shackles of violence around our hands and legs.

But as this violence is increasingly globalized, the struggle and resistance of women is also taking on an increasingly international dimension. We hear the echoes of the struggle and each other’s resistance from far in the distance, and our hearts beat faster. We draw inspiration from each other’s struggles, and we feel proud and are encouraged by our victories. Any advance women make in any part of the world is our own.

As we women become more conscious, we understand that this violence is a tool in the hands of the patriarchal and class system in order to consolidated and establish our subjugation. We also understand that this violence is not controllable, unless women’s subordinate status is overthrown. Domination over women will not disappear peacefully, because standing guard over it is the power of the patriarchal and class system. The liberation of women depends on overthrowing the dominant reactionary system in the world.

Here we are in our millions, with the strong ties between us, ready to shatter the shackles of our historic oppression and slavery and lay the foundations on which a society without oppression and exploitation can be built. We must quicken our steps forward, because we are late. Time is knocking at our door.

(For more information: www.8mars.com)

Why is there civil war in Iraq?

2006-12-02T11:51:00.000-08:00

part 2: Did US deliberately foment this civil war?

27 November 2006. A World to Win News Service. The existence of similar situations in countries victimized by imperialism has led some journalists and political organisations, and a broad section of people, especially in the oppressed countries, to believe that the US has deliberately fanned the civil war in Iraq. There are reasons and unanswered questions that lend credit to these theories.

Despite their present pious protestations to the contrary, the US and other imperialists involved in the occupation of Iraq were not taken by surprise when the civil war started. They were not completely unaware of the consequences of their policies. Some imperialist strategists had predicted such an outcome long before the invasion. As Stephen Zunes documents (Antiwar.com) , “Some of the war’s intellectual architects acknowledged as much: In a 1997 paper, prior to becoming major figures in the Bush foreign policy team, David Wurmser, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith predicted that a post-Saddam Iraq would likely be ‘ripped apart’ by sectarianism and other cleavages but called on the United States to ‘expedite’ such a collapse anyway.”

How did they plan to expedite it?

The well-known London-based journalist John Pilger wrote, “The real news, which is not reported in the CNN ‘mainstream’, is that the Salvador Option has been invoked in Iraq. This is the campaign of terror by death squads armed and trained by the US, which attack Sunnis and Shias alike. The goal is the incitement of a real civil war and the break-up of Iraq, the original war aim of Bush’s administration. The Ministry of the Interior in Baghdad, which is run by the CIA, directs the principal death squads. Their members are not exclusively Shia, as the myth goes. The most brutal are the Sunni-led Special Police Commandos, headed by former senior officers in Saddam’s Ba’ath Party. This unit was formed and trained by CIA ‘counter-insurgency’ experts, including veterans of the CIA’s terror operations in Central America in the 1980s, notably El Salvador.” (The New Statesman, 8 May 2006)

Among the permanent advisors to the Special Police Commandos is James Steele. An interview with him reveals he is “one of the United States military’s top experts on counter-insurgency. Steele honed his tactics leading a Special Forces mission in El Salvador during that country’s brutal civil war in the 1980’s. Steele’s presence was a sign not only of the Commando’s crucial role in the American counterinsurgency strategy but also of his close relationship with Adnan. Steele admired the general.” The reference is to the head of the Special Commandos, Adnan Thabit, a Sunni and former Baathist cadre – and, according to the interviewer, a man who doesn’t mind admitting a taste for torture and murder. (“The Way of the Commandos,” by Peter Maass, The New York Times Magazine, 1 May 2005)

Referring to the civil war in Iraq, British journalist Robert Fisk quotes a security official from Damascus whom, Fisk says, “I have known for 15 years”. The man reported, “One young Iraqi man told us that he was trained by the Americans as a policeman in Baghdad and he spent 70 percent of his time learning to drive and 30 percent in weapons training. They said to him: ‘Come back in a week.’ When he went back, they gave him a mobile phone and told him to drive into a crowded area near a mosque and phone them. He waited in the car but couldn’t get the right mobile signal. So he got out of the car to where he received a better signal. Then his car blew up.” (Independent, 26 April 2006)

Fisk continues: “Just who these ‘Americans’ might be, my source did not say. In the anarchic and panic-stricken world of Iraq, there are many US groups – including countless outfits supposedly working for the American military and the new Western-backed Iraqi Interior Ministry –who operate outside any laws or rules. No one can account for the murder of 191 university teachers and professors since the 2003 invasion.”

This can be connected to controversy about counterinsurgency tactics some two years ago, when some U.S. strategists began to suggest that the occupation adopt the “Salvador option”. A “senior military officer” told Newsweek, “We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing the defensive.” This very clearly shows Washington’s desperation in the face of a war that was going worse and worse. The US-based magazine continues, “The Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still secret strategy in the Reagan administration’ s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s.” (14 January 2005) ”

According to Newsweek, following the Salvador model, the Pentagon “would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria”. In May 2005, similar details were revealed in a New York magazine article entitled “The Salvadorization of Iraq?”

American Congressman Denis Kucinich took these reports seriously enough to write a letter to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “This program in El Salvador was highly controversial and received much public backlash in the U.S., as tens of thousands of innocent civilians were assassinated and ‘disappeared’ ...According to the Newsweek report, Pentagon conservatives wanted to resurrect the Salvadoran program in Iraq because they believed that despite the incredible cost in human lives and human rights, it was successful in eradicating guerrillas”. The letter also refers to an article in Prospect magazine (1 January 2004), which according to Kucinich says, “$3 billion of the $87 billion to fund operations in Iraq was designated for the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. According to the Prospect article, experts predicted that creation of this paramilitary unit would ‘lead to a wave of extra-judicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists.’ The article further described how the bulk of the $3 billion program, disguised as an Air Force classified programme, would be used to ‘support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, and revenge-minded Iraqi security force.’ According to one of the article’s sources, John Pike, an expert on classified military budgets at www.globalsecurity. org, ‘the big money would be for standing up an Iraqi secret police to liquidate the resistance.’” (Taken from “Civil War in Iraq: The Salvador Option and US/UK Policy”, by Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and now a prominent critic of British and American foreign policy, 18 October 2006, available at www.craigmurray. co.uk.)

Here it’s worth pointing out a striking fact: in the early and mid 1980s, when the US government funded and organised the death squads called “Contras” who killed civilians in a campaign to overthrow a pro-Soviet reform government in Nicaragua, as well as similar death squads which carried out horrendous mass murders in El Salvador, John Negroponte was the US ambassador to Honduras. That country, neighbouring both El Salvador and Nicaragua, is where the Contras were armed, trained and based. In a later US Congressional investigation, he was accused of personally running the Contra operation. In June 2004, John Negroponte became US ambassador to Iraq. He served there until the following year when he became Bush’s Director of Central Intelligence (which includes heading the CIA), where he serves today.

The basis for a civil war in Iraq goes back to the formation of the country as a British colony, when the UK instituted the policy of relying on the minority Sunni elite to rule over the Kurds and Shia. Saddam Hussein simply took over that power structure. That cannot be blamed on the US. What the US did do was to deliberately exacerbate the material conditions in Iraqi society that made this civil war possible, in the decade before the US-led invasion, and then set up a political structure that handed power to narrow nationalists (the Kurdish organizations) and the narrowly-based, reactionary Shia religious leaders. It re-empowered traditional ethnic and religious-based forces and encouraged a life-and-death power struggle between them. It created a situation where many people saw little chance for survival except by embracing “their” respective ethnic/religious militias.

In any kind of chaotic situation where there is a fierce contest for power on a vast scale, all sorts of violence among the people inevitably gets unleashed, even in the best of circumstances. In the conditions of Iraq today, where identity politics predominate and none of the main political forces even seeks to unite the people against their real enemies, and where the most reactionary ideas are the best-organized, armed and promoted by the occupiers, both directly and indirectly, then the situation is bound to be especially horrific. It would be wishful thinking to believe that this civil war has no basis and no logic and life of its own independent of the occupation. What is driving this madness is not the spontaneous impulses of the masses but the political goals and nature of the forces contending for power. It may be that the US finds itself in the position of having unleashed forces beyond its control. But the US did act knowingly and deliberately in fomenting this situation.

It might not be possible to verify the extent to which these reports reflected reality or how much of the “Salvador” scheme has materialised, but we can be certain that this pattern of operations has been carried out by US imperialism in many countries where it encountered difficulties in breaking the back of insurgencies.
(Next: The civil war and the US’s proposed solutions)

Nepal Maoists and government sign peace agreement

2006-12-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

27 November 2006. A World to Win News Service.

“This ends the 11 years of civil war in our country,” declared Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) Chairman Prachanda as he and Prime Minister G. P. Koirala signed a “Comprehensive Peace Agreement” at midnight 21 November. The CPN(M) and the seven-party alliance currently governing the country agreed to form a transitional government by 1 December and hold elections for a constituent assembly to establish a new constitution and governmental system by next June.

The government declared the following day a legal holiday and asked people to carry out the traditional Deepwali lighting ceremonies. The CPN(M) called for victory rallies and mass meetings that day.

Friends of the revolution in Nepal around the world are asking how to view this agreement in light of the CPN(M)’s stated objectives when it launched the people’s war 13 February, 1996 – the carrying out of a New Democratic Revolution as the first step toward socialism and communism.

After ten years of people’s war the great bulk of Nepal’s countryside had been liberated by the CPN(M)-led People’s Liberation Army. In areas under the control of the PLA, organs of people’s power were created and real transformations have hammered away at the centuries-old backward social system headed by a king who claimed to be the reincarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. The poor peasants, oppressed nationalities and victims of the vicious caste system stood tall and helped exercise power together with those from the upper castes who broke with Brahmanism. In a few years the formerly horrendous position of women in Nepal went through astounding changes, with women playing a vital role in the revolution, enrolling in the PLA in vast numbers (35 percent of the troops) and starting to create a new democratic culture where more and more women and men married whom they wanted, going against barriers of caste or family.

The armed protectors of the old state known until recently as the Royal Nepal Army has been more and more holed up in the capital and a few major towns and a few heavily fortified barracks in different parts of the countryside, unable to travel except by helicopter or in large convoys. The RNA received substantial support from the US, India, Britain, China and other reactionary states, but is widely hated by people in city and countryside alike. Almost all Nepalese consider the king himself guilty of the murder of his brother and much of the rest of the royal family in a 2001palace massacre. In April 2006 the monarchy in Nepal was further battered by a massive movement in the capital and other cities demanding the end of the monarchy. As a result of this movement and the on-going people’s war, the king was forced to take a back seat and he restored the previously dissolved parliament. The Royal Nepal Army was rebaptised the Nepali Army but the old murderous commanders stayed the same. A ceasefire was declared between the Nepali Army and the People’s Liberation Army. What kind of society, what kind of state, will be established throughout Nepal has been the uppermost question on the mind of the whole society.

Arrangements for the two armies

Under the new agreement, the People’s Liberation Army is to be confined to seven cantonments (designated areas), with three smaller camps within each cantonment. Most PLA members were reported to have arrived in a cantonment by the time the agreement was signed, and the rest were expected shortly. These areas were chosen by a joint committee of the PLA, Nepali Army and UN.

The agreement states, “After placing the Maoist combatants within the Cantonments, all the arms and ammunition except those required for providing security to the Cantonments shall be securely stored and the keys to the single lock shall remain with the side concerned [the PLA]. The UN shall monitor the process of placing the weapons under a single lock by keeping records and fitting a device along with a siren. In case of need to examine the weapons placed under the single lock, the UN shall do so under the presence of the concerned side. All the technical details along with camera monitoring shall be prepared under the joint agreement of the UN, CPN (Maoist) and the Government of Nepal.”

The Nepali Army (ex-Royal Nepal Army), for its part, “shall be confined within the barracks. Guarantee that the arms shall not be used for or against any side. The Nepali Army shall store the same amount of arms in accordance with those of the Maoists and seal it with a single lock and give the key to the concerned side [the Nepali Army].” The rest of the arrangements are the same as for the Maoists, according to the unofficial English translation provided by the Kathmandu daily Kantipur. (Both that translation and the one posted by Nepalnews.com are used in this article. They differ slightly.) According to the media, the PLA has some 35,000 members and the Nepali Army almost three times as many. Since both sides would lock up the same number of arms, this implies that the Nepali Army would not put most of its weapons under lock and key.

The Council of Ministers, which is to be formed by 1 December and include CPN(M) ministers, is to “control, mobilise and manage the Nepali Army as per the new Military Act. The Interim Council of Ministers shall prepare and implement a detailed action plan for the democratisation of the Nepali Army by taking suggestions from the concerned committee of the Interim Parliament. This shall include tasks such as determining the right number of [soldiers in] the Nepali Army, preparing the democratic structure reflecting the national and inclusive character and training them as per the democratic principles and values of the human rights. The Nepali Army shall be giving continuity to tasks such as border security, security of the conservation areas, protected areas, banks, airport, power houses, telephone towers, central secretariat and security of VIPs.” Another section states, “The government shall be taking care of the security arrangements of the Maoist leaders.”

This new government is to provide rations for the PLA members in the cantonments, which is no small matter since it involves concentrations of thousands of soldiers in each one. “The Interim Council of Ministers shall form a special committee in order to inspect, integrate and rehabilitate the Maoist combatants,” the agreement continues. Both armies are forbidden to wear combat uniforms or carry arms “illegally” while travelling outside their confinement areas, or at public gatherings, and to recruit soldiers and procure new weapons. However, “the security forces deployed by the interim government shall have authority to conduct routine patrols, explore in order to prevent illegal trafficking in weapons, explosives or raw materials used in assembling weapons, at the international border or customs points, and seize them.” Further, the Kantipur translation says, “The Nepali Police and Armed Police Force shall give continuity to the task of maintaining the legal system and law and order, as well as criminal investigation as per the norms and sentiments of the Jana Andolan [the April mass demonstrations that forced the king to abandon direct rule] and the peace accord as well as prevailing law.”

UN involvement

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Personal Representative Ian Martin and other UN officials have been closely and directly involved in the process. The next step after the Comprehensive Agreement and a precondition for further steps, Martin said, is a tripartite agreement concerning the details of the management of arms and armies between the government, the Maoists and the UN team he heads. Although high US and EU officials have been on the spot and the US, UK, India, Japan, Norway, Switzerland and Israel have issued statements welcoming the agreement, the UN Security Council has yet to meet to formally consider the subject. Once it issues a mandate, arrangements can be finalized to send UN personnel – 60 monitors to start with, Annan said – tasked with ensuring that neither side can access its stored arms without setting off alarms, being filmed by surveillance cameras and otherwise detected.

A letter sent to the UN by the prime minister and Maoist party chairman in August, reaffirmed by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, asks the UN to play a continuing role in Nepal in terms of five issues: monitoring the human rights situation, helping monitor the 25-point Code of Conduct between the two sides, confining the two armies to their camps and barracks, monitoring the locked-up weapons and acting as observers during the election of the constituent assembly. With the signing of the peace agreement, the UN High Commission for Human Rights has said her organisation would focus on Nepal’s districts and step up monitoring in rural areas.

The interim government, legal system and the king

Prachanda and Koirala reached an extensive draft agreement at a summit conference 8 November that was to be finalized and signed by 16 November. Why this did not happen has not been fully explained, although the 21 November Comprehensive Agreement reaffirms that draft and contains it as an annex. Nor is there any word yet about the interim constitution that was to be finalized and signed by 21 November. That constitution is to be the basis and guide for the new government and its measures. The Comprehensive Agreement states that the existing legal system and constitution will prevail until an interim constitution is adopted, and after that the old laws will continue in force unless they are “inconsistent” with the new constitution. The Agreement also says, “Both parties agree not to operate parallel or any form of structure in any areas of the state or government structures as per the letter of the decisions of 8 November.” Those decisions specify that “The people’s government, people’s courts run by the CPN(Maoist) would be dissolved on the day of the formation of the interim parliament. Interim bodies will be formed at the district, city and village level.”

According to the 8 November document, the interim government to be formed by 1 December will be headed by a cabinet to include Maoists. In addition to 209 current members of parliament from the seven-party alliance, the interim single-chamber parliament is also to include 73 new Maoist representatives. There will also be 48 new seats apportioned to members of “civil society” from among supporters of all of the different political formations in the country. Of the new total of 330 seats, the CPN(M) would have only a few less seats than the biggest party, the Congress Party, and the same number as the second biggest, the UML. Some former members of parliament – 11 according to a newspaper report – deemed “pro-regression” because they “opposed the people’s movement” are to be excluded.

The Comprehensive Agreement strips King Gyanendra of “any authority regarding the governance of the country”, but not of his crown. The property of the former king (Gyanendra’s brother) and his wife is to become a state trust. All properties Gyanendra personally acquired since he took the throne (palace, forests, parks, heritage and archaeological sites) are to be nationalized. The continuation or ending of the monarch is to be decided by a simple majority vote at the first meeting of the constituent assembly, which is to decide the country’s future form of government.

Social issues

Speaking at a gathering of politicians, diplomats and other prominent people after signing the agreement, Chairman Prachanda said, “This moment marks the end of the 238-year-old feudal system,” referring to the date when the monarchy began.

The agreement expresses “determination for the progressive restructuring of the state to resolve existing problems in the country, based on class, cast, religion and sex; reiterating the full commitment towards democratic values and acceptance, including the multiparty democratic system of governance, civil liberty, fundamental rights, human rights, full press freedom and the concept of the rule of law; keeping democracy, peace, prosperity, economic and social change, and independence, indivisibility, sovereignty and self-respect of the country at centre… declaring the beginning of a new chapter of peaceful collaboration by ending the armed struggle throughout the country since 1996, through political consensus between the two sides to ensure the sovereignty of the Nepali people through a constituent assembly, a forward-looking political solution, the democratic restructuring of the state and economic, social and cultural transformation.”

Later, it pledges these specific goals: “To adopt a political system that complies with universally accepted fundamental human rights, a multiparty competitive democratic system, sovereignty inherent in the people, the supremacy of the people, constitutional checks and balances, the rule of law, social justice, equality, an independent judiciary, periodic elections, monitoring by civil society, complete press freedom, people’s right to information, transparency and accountability in the activities of political parties, people’s participation, and an impartial, competent and fair concept of bureaucracy.

“To address the problems related to women, Dalits, indigenous people, Janajatis, Madheshi, oppressed, neglected, minorities and the backward by ending discrimination based on class, caste, language, sex, culture, religion, and region and to restructure the state on the basis of inclusiveness, democracy and progression by ending the present centralised and unitary structure of the state.

“To keep implementing at least programmes of common consensus for the economic and social transformation to end all forms of feudalism.

“To adopt the policy to implement a scientific land reform programme by ending the feudalistic system of landholding, follow the policy for the protection and promotion of national industries and resources. To adopt policy to establish rights of all citizens in education, health, housing, employment and food reserve. To adopt policy to provide land and other economic protection to landless squatters, Kamaiya, Halia, Harwa, Charwa and economically backward sections. To adopt policy to severely punish people amassing properties by means of corruption while remaining in government posts. To form common development concepts for economic and social transformation and justice and to make the country developed and economically prosperous, at the earliest time. To follow the policy to increase investment in industries, trade and export promotion in order to increase opportunities for income generation by ensuring professional rights of the labourers.”

Both sides are to immediately return all seized property, including public and private buildings and land, release all people detained and political prisoners, provide details on the disappeared, allow displaced people to return home without obstacles and “not to discriminate or exert pressure” on people because of the political affiliation of family members. Measures for the relief of those harmed or displaced during the war are to be taken up by a National Peace and Rehabilitation Commission. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission is to “probe about those involved in serious violation of human rights and crime against humanity in course of the armed conflict and develop an atmosphere for reconciliation in the society.”

WPRM meeting on Afghanistan - Oct 19

2006-10-10T18:34:00.000-07:00

Thursday, October 19th • 7pm

University of Winnipeg • Room 0R06 (basement of Bulman Centre)

Come discuss Canada's role in Afghanistan with us.

Come discuss the US led offensive for world hegemony and the Greater Middle East Initiative.

Come discuss the future with us.

World People's Resistance Movement - Winnipeg

wprmwinnipeg@yahoo.ca

Speaking in Winnipeg - International Road Building Brigade Participant

2006-10-10T18:31:00.000-07:00

Saturday, October 21st • 7pm

University of Winnipeg • Room 4M47 (4th floor, Manitoba Hall)

Who are the Maoist rebels leading revolution in Nepal? What are there goals, methods, and aspirations? What has revolution in the countryside meant for Nepal, and where is it headed?

Come listen to a Canadian who participated in the International Road Building Brigade to Nepal in 2005 (with powerpoint presentation.)

Working side by side villagers and People's Liberation Army members, he had the chance to talk with the people making revolution in the Red Base Areas. These are areas inaccessable to the brutal monarchist's army, and where new Autonomous governments have been formed. Come hear Francois Thibault's take on what the decade long 'People's War' means for the world.

A link to a report from the First Road Building Brigade.
http://www.pcr-rcpcanada.org/nepal/report.pdf

Five Reasons... And More... Why Canada Needs to Leave Afghanistan Now!

2006-10-09T18:39:00.000-07:00

Canada must leave Afghanistan now—not because Canadian troops are dying or because Canada’s presence in Afghanistan fails to meet the criteria of a 'peacekeeping' mission. Canada needs to leave because this mission runs against the interests of the people of Afghanistan.

Some will argue this war is bringing democracy to Afghanistan. So, what kind of democracy is Canada bringing to the people of Afghanistan and how is it doing this?

One. Afghanistan is a theocracy. It is a country ruled by religion. The US and its allies brought Hamid Karzai to power. Soon after, this country was renamed the ‘Islamic Republic of Afghanistan’ and sharia law was made the highest law of the land. This means: journalists can be jailed for speaking in favor of women’s rights and people risk execution for converting to Christianity or other religions.

Two. Afghanistan is under occupation which means power is not in the hands of the people, instead sovereignty is in the hands of NATO and the US. The people of Afghanistan will not decide the major policies which they will be forced to live with. What will they be forced to live with? Women being stoned to death for committing adultery, among other horrors.

Three. In rural areas, people are in large part illiterate and impoverished. Warlords dominate the countryside and severely oppress the peasant population and women are especially targeted. Child selling, kidnapping and rape are common. These warlords are allied to the central government that Canada helped into power. The warlords have so much control over the countryside that people can’t organize meaningful opposition. The elections have not liberated anyone–they have served their objective—to legitimize the new government for public opinion.

Four. In many ways, living under the occupation is worse than living under the Taliban. There is little infrastructure. Life for women has become more dangerous as they face a greater risk of being raped. Unemployment is rampant. Peasants are indebted to rural moneylenders. And the occupiers will point to the Taliban and other political forces to excuse their actions. “You’d be living under them if it weren’t for us.” Too bad the occupiers are in the process of creating a miserable society within their firm grip.

Five. It is up to the people of Afghanistan to begin developing their country in a positive direction. The end of the occupation will not guarantee that the Taliban won’t return victorious. But, most Afghans justifiably hate the Taliban and it is quite possible that Afghans, without any foreign leadership, would be able to defeat the Taliban and forces similar. This said, the occupation of Afghanistan guarantees prolonged suffering and ironically serves pro-taliban sentiment.

These are only five reasons why Canada must leave Afganistan...

There are many more reasons.

A message from the World Can't Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime Steering Committee on Oct. 5

2006-10-08T14:20:00.000-07:00

The following is being read at Oct. 5 rallies around the country:

A day we’ve all been waiting for is happening. We are standing up together, all over the country, determined to carry forward a great movement to drive out the Bush Regime. This movement is made up of many people of many different viewpoints and backgrounds---all uniting to accomplish something that must be done. This audacious and historic venture is born of urgent necessity. “The Bush Regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.”

In just the past year we have seen:

Government spying--bolted into law;
Alito & Roberts - installed in the Supreme Court;
The Patriot Act passed - again;
Theocratic anti-abortion and anti-gay laws - spreading intolerance;
War in Iraq--more murderous;
War on Lebanon - approved and fueled;
War on Iran - in preparation;
Cuba, Venezuela and other countries in their sights;
Torture - legalized.

The act passed last week stripped the fundamental right of habeas corpus for 14,000 detainees in secret prisons around the world and to anyone anywhere that the president accuses of being an enemy combatant - all without any real opposition in the halls of power.

This is how fascism happens here, with an orderly transfer of power to the executive branch, to a president and administration claiming war time powers - in a war promised to last generations; to a president who lied about Iraq and is now laying plans for a catastrophic war with Iran; to a president who believes he is on a mission from God.

This is indeed a defining moment. It is not too late to stop this fascist trajectory. But if it goes unopposed by the people of this country, it could be too late. The darkness of this regime descending on the country and the world will succeed in silencing dissent, critical thought, science, the ideals of equality and even the way people think of basic human decency.

Millions of people deeply disturbed by this have been looking for a vehicle to express their outrage. Today in more than 200 cities – 90 of them in 26 states that went for Bush in 2004-- people are finding their courage in this vehicle. We are punching a hole in the political atmosphere of silence and fear that has people going along with a fascist program. And we are opening the way for the kind of resistance we need to stop and reverse the direction this government is taking this society and the world.

Acting in this way, we join with and give support and heart to people all over the globe who so urgently need and want this regime to be stopped. We have to look at ourselves through their eyes – how is the rest of the world seeing us. We have to reckon with how the people of the Middle East, whose countries have been turned to rubble, are seeing us. To be silent when your country is waging endless war, legalizing torture, and taking step after step towards consolidating a police state to "make us safe" is just not conscionable. But when we are out here as we are today, we are demonstrating to the world that there is a difference between the people and the government of George Bush.

Having taken this historic step, we must promise to take this forward to make resistance to all this a reality, now. We must go forward--transforming the anguish, outrage and frustration millions of us feel into truly effective, positive and massive political mobilization. We must stay on the offensive with our opposition to the WHOLE direction of things, and to this regime---including through the immediate period before and after the mid-term elections.

We must not stop, we must go forward. No matter who is elected, we ourselves, the people, by our OWN active initiative, have to now set entirely different political terms than the ones presently accepted as “realistic”.

We must not stop.

It is time to change the terms of discourse. It is not acceptable, at a time when the Supreme Court is getting ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, for the opposition to be saying that the right of a woman to control her own body is expendable.

It is not right for the terms of debate on war in Iraq to be “No exit till victory v. sending more troops”. It’s totally unacceptable that in a civilized country there would even be a debate about torture - or that the opposition is only how to regulate and legalize it.

We must not stop. There is time but there is very little time. We have to change the political landscape so everyone has to respond to what hundreds of thousands of people are now actively on a mission to accomplish: to drive out this criminal regime and to repudiate, to reject, to put beyond the pale the whole immoral and unjust program of this regime.

We have taken a gigantic step today - now we have important plans to make, including over the next days and weeks. So, as you end this day, know that this is not one of those demonstrations you march and go back home to the same old same old. What do you do when there is warning of a tsunami coming your way? You make plans for emergency mobilization. And we are going to do just that.

In one week, we are calling for MASS MEETINGS – where thousands across the country must come to be part of summing up what we have accomplished and be part of planning how to go forward, rapidly expanding our capacity. We’ll discuss “how do you drive an illegitimate regime from power?” We have very important plans for what the next ambitious and necessary steps this movement should make.

In the meantime we must not lose an ounce of momentum - immediately getting other people to join us. To keep the profile and message of World Can’t Wait pulsing through the political atmosphere over the next 6 weeks. We are calling on people to:

1) Be out in the streets - be out in the public square. Wear orange. Wear orange armbands. Decorate yourself and the city with orange Emergency crime tape to symbolize those being disappeared and tortured in our name. Pick a busy area in your city and be there at the same time and day for the next 6 weeks, creating a culture of resistance in song and theater, holding speak-outs on the “Your Government” indictments, making exhibits and showing films. We’ll be ready to respond to an October, or November surprise by the Bush Regime.

2) Today is a gigantic step forward in starting the society-wide debate needed for people in their millions to act even more powerfully. So we are calling today for STATE OF EMERGENCY TEACH-INS to take place before the end of October that can carry out emergency education on each of the “Your Government” indictments found in our Call. We are out to wake people up to what is going on, in their name. We will make the case that this regime is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

So go home with something orange and wear it the rest of the month. Come to the meeting next week and plan to bring your courage and your imagination, bring your resources and your political connections because together we will plan our next steps needed to drive out this Regime before 2008.

Because Bush, because Cheney, because Rumsfeld, because Rice, because Gonzales must all be driven out, they must leave the White House politically repudiated and thoroughly discredited as the war criminals that they are. Anything short of that is unacceptable to the world, to our children, to the future.

THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN - WHICH ONE WE GET IT UP TO US

------------------------

The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime

866 973 4463

Nepali comrade Gaurav re-arrested in India

2006-10-08T14:19:00.000-07:00

2 October 2006. A World to Win News Service. Indian police have re-arrested Chandra Prakash Gajurel (comrade Gaurav), a leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), on new charges on the day he was scheduled to be freed after serving a three-year prison sentence.

As he was about to leave India in August 2003, the CPN(M) Political Bureau member was arrested at the airport in Chennai, in the state of Madras, for a passport violation, usually considered a minor offence. The Indian government’s efforts to deport him to Nepal were blocked after a legal battle, and he remained in jail without charges. Then on 17 September 2005, the courts ordered that he be held for a year under the National Security Act, and in May 2006, he was sentenced to serve three years imprisonment, starting from the day of his arrest, for the original passport violation. Taking into account the jail terms he had already served, Comrade Gaurav was scheduled for release 18 September.

A crowd of at least a hundred supporters was on hand at 7 am outside the Chennai prison to greet him that day. But before he could even leave the prison grounds, he was re-arrested at the request of the police in the state of West Bengal, where charges of waging war against India have been filed against him. According to the Indian daily The Hindu, concretely this means that he is being accused of taking part in secret meetings with a view to disturbing law and order.

In a letter, comrade Gauravs lawyer Alagarsamy Rahul described the scene outside the prison that morning. As the crowd, which included 15 lawyers, was waiting for his release, a convoy of six vehicles which contained heavily armed police numbering nearly 50 took Gajurel to an unknown location. Neither Gajurel nor his lawyers were informed of the details of the arrest, if any, made inside the prison premises. The entire crowd blocked the road peacefully, obstructing the passage of the police vehicles, and claimed that they had a right to be informed of the details of the arrest. Mr Gajurel was sitting in the police van without being allowed to talk to his lawyers.

Thereafter, the crowd was informed that Mr Gajurel was being taken to Chennai Magistrate Court. The entire crowd followed the police vehicles in two-wheelers and three-wheelers, etc. Mr Gajurel was taken to a police station situated at Egmore. With great difficulty, three of the lawyers were permitted to meet him.

The lawyers letter goes on to describe the circumstances of the arrest and the arguments before the Magistrate Court that day, where comrade Gauravs defenders argued that his detention was illegal from a number of different angles. In particular, when the police claimed in court that they had arrested comrade Gaurav outside the prison, a potentially decisive issue, 11 lawyers filed affidavits swearing that this was a lie. More than 300 people assembled before the prison while these court proceedings were taking place. Ignoring police orders to disperse, they entered the courtroom, where they remained for several hours.

Finally, in response to a motion brought before it, the Madras High Court intervened that same afternoon, ordering that comrade Gaurav not be removed to West Bengal until further hearings were held. He was denied bail and sent back to Chennai prison. However, according to reports, in late September hearings the Madras High Court ruled that the West Bengal police should be allowed to take comrade Gaurav to that state to face the new charges.

The CPN(M) says that although India released 11 imprisoned Nepali Maoists in August, it is still holding more than 130 CPN(M) leaders and cadres, including the senior comrade Kiran (Mohan Baidha).

The World Peoples Resistance Movement (www.wprm.org ) calls this situation another outrageous example of the on-going efforts by the Indian authorities to use comrade Gaurav and Kiran, as well as the other Nepali political prisoners being held in India jails, as bargaining chips in their efforts to control political developments and the peoples struggle in Nepal.

Statement from the Provisional Organizing Committee (Europe)

2006-07-25T18:59:00.000-07:00

World People’s Resistance Movement

Stop Israeli Aggression Against Lebanon!

End the Zionist/Imperialist Occupation – Free Palestine!

Once again the world is witnessing a wave of murderous aggression and destruction unleashed by the Zionist state of Israel with the support of the major imperialist powers, most especially the US and UK. This time not only are the people of Palestine the target, but those of Lebanon as well.

For the last two weeks Israel has waged a massive military offensive against Lebanon that has already resulted in over 400 dead and 1000 injured in that country – almost all of them civilians. Between 700,000 and a million Lebanese have been made refugees: almost 25% of the entire population. In addition to targeting civilian areas for massive aerial bombardment, including the use of cluster bombs forbidden by international law, the entire civilian infrastructure of Lebanon has been attacked and largely destroyed: airports, roads, bridges, power stations, radio and television stations, telephone facilities, factories and warehouses. Among the “terrorist targets” on Israel’s list was Lebanon’s largest milk producing facility.

Israel has instituted a sea, land and air blockade of Lebanon thus cutting it off from urgently needed supplies of food and medicine. Ambulances and emergency personal have been systematically attacked from the air. And in its typical arrogant fashion the Israeli forces have dropped leaflets on the villages of Southern Lebanon telling the population to leave the area or face attack. At the same time it has destroyed the very roads and bridges leading out of the region and then callously attacked the vehicles of those seeking to flee. In Kosovo the imperialists called such actions “ethnic cleansing”, in Lebanon they call it “war against terrorism” and “fight for democracy”. Or as US Secretary of State Rice has said, from the imperialist point of view this horror scenario represents the “birth pains” of a “new Middle East”.

There is more the enough pain for the people of the Middle East in this new offensive, but little that is new. For decades the have been subjected to imperialist and Zionist domination, occupation and oppression and the rule of feudal overlords who serve imperialist interests.

Israel claims that this offensive is an effort to get back two of its soldiers captured by Hezbollah and/or to stop the Hezbollah from firing rockets into Israel. These claims are a lie. As soon as Hezbollah captured the Israeli soldiers it offered to exchange them for prisoners held by the Zionists. It was only after Israel carried out its massive bombing of Beirut’s most densely populated neighbourhoods that Hezbollah launched its missiles in retaliation. In truth, this offensive was long planned by the US and Israel as part of the overall US-led imperialist offensive for world hegemony and in particular its “Greater Middle East Initiative” which aims to reorganize this strategically vital region firmly under US control. The goal is not just to hit at Hezbollah, but to establish Israel as the armed enforcer of imperialist interests, especially US-interests, in the Middle East – including its unrestricted right to attack any country in the region at will; to force Lebanon to accept US dictates and a foreign occupation force of 30,000 to 50,000 soldiers; and to “shape the battle space” – politically, diplomatically and militarily – for coming attacks in pursuit of the US’s larger goal of forcing regime change in Syria and Iran.

At the same time the attack on Lebanon has been accompanied by an almost total blackout in the Western media of news relating to the on-going Zionist offensive in Gaza and the West Bank. As in the case of Lebanon Israel used the capture of one of its soldiers as an excuse to launch a long planned offensive against the population of these areas in a bid to cement forever its occupation of Palestine. For weeks Gaza – the world’s most densely populated area – has been subjected to unrelenting aerial bombardment, artillery fire and ground invasion. Dozens of civilians have been killed and hundreds injured. Giving the whole world a lesson of what they mean when they talk of “democracy”, the Zionist forces have systematically destroyed the governmental facilities of the Palestinian Authority (PA) while arresting or driving into hiding two thirds of the elected PA-government. They have targeted vital sections of the civilian infrastructure including roads, bridges and Gaza’s only power station resulting in over half of Gaza having no electrical power for hospitals, water pumps and sewage treatment. Attacks on such targets are forbidden by international law and a number of well-known human rights organizations such as Amnesty International have classified them as war crimes and called on Israel to immediately cease such action. As usual and as in Lebanon, Israel has ignored these pleas. In an open demonstration of their complete contempt for civilian life, international law and public opinion the Israelis have also instituted a blockade of Gaza limiting and at times even completely stopping the import of food and medicines.

Collective punishment of the civilian population is a tactic of choice for Zionist occupiers. For all their talk of “democracy” and “the rule of law”, the only law these oppressors and their imperialist backers understand is the law of “might makes right”. Israel’s collective punishment tactics are exactly the same tactic that the US-imperialists and its allies are currently using in Iraq and Afghanistan and have used in literally dozens of other countries throughout modern history. And, as many have remarked, it is exactly the same tactic that Nazi Germany used during WWII against the people of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union as well as against the Jewish population of Germany itself.

The tactics are the same in all these instances because the basic interests that are being pursued are the same: the interests of imperialist capital. And the logic of these interests demands the most brutal and merciless subjugation of the great majority of people. Although the oppressors enforcing such collective punishment always call resistance to their rule “terrorism”, such resistance is fully justified – that is the logic of the people. The World People’s Resistance Movement is calling on its activists and supporters and on all people around the world who are opposed to the great injustices being done to the people of the Middle East by the great powers and their Zionist henchmen to turn the outrage and anger over these newest crimes into active and determined resistance to stop this latest wave of aggression and the entire offensive it is a part of.

North, South, East and West:

Unite the People’s Struggles!

Provisional Organizing Committee (Europe)

World People’s Resistance Movement

(July 24,2006)

Email: wprm@wprm.org

Local Contact:

www.wprm.org

June 30 Actions in Colombia

2006-07-13T19:42:00.000-07:00

The WPRM-Colombia and the Anti-imperialist Brigades, a revolutionary organization of the masses that supports the WPRM-Colombia, distributed more than ten thousands of the POC statement demanding the release of the Comrades Gaurav and Kiran and the other Nepali political prisoners in Bogotá, Bucaramanga, Medellin and Pereira.

In Bogotá, at noon, some three dozens of activists demonstrated during half an hour in front of the Indian Embassy. The demonstrators carried a big banner with the message "Free comrades Gaurav and Kiran and all other progressive and revolutionary Nepali Prisoners in India and China —Now!". Three times the demonstrators blocked the Carrera Séptima and the Avenida Chile, one of the main crosses in the city, and where the Embassy is located. Finally the demonstrators marched some five blocks in a zone that is the financial heart of Bogotá, chanting slogans and agitating about the situation of the Nepali prisoners in India and China. Street vendors and low level bank employees supported the demonstrators and some wondered about this kind of action in a zone like that in a country where the oppressors are waging a war against the people.

Before, during and after the demonstration, some other activists make repeated phone calls and faxed (both in Spanish and English) to the Embassy transmitting the message of the protest. In the afternoon, the Secretary of the Mission says that the received dozens of faxes and phone calls about the Nepali revolutionaries and that the Embassy will send the message to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in India.

In Bucaramanga, thousands of leaflets were distributed to university students and to the masses in some neighborhoods. In a meeting of school teachers, the WPRM activists were long applauded when agitating after leafleting to all the teachers. Some activists made long distance calls to the Embassy, both in English and Spanish, including the known human rights lawyer Juan-Jose Landinez who ask for the Ambassador (Mrs. Nilima Mitra) and after introduced himself expressed the WPRM demands. Mr. Landinez was a member of various IEC delegations to Peru.

International Brigade to Nepal

2006-07-06T19:02:00.000-07:00

Report from the Second International Road-Building Brigade
(Britain and Ireland representatives)

As the Nepalese people's struggle against the autocratic feudal monarchy to establish a democratic republic hit a high point during the month of April, it coincided with the arrival from India of the Second International Road-Building Brigade. While the old oppressive and exploitative feudalist world was being attacked and dismantled in the country's towns and cities, the challenge of building the new people's republic was continuing in the liberated base areas of the CPN(M). An important element in this in recent times has been the construction of 91 kilometres of what is known as the Martyrs Road. Organised by the people-elected Magarat Autonomous People's Republican Government in the main base area, mass organisations have been engaged in building what is a motorable road, the moral and material support of the masses helping to create the infrastructure of the new people's society. The Second International Road Building Brigade, drawing its members from Afghanistan, Iran, Scotland and England was gathered with the aim of journeying to Rolpa during April to work on this road.

As the group met up in Nepalgunj, the situation at that time in Nepal saw the country in the grip of nation-wide, anti-monarchist protests and a bandh (shutdown) that not only closed all the shops and commercial outlets but also cleared all motor vehicles from the roads. Trapped in Nepalgunj therefore, across the border from India, we were ideally placed to witness one of the many anti-monarchist protests outside of Kathmandu. A major focus for mass anger was Gyanendra Square, the central monument dedicated to the king. This monument was given 24-hour paramilitary police protection but was still a focus point for the protestors. On our second day in Nepalganj from a distance we saw smoke billowing in the sky above the monument. One man walked past us and motioned for us to take photos, another shouted "hello, namaste, we want democracy okay!" As we approached the monument a crowd of around 100 people had gathered and more police had arrived on the scene. Four piles of tires had been set on fire around the monument, causing the whole monument to the king to be surrounded in smoke. We were all amazed at the audacity of the action, considering the paramilitary guard, especially while the April Movement was only days old. Indeed, there was more to come for the monument to King Gyanendra!

As well as the fires, there were numerous demonstrations throughout the day, every day. Containing large numbers of women, these protests drew many from the Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities. As well as workers, peasants and students, civil servants, including doctors, lawyers, teachers and bank officials marched through the streets. At most of the intersections, the remains of burning tyres were a constant feature, new fires breaking out at regular intervals. The slogans chanted by the protestors left little room for reconciliation. As one of these marches approached the statue of Gyanendra's deeply unpopular grandfather, Tribhuvan, a man with a loudhailer called out, "What does Arayghat want?" the crowd responding with, "Arayghat wants Gyanendra". Arayghat is the royal cemetery, where it seemed many protestors wanted King Gyanendra to end up sooner rather than later! Also popular was the call to "Hang Paras from a tree". Gyanendra's son, Prince Paras is also much hated as a man who has committed both rape and murder but who has proved immune from legal action. These minor protests, the crowds becoming increasingly antagonistic, were set to rise in both numbers and militancy as the campaign intensified and tens of thousands of protestors poured into the cities from the countryside. In its early days however, it was still not strong enough to overpower the armed police, and we witnessed a standoff as the demonstrators wanted to destroy the monument to the King but were not strong enough to break the police lines.

This People's Movement was distinctly anti-monarchy, retaining a general line of being anti-Congress due to the Nepali Congress party being perceived as both too close to the monarchy and renowned for its corruption and its inefficiency in previous governments. Most of the protestors by far appeared to be in favour of a republic, this being recognised as a more modern form of government in contrast to the existing feudal autocracy. Many of those that we talked to, spoke of achieving a British-style constitutional monarchy, although the cultivation of a constituent assembly and a republic were infinitely more popular. Indeed, while trying to maintain that we were tourists inadvertently caught up in the People's Movement (because we didn't want to do anything that would endanger our attempts to get to the liberated zones), we also tried to struggle with some Nepali people about the nature of society in Britain – what they described as "the mother of democracy" – trying to let them understand the role of Britain within the capitalist system of exploitation and the real lack of `democracy' and `freedom' in our country!

"If the SPA fails to move towards a constituent assembly,
then the people will protest again."

There was however, also some concern among the protestors that the Seven Party Alliance leadership would compromise with the monarchy allowing the people's demand for a democratic republic to fall short. One man said to us that "if the SPA fails to move towards a constituent assembly, then the people will protest again." Within these protesting crowds, it was acknowledged that the Maoists were very much a part of the peoples' struggle and therefore part of the democratic agenda. We witnessed constant flows of people coming from the Maoist controlled base areas, and the tractors and trailers that waited outside the city to take them home, which strengthened the movement in the cities. In this way, the protests in the towns and cities tended to increase by tens of thousands as the campaign escalated.

After our work brigade had left, we were told on returning to Nepalganj, by people that had been there, that the movement had grown rapidly. The main protest is reported to have consisted of 60-100,000 people – not bad for a city with a population of around 60,000! In this major demonstration, the crowds once again focused their anger against the monument to King Gyanendra. The police held their line, fired teargas and live ammunition. A human rights worker told us that a child had been shot dead and a woman had died after having first been beaten and then having a tear gas canister explode next to her. This police brutality obviously spurred the protestors to a more radical line. With their ranks packed with the people from the countryside, they were more than a match for the armed police, and the protestors destroyed the statue of King Tribhuvan before returning to the monument to Gyanendra which they smashed with bricks and lump hammers, reducing it to a pile of rubble and raising a sign commemorating the martyrs of the movement and raising the red flag on the fallen structure. As we stood next to the remains of this royal monument, a Nepali man pointed at the rubble and shouted to us in English "this is the future of Nepal!"

In Nepalganj we had met up with the other two members of the brigade, and we spent our time in deep discussion about the events around us. Although the excitement of being witness to the bandh, the historic people's movement in the cities for democracy and a republic to boot the King out of the country, we started to concentrate our minds on how we could travel out of the city and towards the liberated base area, the original object of our journey. However, because of the bandh there was no traffic on the roads except for UN and human rights jeeps and police trucks. After asking around we found it would be impossible to travel by motorised transport, and so, even though we estimated our journey to be at least two hundred kilometres there and another two hundred back, eventually settled on the idea of going by bicycle! For safety reasons, and because two of us were more constricted by time, three of us left by bike while the other two remained in the city to provide support should it be needed. Although it seemed risky, and was certainly a last resort, we decided we would have to rely on our own efforts if we wanted to see more of the country.

However, because of the bandh there were no shops open and so we were forced to sneak back into India where we purchased bicycles. Cycling out onto the Mahendra Highway we were excited at a new chapter of our journey, but soon became worried over practical considerations such as where we would spend the night, whether we could get water and food (the temperatures neared 35°C. Our first stop as night was approaching was the village of Agaiya, around 55km from where we had set off. A Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninists) stronghold, the people appeared to be preparing to walk to Nepalgunj the following day to join the protests there. Fortunately we were able to find lodging and a meal in a peasant's house. As darkness fell, the village children, sitting in a ring singing songs, suddenly decided to play a different game, that of protestors. Influenced by the events that were going on around them, a knot of children marched around the houses chanting, "Gyanendra is a thief, he must leave the country!" We felt refreshed to be in an environment where everyone seemed to be inspired by politics.

"The police used to come from Gorahi to oppress us,
now we go to Gorahi to encircle them!"

After two days of cycling covering 150 kilometres, we eventually reached Gorahi, the last major town garrisoned by the RNA before Rolpa. Here our group encountered more large protests. Again villagers were coming in from Maoist areas to increase the numbers of the protestors, playing a decisive role in the successes of the people's movement. One villager explained to us that "the police used to come from Gorahi to oppress us, now we go to Gorahi to encircle them!" From Gorahi, cycling was impossible due to the steep mountain roads and we were forced to trek on up into the mountains. On the way, we met groups of people going to Gorahi, some taking breaks at the side of the road so women with children could breast feed. We were made to feel very welcome by the locals, some of whom walked with us on our journey. When we stopped in small villagers, someone would invariably walk out to offer us water. Right away, it seemed like a different world.

The hike was a journey of about 60 kilometres, and we were walking with the expectation that we would reach the last police checkpoint before the base area. Along the way, however, our group encountered the village of Holeri which was decorated with red flags and slogans on the walls. There was no last police checkpoint! In fact, the influence of the royal government did not extend 1km outside of Gorahi. A former police outpost, Holeri had been deemed too dangerous to man at night, the police occupying the fortification during the day. The PLA however, broke with its more common tactic of attacking at night to strike in the morning, destroying the outpost and any police that didn't flee. We saw the remains of the outpost, now a pile of rubble, on the outskirts of the village. Now the village walls were decorated with slogans, posters and red flags as the CPN(M) stamped its territory.

We finally reached Tilla Bazaar, nine days after we had been due to rendezvous there, after about 60kms walking through the foothills of the Himalayas! The District Secretary of Rolpa, Comrade Kamal, on hearing of our arrival, walked for two hours across the mountain roads (on flip flops) to meet with us. He made us feel very welcome in the base area and we were lucky enough to be able to spend time in his company. Kamal was a warm and generous man, mingling with all the villagers that we passed through, indistinguishable from the locals even down to his flip flops! He introduced us to Comrade Surya, the Co-ordinator of the road-building project. Out on the Martyr's Road itself, at the group's welcoming ceremony, each member of our group had a mark, or tika, symbolising the blood of the martyrs, put on our foreheads.

When the CPN(M) seized control of the Rolpa District from the monarchist regime, it drove out the local tyrants and carried out widespread land reform. In more recent times, experimental co-operatives and communes have been implemented and new co-operative banks have replaced usurers. At one point we were introduced to Comrade Birat, the head of the People's Cooperative Bank in the Rapti Zone who proudly showed us the bank's documents and talked to us of the oppression of people during the old pre-liberation era, how people were crippled by loans from the feudal regime's bank and by local usurers, whose interest was impossible to repay and which forced many into virtual slavery. When villagers could not pay back loans, they starved. Some were forced to sell their children, especially the girls, many of whom ended up working as prostitutes. Indeed, some of the most obvious oppression we witnessed was that of women. One young man we walked with told us that he had married when he was 17, to a girl who was 15, in an arranged marriage. He also said that this was the norm for their area. His wife was illiterate and spent her time solely rearing children. Another man we had met had told us that he was married to two women, two sisters in fact. Women in Nepal are under a two-fold oppression, that of feudalism and imperialism as well as that of male chauvinism. We knew however, that women in the liberated zones were getting their first opportunities to join the administration of the local areas, to join the party hierarchy and to join the army, and many were occupying high positions. Seeing women working on the road side by side with the men was also a powerful image of how women need to take up the implements of production in their own hands to break the chains of oppression and work towards liberation.

In areas like Rolpa road distances tend not to be measured in kilometres but in the numbers of hours needed to walk. The Martyr's Road is planned to link the town of Nuwagaon to Thawang and Chunwang, and also to connect many of the villages in the interior of Rolpa with the main district capital of Dang, Gorahi. Once complete, the road will greatly improve travel within the district, making it easier for young people to access higher education and enable better access to the likes of medical treatment. We were impressed by the general enthusiasm of the majority of the road workers and spoke to two volunteers who told us that they had come from a far-away village that wouldn't even benefit from the road directly because they wanted to work "for the development of the region and the country". Comrade Surya was eager to point out to us that it also contributes to the development of the world and offers a unique example of development to all the peoples of the world!

It is widely recognised, even among non-Maoists, that the road is an important step in this development. Built purely by the people with no outside help, using pickaxes, spades and dynamite, the road-building project avoids most of the main developmental problems including over-reliance on capital-intensive techniques, and the mindset whereby if modern technology is unavailable the job cannot be done. As a country with a large amount of `foreign aid', the Nepalese are well placed to recognise the problems inherent in such solutions. Given that under such a scheme, labour would normally be paid to build the road, such projects tend to be open to wide-scale corruption that would ultimately ensure the draining away of financing. There is however, no room for corruption in the Maoist project, the people seeing the immediate results of their labour. As for the frequently made accusations by western media that the road-building project depends on forced labour, workers are required to work no more than 15-20 days, once a year. Carried out during the slack agricultural seasons, people work for 8 hours a day, a fact confirmed by people we spoke to who were working on the road itself. Party leaders, cadres and PLA members also do voluntary work on the road throughout the year, working side by side with the people. There were also frequent breaks, the working days broken up by occasional cultural activities of Nepali and local minority singing and dancing. It was interesting to see the role of culture in the liberated zone. In such a poor area culture was usually the domain of the landlord or capitalist, who had time to enjoy their leisure while others secured their profits. On the Martyrs Road however, the smiles on the young dancers' faces, boys and girls, not to mention the workers in the audience, showed us who this new society was oriented towards.

"Our Development, Our Effort"

The CPN(M)'s attempts to develop the country without depending on imperialism are due to these international forces having their own agenda that doesn't coincide with Nepali interests. The Nepali people's interests therefore lie in the development of the country for all, while the imperialist agenda lies in keeping countries that they call, "developing" underdeveloped and dependent on foreign aid, loans, technology and expertise. Using their own strengths to develop their own methods as in Mao's China, the CPN(M) has utilised the road-building project to raise consciousness among the masses. Working under the slogan, "Our Development, Our Effort", this process involves the finding of what can be achieved collectively, increasing the self-confidence of the people, as their own techniques are developed to overcome problems as they emerge.

Walking back to Gorahi, we were to meet many groups of people on the road, again in loose knots, that gave us the lal salaam (red salute) as they returned homewards following the previous days protests in the city. These greeted Kamal and Surya, who travelled with us the first part of the way, in a warm and enthusiastic manner, exchanging news. Among many of these groups, some carried transistor radios, tuned into news reports and playing as they walked. In fact, that very evening King Gyanendra announced that he would recall parliament with immediate effect, and the SPA leadership straight away accepted this concession. We had clearly seen how the masses from the countryside had played a decisive part in the People's Movement. It would be interesting to see, however, just how much the SPA would represent the people's wishes in the next few months, and whether the recall of parliament would in the future be seen as a fundamental step in moving Nepal towards a democratic republic.

In the final analysis we had strong feelings about our journey to Nepal. We had been enthusiastic to be caught up in the People's Movement in the cities, which was an invaluable experience for us, and we were inspired by our firsthand experience of life in the liberated base area, though we would have liked to spend more time there. Anyhow, it certainly proved to be a great education for those of us involved. In deepening our understanding of the revolutionary process as it unfolds in Nepal, we are now better equipped to help build a solidarity movement in our countries to counter foreign interference and media lies about the revolution. As our group said goodbye, Comrade Surya gave a speech as part of our farewell ceremony. Telling all that were assembled, that we were there to counter the lies and misinformation that journalists had been spreading in the west, he explained that the Martyrs Road was not just a road for Dang, but for the whole world. As we left, the gathering, lines of Nepalese clapping, we carried with us Kamal's message: "We from our party request heartily to the people, to democrats from foreign countries, to come here and see the ground reality here with their own eyes, and to describe it materially, and expose such illusions and propagandas, false sayings. We give our solidarity to the people and request their solidarity to our movement here. Now we are fighting to establish a democracy here and we request you all to convey our red salutes to all the people, to our beloved people, to democratic people, and the people who are supporters of the WPRM [World People's Resistance Movement]. Lal Salaam!"

If you would like any more information about the International Road-Building Brigades, or if you are interested in joining a future brigade, send an email to aroadtothefuture@yahoo.com

Interview with WPRM Ireland on visiting Red Areas in Nepal

2006-06-30T17:24:00.000-07:00

An Irish based Maoist and member of World Peoples Resistance Movement recently visited Nepal as part of an International Brigade to construct roads in the Rebel Maoist held areas of Nepal. As well as observing the protests in the cities and villages as he made his way to the Red areas he also worked alongside rebel soldiers, farmers and workers on the Martyrs Road. My interview with him is on the feature page here's a taster.

During our time in Nepalgunj, we met a young man from Kathmandu who was working for a human rights group. One evening, this man who was unaware of our political affiliations, told us of the day that the PLA had attacked the town only several weeks previously. Greatly shaken by the experience, he was to tell us that together with the uniformed soldiers of the PLA, large numbers of local Maoists with guns also appeared, some firing from rooftops in support of the guerrilla fighters.

In the revolutionary strongholds people's courts have been established where along with other issues, cases against women's exploitation have been brought to book with the combined efforts of Village Defence Committees, women's mass organizations and the people. Many cases of land usurpation of widows or single women have been restored to the injured parties through such courts. Not only those guilty of sexually exploiting women, but also many defaulting husbands who have taken to drinking and beating their wives or practicing polygamy, have been disciplined through such courts. Forty percent of PLA soldiers are women (the largest representation of female combatants in any army), 80% are party members, and all of them are volunteers. In practice, this “thinking army” is one where everybody knows whom he or she is fighting for, and why. They are fighting for the people, and so, they are fighting for themselves.

There have however, been instances whereby exclusively female guerrilla squads have been organised, most often taking on the task of dealing with feudal tyrants that have been guilty of sexually exploiting women.

PC: Why did you choose to visit Nepal?

WPRM Ireland: The Chinese are said to have a curse that masquerades as a blessing: ‘May you live in interesting times’. Right now Nepal is going through an interesting and pivotal period of its history. It is a time where, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)'s liberated base areas extend to over 80% of the national territory, including most rural areas, which are home to 85% of the Nepalese people. Landlocked between China and India, the Nepalese interior is largely inaccessible other than by foot, having only an estimated 8,000km of road suitable for motor vehicles in the whole country. Consequently, distances are measured in the number of hours or days it takes to walk, and the majority of Nepalese are cut off from health facilities, schools, and national trade, despite astronomical amounts of foreign aid that had peaked in 2001 to around one-third of the national budget. In the liberated base areas, the CPN (M) has been engaged in building the new People’s Republic of Nepal. An important element in this in recent times has been its project for the construction of 91 kilometres of what is known as the ‘Martyrs Road’. Organised by the people-elected Magarat Autonomous People’s Republican Government in the main base area, mass organisations have been engaged in building what will, on completion, be a motorable road. With the moral and material support of the masses helping to create the infrastructure of the new people’s society, the MAPRG called for international volunteers to come to visit the Martyrs’ Road, participate in its building and take the opportunity to learn from the ongoing revolutionary process that was taking place there, on the ground.

PC: So have International volunteers taken part in the road construction?

As the Nepalese people’s struggle against the feudal monarchy to establish a democratic republic hit a high point during the month of April, it coincided with the arrival from India of the Second International Road Building Brigade of which I was a member. Drawing its members from several countries, including Afghanistan and Iran, the brigade was gathered with the aim of journeying to Rolpa to work on this road. The Martyr’s Road on completion, will eventually link the town of Nuwagaon to Thawang and Chunwang, and connect many of the villages in the interior of Rolpa with the main district capital of Dang, the city of Gorahi. It is believed that the road will greatly improve travel within the district, making it easier for young people to enter higher education and enable better access to the likes of medical treatment. We were impressed by the general enthusiasm of the majority of the road workers and spoke to two volunteers who told us that they had come to work on the road, “for the development of the region and the country”.It is widely recognised, even among non-Maoists, that the road is an important step in this development. Built purely by the people with no outside help, using basic tools such as pickaxes and spades, the road-building project consequently avoiding most of the main developmental problems associated with such a project. These include the tendency towards over-reliance on capital-intensive techniques, and the mindset that if modern technology is unavailable the job cannot be done. A country swamped by ‘foreign aid’, the people of Nepal are well placed to recognise the problems inherent in such solutions. Given that under such a scheme, labour would normally be paid to build the road, such a project tends to be open to wide-scale corruption. This however, is not possible in this project, the people seeing the immediate results of their labour. As for the frequently made accusations by western media that the road-building project depends on forced labour, workers are required to work no more than 15-20 days, once a year. Carried out during the slack agricultural seasons, people work for 8 hours a day, a fact confirmed by people we spoke to who were working on the road itself. There were also frequent breaks, the working days broken up by occasional cultural activities. Party leaders, cadres and Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) members also do voluntary work on the road throughout the year.

PC: How does this tie in with the CPN (M)s development plans?

WPRM Ireland: The CPN (M)’s attempts to develop the country without depending on imperialism are due to these international forces having their own agenda that doesn’t coincide with Nepali interests. The peoples’ interests therefore lie in the development of the country for all, while the imperialist agenda lies in keeping countries that they call, “developing” underdeveloped and dependent on foreign aid, loans, technology and expertise. Using their own strengths to develop their own methods the CPN (M) has utilised the road-building project to raise consciousness among the masses. Working under the slogan, “Our Development, Our Effort”, this process involves the finding of what can be achieved collectively, increasing the self-confidence of the people, as their own techniques are developed to overcome problems as they emerge.The Nepalbandh however, extended for far longer than we had expected and although it was a beautiful thing to witness an unbreakable strike, it certainly presented problems with regard to our wish to travel to the liberated zones, and indeed to the Martyr’s Road. Although it was both interesting and exhilarating to participate in the people's movement, every day we were meeting to discuss ways in which we could fulfil our task of reaching the Maoist-held areas. In our eagerness, it must be said, our ideas at this time were approaching desperation and eventually, there appeared to be no alternative but to cross the border into India to buy bicycles so that three of us could continue. Cycling across the flat plains of the Terai and up into the mountainous district of Dang, we eventually reached Gorahi, the last city garrisoned by the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) before Rolpa. Here, our group encountered more large protests. As in all such protests, villagers were coming in from Maoist areas to increase the protestors’ numbers, playing a decisive role in the successes of the people’s movement. From Gorahi, cycling was impossible due to the mountain roads and we were forced to trek on up into the mountains, a journey of over 50km. What most surprised us here was that the RNA and police influence ended abruptly outside the exit from the city. From then on, the villages were hung with the banners of the Maoists, people we met on the mountain trails greeting us with calls of “Lal Salaam!” (Red Salute).

PC: Did you have preconceptions?

WPRM Ireland: Certainly the western media had always suggested that the monarchist structure was very popular among the Nepalese people, a claim that Michael Palin was also to make in his ‘Himalaya’ book and TV series. While I have never rated Palin as any kind of a worldly wise individual, and I have never trusted the Western media, naturally the doubts remained. Reactionary propaganda, when continuously churned out, does tend to be absorbed passively by anyone that is exposed to it. When our group arrived in Nepalgunj however, the country was in the grip of nation-wide, anti-monarchist protests and a bandh (general strike) that not only closed all the shops and commercial outlets but also cleared all motor vehicles from the roads.

PC: Did you join in any Anti-Royalist demos?

WPRM Ireland: Trapped in Nepalgunj across the border from India, we were ideally placed to witness one of the many anti-monarchist protests outside of Kathmandu. Containing large numbers of women, these protests drew many from the Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities. As well as workers, peasants and students, civil servants, including doctors, lawyers, teachers and bank officials marched through the streets. At most of the intersections, the remains of burning tyres were a constant feature, new fires breaking out at regular intervals. A major focus for mass anger was Gyanendra Square, the central monument dedicated to the king that was frequently surrounded by such fires in spite of having been given 24-hour paramilitary police protection. In joining the daily protest marches, we found that the slogans chanted by the protestors left little room for reconciliation. As one of these marches approached the statue of Gyanendra’s deeply unpopular grandfather, Tribhuvan, a man with a loudhailer called out, “What does Arayghat want?” the crowd responding with, “Arayghat wants Gyanendra”. This was a reference to the royal cemetery. Also popular was the call to “Hang Paras from a tree”. Gyanendra’s son, Prince Paras is also much hated as a man who has committed both rape and murder but who has so far proved immune from legal action. These minor protests, the crowds becoming increasingly antagonistic, were set to rise in both numbers and militancy as the campaign intensified. After our work brigade had left, we were told on returning to the town by people that had been there, that a child had been shot dead and a woman had died after having first been beaten and then having a tear gas canister explode next to her. This occurred during a large protest that saw the destruction with lump hammers of both the Gyanendra monument and the statue of Tribhuvan.

PC: Did the visit change your views?

WPRM Ireland: It would be wrong to say that I had any ‘Road to Damascus’ conversions, as I was already fully supportive of the Maoist project when I arrived there. Rather than say that my views were changed, I would be more conscious of having gained a deeper understanding of the revolutionary process that is going on in Nepal. As Mao Tse-tung once said, “All true knowledge comes from direct experience”. Reaching the town of Tilla Bazaar deep within the liberated zones, nine days after we had been due to rendezvous there and afflicted by blisters the size of Denmark, the District Secretary of Rolpa, Comrade Kamal, on hearing of our arrival, walked for two hours across the mountain roads (on flip flops) to meet with us. A man who in spite of his high rank, displayed no airs or graces, Kamal had no hesitation in bedding down in the same dormitory room that the local cadre had billeted us in. Announcing that he would remain with us throughout our stay in the liberated zone, Kamal was to accompany us to the Martyr’s Road, introducing us to Comrade Surya, the Co-ordinator of the road-building project. In the short time that we were there, we spent much time in the company of these two men. Although as I said, my views were not changed as such, I was by no means certain that our group would be treated in such a comradely manner.

PC: How important was the Maoist insurgency in bringing down the King?

WPRM Ireland: The People’s Movement was distinctly anti-monarchy, retaining a general line of being anti-Congress. This is due to the Nepal Congress party being perceived as both too close to the monarchy and renowned for its corruption and its inefficiency in previous governments. Most of the protestors by far appeared to be in favour of a republic, this being recognised as a more modern form of government in contrast to the existing feudal autocracy. Many of those that we talked to in the cities, spoke of achieving a British-style constitutional monarchy, although the cultivation of a constituent assembly and a republic were infinitely more popular. Within these protesting crowds, it was acknowledged that the Maoists were very much a part of the peoples’ struggle and therefore part of the democratic agenda. As I have said, the CPN (M) strategy at this time was to mobilise people in the villages around the major towns, organising them to swell the protests in the urban centres. In this way, the protests in the towns and cities tended to swell by tens of thousands as the campaign escalated.With the current two-state situation, the emerging revolutionary state based in Rolpa and the dying monarchist regime in Kathmandu, the signing of a 12-point agreement between the seven parliamentary parties demonstrated that the latter had come to recognise this situation. Outside the major cities, the RNA controls little other than its barracks in the district headquarters and some parts of the Terai region along the Southern border with India. Even in government controlled areas, support for the revolution is evident in massive support for bandhs (general strikes) that are frequently called.

PC: What sort of government exists in the liberated zones?

WPRM Ireland: The new red power is exercised throughout the liberated zones in the form of People’s Committees, co-ordinated at the central level by the United Revolutionary People’s Council (URPC). These People’s Committees, elected in general elections called by the Party, practice what is known as the three-in-one system. This organisational style was developed in China under Mao. Bringing together different sections of society, this system combines representatives of the Party, PLA, and other democratic and nationalist elements, representing the petit-bourgeoisie. Also present are local rebel cadres from the Nepali Congress Party and the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninists). Those who go against the reactionary policies of their parties are therefore eligible for election to the local committees. The committees carry out political, economic, social, cultural and educational activities at local level. In Nepal’s western region, Journalists from all over the country are frequently invited to the red zones to report on the massive open rallies there. Party cadres will often point out that such remarkable progress has been made possible by the political awakening of millions of people within the country. The masses are defined as the base for the people's war, the CPN (M) declaring that, “Unless they are politically conscious and actively participating in the revolutionary process, our program will fail.” Without the Maoist Peoples’ War and the widespread mobilisation and raising of consciousness that this brought with it, there is little doubt among those that honestly analyse the situation, the people’s movement and the king’s compromise would not have occurred.

PC: Did the Maoist Guerrillas have the Army on the run or was there a stalemate?

WPRM Ireland: The Maoist armed struggle began by using the principle of encircling the enemy, utilising the strategy of luring them into red bases, encircling their forces and delivering death blows at their weakest points. The Maoist strategy of Prolonged Protracted People’s War is greatly suited to semi-colonial countries such as Nepal, the revolutionary fighters surrounding the cities from the countryside by establishing rural base areas. Beginning as a guerrilla struggle, what was to become the PLA operated in squads and platoons, pursuing mobile and positional warfare, the red fighters advanced towards the creation of company, battalion and brigade strength capable of large engagements with the forces of the state. At this time there exists a military and political stalemate the CPN (M) now “making preparations for the Strategic Offensive through tactical offensives.” The reactionary state itself however, attempting to regain lost ground, continues being inevitably drawn into increasing contradiction with the revolutionary forces. During our time in Nepalgunj, we met a young man from Kathmandu who was working for a human rights group. One evening, this man who was unaware of our political affiliations, told us of the day that the PLA had attacked the town only several weeks previously. Greatly shaken by the experience, he was to tell us that together with the uniformed soldiers of the PLA, large numbers of local Maoists with guns also appeared, some firing from rooftops in support of the guerrilla fighters. A key component in this revolutionary process is the development of the PLA itself. Soldiers must seed, plough, dig, sing, dance, teach, learn, and, of course, fight. Declaring that, “Our weapon is our ideology”, the PLA perceives itself as a thinking army, their successes in the past ten years being from more than just their military strength: they began with two rifles, only one of which worked. Forty percent of PLA soldiers are women (the largest representation of female combatants in any army), 80% are party members, and all of them are volunteers. In practice, this “thinking army” is one where everybody knows whom he or she is fighting for, and why. They are fighting for the people, and so, they are fighting for themselves.It is commonly stated, most often by the Western media, that 13,000 people have been killed in the civil war. It is rarely clarified however, that of these deaths, 10,000 have been at the hands of the RNA and the police. Many of these are people who have been murdered in fake “encounters” in which dozens of “Maoists” are killed, but no weapons are captured.The CPN (M) however, has taken the decision on many occasions, to participate in peace talks with the Kathmandu government, as a means to win public opinion and destroy many of the myths promoted by the monarchy. This front of struggle is one that the CPN (M) believes most revolutionary forces must face. Historically, reactionary forces have rarely been able to defeat rebels by purely military means. However, the Maoists have pointed out, whenever rebel forces are brought to the negotiating table, it is usually there that they are vanquished.PC: What role did the traditional Trade Union movement play in the resistance in the cities?WPRM Ireland: Trade Unions have existed in Nepal since the All Nepal Trade Union Congress was formed in 1947, although this group only really came into power after the collapse of the Rana dynasty in 1951 and the movement towards democracy. The current line-up of Nepalese unions tend to be linked to the political parties both parliamentary and revolutionary and played a frontline role in the Peoples’ Movement, their flags much in evidence on all protests. Among these were the Nepal Congress linked, Nepal Trade Union Congress (NTUC) and the CPN (UML) linked General Federation of Nepalese Trade Unions (GEFONT). The latter is a confederation of seventeen national trade union federations, declaring its goal to be "Socialism for the dignified working class and prosperous life". The Nepal Independent Workers Union, the Independent Transport Workers Association of Nepal, the Nepal Independent Hotel Workers Union and the Trekking Workers Association of Nepal established GEFONT itself in 1989. At the time of its foundation it functioned as the trade union wing of the then underground Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist).The trade union movement in general, has proved itself to be quite powerful due to the wider revolutionary situation, the bandh remaining unbroken until it was called off. In response, the monarchy called a nighttime curfew backed up by the threat that members of the RNA would shoot any who broke this. So far as I could see, all unions participated in the Peoples’ Movement.

PC: Was there a more radical Union, which took a different perspective?

WPRM Ireland: It would be fair to say that the trade union affiliated to the CPN (M), the All Nepal Trade Union Federation (Revolutionary) would be the most radical of the unions. It did however; also participate fully in the two-week general strike and blockade of Kathmandu despite the ANTUF(R) being an underground organisation in the areas still held by the monarchy.

PC: What other left organisations exist in Nepal and what is their current strength?

WPRM Ireland: Of the seven parliamentary parties, four of these can at least be termed nominally communist. The largest and most significantly influential non-Maoist party is the aforementioned Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninists). On leaving Nepalgunj and cycling out onto the Mahendra Highway our first stop as night was approaching was the village of Agaiya, around 54km from where we had set off. A CPN (UML) stronghold, the people appeared to be preparing to walk to Nepalgunj the following day to join the protests there. As darkness fell, the village children, sitting in a ring singing songs, suddenly decided to play a different game, that of protestors. Influenced by the events that were going on around them, a knot of children marched around the houses chanting, “Gyanendra is a thief, he must leave the country!”

PC: It has been reported that some leading members of the Maoist organisation left due to the agreement with the opposition parties. Was this a significant split?

WPRM Ireland: It would be wrong to categorise the recent expulsion of two former leaders, Rabindra Shrestha and Anukul from the Party as any kind of significant split. These were expelled due to, among other things, their going public with their dissent accusing senior leaders, Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai of political deviation as well as lodging, personal attacks against them. Though the Party leadership had been trying to sort out the differences with them through inner-party debate and "had instructed them to present their discontents in a disciplined way ", they chose instead to attack the party and the revolution blatantly showing utter disregard of Party discipline and demeanour. The duo had been previously "suspended from the central committee only a few days before". Chairman Prachanda has issued a Press Communiqué on 14 March 2006 to this effect, denouncing them as "traitors", "collaborators of the reactionaries" and deserters of the revolution.

PC: Do you see problems ahead after an election is held?

WPRM Ireland: I reckon that there is clear evidence of problems set to emerge long before any elections appear on the horizon. Talking to protestors in both Nepalgunj and Gorahi, there appeared to be a distinct concern among the protestors that the Seven Party leadership would compromise with the monarchy allowing the people’s demand for a democratic republic to fall short in its ambitions. In discussing the issue with Comrade Kamal later, he was to remark that the Seven Party Alliance leadership lagged behind the forward momentum of the masses in their opposition to the monarchy. The masses therefore are more progressive than the aspirations of their parliamentary leadership.

PC: What is the position of women in Nepal?

WPRM Ireland: Women have historically in Nepal, had no land or voting rights, tending to live around thirteen years less than the average Nepalese man. Realising therefore, the double exploitative state of women, the CPN (M) has rightly targeted them for the unleashing of their doubly repressed energy to attack the system, which has been ultimately responsible for their present state. Added to the three mountains of oppression weighing down on the Nepalese masses, women are recognised as suffering a fourth mountain of patriarchy that is especially harsh upon those of lower castes, the Brahmin and Chetries castes being dominant. Many Nepalese women have been trafficked to India as prostitutes from ages as young as ten and it is currently estimated that up to 300,000 Nepalese women and girls currently work abroad as prostitutes. Marginalized from education and denied a share as heir to family property, women are often married to much older men before the age of thirteen. Those that are widowed are forbidden to re-marry and are obliged to slave for their husband’s family. It is this oppression that continues to bear women to the front ranks of the PLA and the CPN (M).

PC: To what extent are women involved in revolutionary organisations?

WPRM Ireland: Now, more than two million women participate in the All-Nepal Women's Association (Revolutionary), which is spearheading many of the drastic changes that are taking place in Nepalese society, mobilising women and men alike around the issues of women's liberation. At all village, area and district levels, women have been mobilised under the women's mass organisations. In the revolutionary strongholds people's courts have been established where along with other issues, cases against women's exploitation have been brought to book with the combined efforts of Village Defence Committees, women's mass organizations and the people. Many cases of land usurpation of widows or single women have been restored to the injured parties through such courts. Not only those guilty of sexually exploiting women, but also many defaulting husbands who have taken to drinking and beating their wives or practicing polygamy, have been disciplined through such courts. With the provisions of these people's trials women now tend to feel more secure within and outside their homes as defaulting husbands and roving men are duly punished. Also the women have become more aware of their legal rights and the realities of the feudalist state, the repeated rape and molestation by members of the police force and the protection given by the state to such people has exposed the class character and gender bias of the regime. Because culturally women have been associated with household work, women activists have been most effective in mobilising masses in new areas as they are easily accepted at household level. It has been generally observed that in areas where local women have been mobilised, such places eventually become stable bases for sustaining the movement.

PC: Did the war have an effect on womens involvement?

WPRM Ireland: It was only after CPN (M) started the People's War that women from grassroots, mainly rural women, started to mobilise. Historically, whenever women have been called upon to make a contribution to political movements they were looked upon as a reserve force, whose function was merely to act as “helpers”. Today however, there are many leaders, commanding guerrilla squads that are made up of both men and women. Each guerrilla squad, consisting of around 9-11 members, due to Maoist policy, contain at least two female guerrillas. There have however, been instances whereby exclusively female guerrilla squads have been organised, most often taking on the task of dealing with feudal tyrants that have been guilty of sexually exploiting women.The Maoist movement has found that women tend to take time to decide whether or not to join the movement, but once they have made the commitment are inclined to be much firmer than many of the male cadres. This is demonstrated by the fact that there have been fewer cases of surrender or fleeing under fire among the PLA’s female combatants. Women have also been found to be less likely to disclose party related secrets when captured and are also found to have greater perseverance and patience than men. This reality is thought to be due to the fact that women have more to gain from the revolution than men, i.e. for them it is not only the question of escaping away from class oppression but also gender oppression. The revolutionary process in Nepal has certainly brought an alternative life to many young and aspiring men and women. In the case of women's lives, particularly in rural parts of the country, the daily existence is highly monotonous, set in a repeated pattern of reproductive activities and with marriages being arranged at much younger ages, they have no way of escaping from this beaten track life cycle. Thus for aspiring women, the Peoples’ War offers them challenging opportunity to work side by side with men on equal terms and to prove their worth both mentally and physically. The Peoples’ War, vilified by a short-sighted Western media as a “terrible thing”, has in Nepal given an alternative and dignified life to many socially abandoned women, women abandoned by their husbands, and women who could not afford to get married. For them a heroic death in the course of PW is more attractive than the living death that is imposed on them by the society.In discussing this issue with Kamal, he was to recall, “When we rebelled against the feudalist and the semi-colonialist system here, women, that means our sisters and mothers, were with us from the beginning. These came to our rebel group, and they worked very hard with us. Now they are with us in our military formations, in our party organisation and in our mass organisations. Although as women, the old traditional, conservative society rejects them as leaders, we accept them, and they can work freely without hesitation. They take commanding roles and are very good in the field. They are also taking leadership roles in the war fronts.”

PC: What were your own observations on womens involvement?

WPRM Ireland: Attending a cultural activity for the road workers on the Martyrs’ Road itself, which was also arranged as part of our welcoming ceremony to the liberated areas, Comrade Surya explained the reasons behind such events. “Under our policy and program we do not only make a timetable for work but we give recreation and enjoyment to the people. We give our ideology through this, by dance and song. We want to raise their consciousness and people are very eager to grasp ideology through art. We try to give our ideology through our cultural programs. If we want to take something from the people then we must give them something back, what we give them is ideology.” Having set up a stage surrounded by brightly coloured drapes, we were all invited to address the crowd before the entertainment began. Performing traditional dances, interspersed with revolutionary songs, girls stood with boys, their fists raised in the Lal Salaam at the beginning of each performance. What I found interesting was that when we met female comrades here they would Lal salaam and shake our hands like the men, showing a degree of confidence that we hadn’t seen previously. On our journey through the Terai, we had met and talked with many men who were eager to share their views and opinions with us, women tending to remain in the background. As we left the celebrations, which were continuing, some of the performers, who were changing from the traditional dress of the Magarat people into PLA uniforms, saluted us as we passed. The boys, displaying wide smiles, punched the air enthusiastically, the girls, sombre and unsmiling raised their fists to their temples. The difference was slight but tangible. On our return journey to Gorahi, we encountered a group of elderly women returning from the protests there. One of these, on seeing the three of us in the crowd and being told why we were there, insisted on coming over to salute and shake our hands, declaring that, “The police used to come from Gorahi to suppress us, now we go to Gorahi to encircle them”. These of course are but two isolated perspectives but I would argue, food for thought nonetheless.

PC: In the field how have the Maoists dealt with the issue of equality?

WPRM Ireland: The Maoists' popular support is founded on their proven ability to lead the people in making radical, practical and much needed changes. Historically, the land has not provided enough food for subsistence, and men have had to migrate seasonally or indefinitely to cities in search of work. When the CPN (M) seized control of the Rolpa District from the monarchist regime, it drove out the local tyrants and carried out widespread land reform. In more recent times, experimental co-operatives and communes have been implemented and new co-operative banks have replaced usurers. At one point we were introduced to Comrade Birat, the head of the People’s Cooperative Bank in the Rapti Zone who proudly showed us the bank’s documents and talked to us of the oppression of people during the old pre-liberation era. Based on principles of “land to the tiller”, the party’s rural policy is to expropriate land from the landlords, redistributing it to peasants. This policy is designed to develop a self-reliant economic system with a view to domestic production being geared to the immediate and basic needs of the people. Alongside the application of the co-operative farming method, the People’s Committees have also begun instituting collective production and collective farming. In the base areas, small industries have also been set up and supplied by the raw materials of the countryside that would otherwise be exported to India. This land reform has led to the implementation of new agricultural techniques and the creation of people's communes has made agriculture sustainable. Also, “cottage industries” such as cloth and bag making have sprouted from the extra time created through distribution of labour.Within the liberated zones, many reactionary traditions, such as arranged marriages, have been done away with. Under the new power, widows can now remarry and also inter-caste and love marriages are permitted. New festivals are also being celebrated, including, 1st May, the birth anniversaries of Communist Leaders, the initiation date of the People’s War (13th February), the Martyrs Day and International Women’s Day. As both genders are granted rights of inheritance, the reactionaries tend to complain. Campaigns have also been launched for the teaching of hygiene, health and literacy. Special attention has further been made to the concerns of national minorities (janajatis) that collectively make up the majority of the country’s population. The official language, Nepalese, is spoken and enforced by the upper caste Hindu elite, who have prohibited the use of minority languages in any official capacity, including within education. Literacy rates are less than 50% nationally, Surya explaining that, “In Rolpa, under the old power, there were few schools and the children were not able to go to school because they were very poor. About 50-60% of children go to school at primary level but they cannot go to school at secondary level or upper level because they cannot afford it.” This is being tackled in the liberated areas by the creation of “model schools” that teach mother languages, as well as Nepalese and English, within a curriculum based on the needs of the people, as well as through the establishment of adult literacy classes. On this issue, Surya was to continue, “Now new republican schools are being built and the children are able to go to school.”When we first met Comrade Kamal, we had a lot of questions for him due to all that we had seen and experienced. This was largely as a result of our pretending to be tourists to all that we met until we reached Tilla Bazaar. Consequently, this was our first opportunity to ask questions freely and so we talked into the night. As darkness fell, Kamal broke off from what he was saying to ask me to flick on the light switch. This came as a surprise to me as I hadn’t expected electricity in such a remote area. On asking Kamal about the electricity sources he told me to look up on the roof. Sure enough, all the houses in the area seemed to have solar panels on the roofs. This green-power has allowed local people not only to light their homes, but also to charge their torches and radios.

PC: How could Irish people support left / progressive forces in Nepal?

WPRM Ireland: Ultimately the CPN (M) has promoted Lenin’s declaration that, "There is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is -- working whole-heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one's own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy, and material aid) this struggle, this, and only this, line, in every country without exception". Admittedly this is a somewhat daunting task given the current political situation in Ireland. The CPN (M), sees itself as part of an international struggle, affiliated as it is to the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), an embryonic Maoist international that includes among it’s fighting contingents, that of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) and the Maoist Communist Party – of Turkey and Northern Kurdistan (MKP). “The CPN (M) argues that in the present context of world development, that is, the maximum polarisation of property through the International Monetary Fund, globalisation and structural adjustment programmes, the unhealable gap between rich and poor, the development of electronics and communications, and, along with the internationalisation of capital and the capitalist class, the internationalisation of the working class and the poor people, and in essence at a time when the whole world is squeezed into a small village, the application of a single strategy is not sufficient to make revolution in today's world.” (A World To Win, 2002/No. 29)It is this consciousness that has led the CPN (M) to affiliate itself to the Co-ordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations in South Asia (CCOMPOSA) whose function it is to help co-ordinate Maoist forces in the region. The fact that Nepal borders some of India’s most inflammatory regions and with strong discontent boiling up in the country, the Indian Home Minister LK Advani has expressed some alarm over the prospect of a South Asian Soviet Federation. War with India’s own Maoists it is believed, would be far more costly to the Indian government forces than those currently being waged against the Kashmir and Bodo national movements. As fellow contingents of the RIM, the Indian Maoists would see victory in Nepal as having the potential to provide a red beacon to the Indian masses. Such a victory, it is hoped, will introduce clarity into the line struggles currently advancing within the Indian movement. With such high stakes, India may soon see it as necessary to intervene in Nepal directly having already sent arms and helicopters to the RNA The 12th May, 2002 issue of the British Independent newspaper, riding the tidal wave of emotion that followed in the wake of September 11th, attempted to slander the Maoists by claiming they had links with al-Qaeda. The basis for this is the oft-used “suspicions of Western intelligence agencies”. In June of that year, Britain, hosted an international consortium that included the US, Russia, China, India, Australia and several European countries with an interest in aiding Gyanendra in defeating the Maoists. The British Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs responsible for South Asia, Ben Bradshaw, speaking in Kathmandu said, “Britain will certainly help Nepal. We have also experienced in Northern Ireland a similar kind of problem for 35 years. There is a need for a robust attack on this type of terrorism…. After the 11 September attacks, there has been a greater obligation to stop terrorism in the world. We have already passed legislation to stop terrorist propaganda.”It is important therefore, that progressives in Ireland and indeed the West should remain vigilant against the falsehoods and distortions that the increasingly reactionary Western media has been promoting. Before we left the liberated areas in Rolpa, Kamal had said to us, “We from our party request heartily to the people, to democrats from foreign countries, to come here and see the ground reality here with their own eyes, and to describe it materially, and expose such illusions and propagandas, false sayings. We give our solidarity to the people and request their solidarity to our movement here. Now we are fighting to establish a democracy here and we request you all to convey our red salutes to all the people, to our beloved people, to democratic people, and the people who are supporters of the WPRM. Lal Salaam!”

PC: Can you provide some contact addresses, email adds, relevant websites?

World Peoples Resistance Movementhttp://www.wprm.org Local email: Wprm_Ireland@yahoo.com Brigade Organiser Email: aroadtothefuture@yahoo.com

Your Right to Dissent Fundraiser June 24

2006-06-19T18:02:00.000-07:00

In support of the right to dissent, as well as to assist those people arrested at the May 3 and 26 bike rides. Will we accept the daily reality of police brutality? Will we accept the repression of dissent and protest?

NO! WE AIN'T SUCKERS!

All ages, silent auction, speakers

June 24 - Saturday

7pm doors 8pm show at the Kismat Banquet Centre, 280 Fort St.,

featuring: Neken, Johnny Sizzle, Howling Moonbats, and much more.

Tickets are at Mondragon at 4.99 (91 Albert St.),

or contact Marli(218-2337) or Marcel(997-7936). See you there!

wprmwinnipeg.blogspot.com

WPRM Merchandise

2006-06-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

OPERATION CHARGING BISON: A WEEK OF DISSENT ON THE STREETS OF THE PEG is now available to purchase at Mondragon, Wild Planet, Ragpickers, and Kustom Kulture (and Urban Bakery this coming week).

Pick up a copy and contibute to the discussion of building the world people's resistance movement.

ALSO AVAILABLE:

Custom T's! From a special local graphic artist we have two screenprinted T-shirts available in many sizes and colours. They are
1) France 2005 - with an image of a hooded youth in front of a burning car (this T is hot, no jokes!) 10-15$ (sliding scale)
2) Hearts and Minds - shows a police with a gun to someone's head. 10-15$ (sliding scale)

ALSO in the T's department:
Support the Revolution in Nepal - World People's Resistance Movement (text reads) , features image of mass rally in Nepal - hot from the London chapter
Available in white or olive green - 20$

You can get T's by emailing and making arrangements with us at wprmwinnipeg@yahoo.ca. Please send your size and colour preferences.

The World Can't Wait - Drive Out The Bush Regime!

2006-05-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

The following can be found at worldcantwait.net

Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights.

Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it.

Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.

Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.

Your government suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.

Your government is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.

Your government enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.

People look at all this and think of Hitler — and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.

Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this.

There is not going to be some magical "pendulum swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a "mission from God" will not go without a fight.

There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into "leaders" who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.

But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn — or be forced — to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it.

And there is a way. We are talking about something on a scale that can really make a huge change in this country and in the world. We need more than fighting Bush's outrages one at a time, constantly losing ground to the whole onslaught. We must, and can, aim to create a political situation where the Bush regime's program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking society is reversed. We, in our millions, must and can take responsibility to change the course of history.

Acting in this way, we join with and give support and heart to people all over the globe who so urgently need and want this regime to be stopped.

This will not be easy. If we speak the truth, they will try to silence us. If we act, they will try to stop us. But we speak for the majority, here and around the world, and as we get this going we are going to reach out to the people who have been so badly fooled by Bush and we are NOT going to stop.

The point is this: history is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror beyond what they ever imagined. The future is unwritten. WHICH ONE WE GET IS UP TO US.

The World Can't Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!

Endorsers of Statement include:
ACT UP, New York City Mumia Abu-Jamal, political prisoner, journalistImam Talib Abdur-Rashid, mosque of Islamic Brotherhood; Justice Committee, Majlis Ash-Shura, NYPam Africa, Move Organization and International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal After Downing Street CoalitionVicente "Panama" Alba, Organizer, Laborers Union Local 108, New York"Alberto Lovera" Bolivian Circle, New YorkAimee Allison, army conscientious objector (Gulf War90)/counter-RecruiterTom Ammiano, San Francisco Board of SupervisorsAnti-FlagAris Anagnos, Los AngelesArab American Community Coalition, Seattle WashingtonCarlos Arango, director of Casa Aztlan*Edward AsnerAsociacion Tepeyac de New YorkAxis of JusticeRosa Ayala, Justice for Janitors*William Ayers, professor and authorRussell Banks, writerFather Luis Barrios, Iglesia San Romero de Las Americas, New York Rev. Willie Barrow, Women Connecting*Ed Begley Jr.Harry BelafonteDave Berenson, Cleveland, OH, U.S. Green PartyMichael Berg, anti-war activistJessica Blank, writer, actorBlase Bonpane, authorBob Bossie, SCJ, 8th Day Center for Justice*Father Roy Bourgeois, MMSt. Clair Bourne, film maker Elombe Brath, Patrice Lumumba Coalition, NYCCatharina Breinholm, musician (Nina Hagen)Jane Bright, Co-founder, Gold Star Families for PeaceCarol Brightman, author, "Total Insecurity: The Myth of American Omnipotence"Dennis BrutusGabriel Byrne, ActorCampus Anti-War Network(CAN)Tim Carpenter, Director, Progressive Democrats of AmericaCenter for Constitutional RightsChicago ADAPTCHOICE USAWard ChurchillCitizens For Legitimate GovernmentKate Clinton, humoristClothing of American MindDavid Cobb, 2004 Green Party Presidential CandidateCode Pink: Women for PeaceSteve Colman, poetJohn Conyers, US RepresentativeCarlos Cornier, percussionist, Funkadesi, Old Town School of FolkMusicBarry Crimmins, writer/correspondent, Air America Radio Culture ClashCharles W. Dahm (Father Chuck), Pastor, St. Pius V, ChicagoChris Daly, San Francisco Board of SupervisorsJulie Delpy, ActressDC Anti-War NetworkDemocrats.comCarl Dix, Revolutionary Communist PartyLeonard "Len" Dominguez, Candidate for Cook County Commissioner, IllinoisDominican Women's Development Center, New YorkAriel Dorfman, writerTom Duane, NY State SenatorMichael Eric Dyson, author, "Is Bill Cosby Right?"Steve Earle, musicianNiles Eldredge, curator of the Darwin Show at the Museum of Natural History, NYCEdwin Ellis, President of Veterans for Peace, LA*Daniel Ellsberg, author of "The Pentagon Papers"Eve EnslerMichelle Esrick, actress, poet, filmmakerDonelle Estey, artist, Artists Against the WarChristian Ettinger, exec. prod. of film "The Weather Underground"Jodie Evans, Code Pink Nina Felshin, curator, writerLawrence FerlinghettiRev. John FifeJane FondaProf. Barbara Forrest, Southeastern Louisana University (testifed in Dover against intelligent design)Michael Franti, musicianAaron Freeman, comdianSamina Faheem Fundas, American Muslim Voice*reg e. gaines, poet, playwrightMartin Garbus, NYCDeborah Glick, NY State AssemblywomanTed Glick, Climate Crisis CoalitionGlobal Justice and Peace Ministries, Riverside Church,New YorkFrances Goldin, literary agentSam Greenlee, poetAndré Gregory, theater directorAndy Griggs, US Labor Against the War, Exec. Board of United Teachers of LA*Jose Guerrero, artist and muralist, ChicagoLawrence Guyot, former SNCC member and former Chairman of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic PartyPaul Haggis, Academy Award Winning Director/Writer of Crash, screenwriter of Million Dollar BabyHaitian Coalition for JusticeSuheir Hammad, poetSam Hamill, Poets Against WarKathleen Hanna, Le TigreDavid Harris, founder of The Resistance*, writerJon Hendricks, jazz singer/lyricistJon Hendricks, artistWarren M. Hern, MD, MPH, PhD, Director, Boulder Abortion ClinicEric Hilton, Thievery CorporationHip Hop CaucusDorothy Hoobler, PENMarie Howe, poet and writerImpeach Bush CoalitionMesha Monge Irizarry, Idriss StelleyFoundationIslamic Association of AmericaAbdeen Jabara, past president, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee*Rev. Jesse L. JacksonRon Jacobs, writerDahr Jamail, independent journalistPramila Jayapal, Executive Director, Hate Free Zone WashingtonAlan Jones, Dean of Faculty at Pitzer College*Bill T. Jones, dancerSarah Jones, poet and actorRickie Lee Jones, musicianEsther Kaplan, author of With God On Their SideJanis Karpinski, Brig. General (retired)Casey KasemM. Ali Khan, American Muslim CouncilC. Clark KissingerFrances Kissling, President, Catholics for a Free Choice*Yuri KochiyamaRon Kovic, author, Vietnam VeteranJonathan KozolJoyce Kozloff, artistJim Lafferty, Executive Director of the National Lawyer's Guild of Los AngelesRay Laforest, organizer, DC 1707, AFSCME*; member, Pacifica National Board*Beth LamontJessica LangeLewis Lapham, former editor, Harper's MagazineMartha Lavey, ChicagoMark Leno, California AssemblymanRabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazineJames Levin, co-director of Cleveland Festival of Arts & Technology (Ingenuity)Simon Levy, director, "What I Heard About Iraq" at Fountain St. TheatreToby Devan LewisBruce Lincoln, professor, History of Religions, University of Chicago Margarita Lopez, New York City Council MemberHaki R. Madhubuti, chairman, publisher, Third World PressDevorah major, poet & novelistMake the Road by Walking, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NYMike Malloy, syndicated radio talk show hostLucinda Marshall, Founder Feminist Peace Network*Bill Martin, philosopherBill Martinez, Attorney, ProducerFather Matthius, Pastor, St. Pius V, ChicagoMalachy McCourt, actor & authorRosie Mendez, New York City CouncilAllen Michaan, owner, Grand Lake Theater, Oakland, CACynthia McKinney, US RepresentativeEllen McLaughlin, actress and playwrightCamilo Mejia, conscientious objectorDave Meserve, Arcata California city council memberCarol Migden, CA State SenatorCarly Miller, Clothing of the American MindMark Crispin Miller, author, "Fooled Again"Alderman Joe Moore, Chicago's City Council Millions More Movement, Pittsburg /Antioch CA organizing committeeBill Mitchell, co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace*Leon Mobley, musicianTom Morello, AudioslaveTracie Morris, poetAndrew Muñana, Images Salón, East Los AngelesSteve Murphy, editor of Tales of Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesCecil Murray, Retired Minister First AME Church, Los Angeles Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador to UzbekistanNational Lawyers GuildArmando Navarro, chair and professor, Ethnic Studies, UC RiversideThe Network in Solidarity with the People of the PhilippinesBill Nevins, teacher, AlbuquerqueNorthwestern College FeministsNot in Our NameMike and Julie NussbaumEfia Nwangaza, director, African American Institute for Policy Studies, Greenville, SCBrian O'Leary, PhD., author, former astronautBertell Ollman, prof. Dept. of Politics, NYUR. Tomás Olmos, President, Mexican American Bar Foundation, Los Angeles County*, Dean Emeritus, People's College of Law*Barbara Olshansky, Center for Constitutional RightsE. Rendel T. Osburn, Southern Christian Leadership Foundation*OuternationalMajor Owens, 11th Congressional District, D-NYOzomatliJose Padilla*, executive director, California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA)Cristina Page, author of "How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America"Grace Paley, writerPatrick Henry Democratic ClubHarvey Pekar, American SplendorSean PennBill Perkins, New York City CouncilRosalind Petchesky, prof., Hunter College & Grad. Center, CUNYPeter Phillips PhD, Project Censored, Sociology Dept Sonoma State UniversityJeremy Pikser, screenwriter, BulworthHarold Pinter, Nobel Prize winning playwrightFrances Fox PivenSterling Plumpp, poetKevin Powell, writerSr. Helen Prejean CSJ, Moratorium Campaign to End the Death Penalty*Progressive Democrats of AmericaFrancine Prose, novelistPuerto Rican Nationalist Party - New York BranchQueers for Economic JusticeJerry Quickley, poet and playwrightMalik Rahim, New Orleans Community Organizer Michael Ratner, Center for Constitutional Rights*Reach Hip Hop CoalitionRaghava Reddy, stem cell biologist, biomedical scientist, film makerMaggie Renzi, filmmakerEric Resnick, Gay People's Chronicle* reporter, peace activist, one time candidate for US CongressAllan Rich, screenwriter/actorBoots Riley, The CoupWalter Riley, lawyerDennis Rivera, President of Local 1199 SEIUJoshua Rosenblum, Composer/ Director of Bush is BadMark Ruffalo, actorBobby Rush, US Representative, ChicagoDouglas Rushkoff, authorKalamu ya Salaam, Listen to the People Angelica Salas, executive director, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles*JD Samson, Le TigreSonia SanchezRev. Henry Sanders, Fountain of Life Missionary Baptist Church, Watts, CASan Francisco Bayview NewspaperSapphire, poet, writerSheley Secrest, Attorney, President NAACP Seattle-King County BranchSusan SarandonJohn Sayles, filmmakerRinku Sen, Colorlines*Richard Serra, artistRev. Al SharptonLou Shaw, writer, creator of Quincy MDCindy SheehanMartin SheenStanley Sheinbaum, economist, LANancy Spero, artistDona Spring, Berkeley Council memberGloria SteinemMalcolm Suber, People's Hurricane Relief Fund*Serj Tankian System of a DownSunsara Taylor, Revolution newspaperStuds TerkelMarianne Torres, Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane*Dwight Trible, jazz vocalistGeorge Tuttle & Ben Cushman, grapegrowersGore Vidal, writerKurt VonnegutAlice WalkerMaxine Waters, US RepresentativeWavy GravyLeonard Weinglass, lawyerRev. Dave Weissbard, senior minister, The Unitarian Universalist Church, Rockford, ILCornel West, Princeton UniversityRev. Phil Wheaton, Episcopal Co-pastor, Community of Christ, Washington DCJoan Wile, Director, Grandmothers Against the WarSaul Williams, poetStandish E. Willis, National Conference of Black LawyersS. Brian Willson. Veterans for PeaceKrzysztof Wodiczko, artistAnn Wright, former US diplomat, resigned in protest of Iraq warDaphne Wysham, Institute for Policy StudiesLeland Y. Yee, Speaker pro Tem, California State AssemblyJuanita Young, courageous resister, leader in October 22nd Coalition*Dr. Quentin Young, Health and Medicine Policy Research Group*Dave Zeiger, filmmaker, "Sir, No, Sir!"Zephyr, graffiti artist, writerRobert Zevin, Robert Brooke Zevin Associates, Inc.Howard Zinn, historian, "A Peoples' History of the United States"David Zirin, author, "What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States"
*Organization for identification purposes only.

Mass Mobilization: Drive Out the Bush Regime!

2006-05-29T18:52:00.000-07:00

The following can be found at worldcantwait.net

The Bush Regime Must be Stopped!On Thursday, OCTOBER 5TH 2006: All day and into the night, across the country, we must decidedly break the paralysis that still grips too much of American political life.

Taking off work, taking off school, shutting down campuses and coming together in mass gatherings, we must let the country and the world know that:

---millions of us reject this illegitimate regime that is as criminal as it is dangerous to humanity & the existence of this planet.

---we refuse to grow accustomed to a political climate that is becoming everyday more frightening & reactionary.

We are what we've been waiting for.

Despite Bush's popularity ratings now running lower than Nixon's, majority opposition to the unjust Iraq war and popular support for Bush being censured or impeached, the political will of the people is being betrayed and finds no voice. We are told to put our hopes into what powerful interests dictate as "electable".

Ask yourself this: Where will this country and the world be, on the day after the elections of 2006? Will we be debating:

What the minimum voltage level for the electrodes attached to prisoners' genitals is, in order to meet the definition of torture?

Whether war on Iran will use nuclear weapons, or just white phosphorous bombs and conventional forces like in Iraq?

Whether birth control should be outlawed in just a few states, or the whole country?

Whether gay parents should have their children taken away immediately, or just be prevented from adopting in the future?

Will hopes and energies have been squandered again, leaving us further locked into politics that is cementing this situation in place for generations?

Or do we need a powerful movement that is not afraid to give voice to the peoples' will, to speak the truth, building toward and bursting out society-wide on October 5th, that won't stop until the Bush regime is driven from power?

On October 5th we will make a breach in the walls being cemented all around us to say Enough! with mass political action that does not compromise with torture & unjust wars, that rejects bowing down to theocrats and the immorality of empire.

On October 5 join us in a day of honest, courageous resistance. What will you do to take responsibility for the future?

Change the course of history. This regime does not represent us and we will drive it out!

An Account of the Walkout - May 1, 2006

2006-05-29T18:48:00.000-07:00

The May Day Walkout was a great success and a welcome break from Winnipeg’s usual chant-by-numbers activism that not only fails to, but AVOIDS rattling any cages. The mostly youthful crowd congregated at Memorial Park and all seemed to be in high spirits. By about 1:15pm the crowd had reached about 100 people. It was an interesting mix of local citizens, high school students, social activists and revolutionaries, which made for a refreshingly energetic march. People made their own signs with blank placards and markers that had been provided. There were a variety of banners, puppets, props, and other dazzling visual aides. After some brief speaking about the march route and other details, WPRM member Zaps did a short agitation piece about what Charging Bison was all about. This was met with a great response and it was clear that these people had an articulate grasp on why the weeks’ events were happening.

Most people seemed anxious as the march began, which really got things going quickly. We made our way down Broadway with chants that were a welcome break from "What do we want?[ insert cause here] When do we want it…" The days chants and shouts were far more radical, reflecting the mood of the primarily youth based march. "Not our country, Not our troops!" and "One solution! Revolution!" were among the more common shouted out not only by seasoned radicals, but especially by high school students as well, who were visibly excited to take part in an expression of resistance that goes deeper.

As we walked down Broadway, and towards the Provencher bridge, it seemed to be more of a party that a protest, as people joked and danced, even halting the whole march as one person stopped to tie their shoe. It was a great positive energy that is VERY rare at most events in the Winnipeg activist scene.

As we hit Tache and turned towards the base things began to get a little less light-hearted. People started to realize the army was right down the street. There was nervous excitement as we got close, not knowing what would happen when we got there, especially when it was announced that our march permit expired when we arrived!

The Radical Cheerleaders rocked some excellent provacative cheers towards the troops and the "human" wall of police in goofy trench coats, who blocked the 15 foot gate into the base. Even the soldiers seemed to get a kick out of the tongue and cheek attacks on what they have been trained to stand for.

Aside from the Radical Cheerleaders, the soldiers were completely indifferent to even the most on-point criticism of Canada’s role as an imperialist nation. This was very frustrating, however our message was conveyed clearly, with sincerity and conviction. After about an hour we felt that we had said what we wanted to and had made our point. We let the soldiers know that we would return, then began to vacate the base.

The event was surprisingly (and suspiciously?) under published, but was a great success anyways! The march drew a variety of different crowds, all united under an advanced grasp of what this type of training means. To see high school students and members from the neighborhood sharing this understanding is a great step in the right direction. This was not activism as usual, these people had a passion in their struggle, and they’re ready to change the world at the drop of a hat!

Lessons from the Struggle in Zine Form - More Arrests and Resistance

2006-05-28T11:58:00.000-07:00

As some of you on this list may already know - police arrested, assaulted and beat up cyclists at the critical mass bike ride on friday. what is it that makes riding bikes a threat to the system? Excessive force is only the tip of this political monstrosity. THE PEOPLE WILL FIGHT BACK!

After some brief post-Operation Charging Bison resting days - it is time to intensify the political exposure of Canada - and everything this means for the people around the world - and what it means when you can't even take a peaceable bike ride downtown.

Stay tune for a massive legal aid fundraiser/political exposure night in June in Winnipeg.

also,

OCB ZINE - mini-magazine is almost done! It has been in the works since the last few days of the protests. It will have killer pics and colour layout - maximum political exposure - an eyewitness moment-by-moment account of both the Walkout and the May 3 Critical Mass. It has been compiled by various OCB dissidents, WPRM supporters and allies. The articles will be found soon up at wprmwinnipeg.blogspot.com

email us at WPRMWinnipeg@yahoo.ca to reserve a copy and we will find a way to get it to you.

It'll be sold as a fundraiser for 3$ and up - with all proceeds to WPRM-Winnipeg's mass work fund. Resistance isn't cheap - so all donations at this time will be gratefully accepted.

World People's Resistance Movement - Winnipeg
Box 1
Winnipeg, MB
R3C 2G1

MORE PICS!

2006-05-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

Cheerleaders at Walkout May 1

Cops surrounding protesters
May 3
May 1 - Cheerleaders confronting troops and cops

May 3rd ARREST PHOTOS

2006-05-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

Video of Charging Bison

2006-05-19T18:34:00.001-07:00

Check out www.dwdtv.org for 5 short films uploadable from your computer about Operation Charging Bison by local film maker Jon McPhail.

These are definitely worth checking out, and includes shots of the arrests, including the police harrassment and arrest of a freelance journalist. The shot shows a cop knocking Jon Schledewitz's hat and glasses off, then one cops stealing his camera and another pulling him the other way. Other shots capture the outrage and chaos when police used overwhelming force to silence the anti-military bike ride.

May 1 Resistance Reports

2006-05-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

The following three articles are from A World to Win News Service. The views expressed are those of their respecitve authors, and may not represent WPRM-Winnipeg. AWTW News Service is accessible at http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/AWorldToWinNewsService/ or aworldtowin.org

1 May in the US: Over a million immigrants and allies take to the streets

8 May 2006. A World to Win News Service. Following is an article from the 14 May issue of Revolution, voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.

Risking life itself to cross the border.
Hounded by La Migra (immigration police) and treated like criminals.
Crowded into decaying neighbourhoods.
Slowly dying in backbreaking fields and suffocating sweatshops.
The few rights you have are under assault.
They want to take away your very humanity.

May First 2006 in the United States of America: An undeniable force of over a million immigrants and their allies said ¡Basta Ya! Enough already!

People filled the streets in big cities, small cities, and rural towns – emptying factories and schools, closing restaurants and shops. More than half a million in Los Angeles. 400,000 in Chicago. Tens of thousands in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Milwaukee. Many thousands more from coast to coast, including small towns and rural areas in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Texas. The crowds were overwhelmingly Latino, but there were many different immigrant groups as well – from Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Ireland.

This was a massive outpouring of resistance to government's efforts to intensify the persecution and exploitation of undocumented immigrants in this country.

At great personal risk, many hundreds of thousands of immigrants, overwhelmingly proletarians, came out of the shadows and lifted their heads in defiance. Such an outpouring of resistance is something to uphold and celebrate. Such a heroic spirit is something to support and spread.

An upsurge of protest among immigrants has grown over the last several months. And it is changing the political landscape in this country. It is drawing millions into struggle against the government, against the system. And it is raising big questions about the nature of this system, how to fight, and what it will take to actually put an end to exploitation and oppression.

The actions of a minority are inspiring and opening the minds of many more. And for all those angry about the direction the Bush regime is taking this country, and the whole planet – there is an important example here.

Various anti-immigrant bills are being proposed in Congress. Fascist politicians like Congressman Tom Tancredo want to deny citizenship to the children born in the US whose parents are undocumented immigrants. And vigilantes like the Minutemen are patrolling the border with guns, hunting immigrants who they call a threat to the “fabric of America”. In such a situation this new movement of immigrants is not being paralysed by fear and driven deeper into the shadows. People are stepping out and saying: “¡Bush escucha! ¡Estamos en la lucha!” and “¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!” (“Bush, listen up! We are in struggle!” and “The people united will never be defeated!”).

It is truly exciting and significant when hundreds of thousands of proletarians take to the streets, right here in the United States. And it was very fitting that these protests took place on May First – the revolutionary holiday of the international proletariat. Many of these demonstrations were billed as “A Day Without Immigrants” and the bit of truth this hit on was hard to miss as factories, restaurants, construction, landscaping, transportation and many other industries and services ground to a halt.

Significantly, this outpouring of protest found _expression in small towns and rural areas where there have been dramatic demographic changes over the last few decades. In many of these places, which have rarely, if ever, seen any kind of political protest, meatpacking plants and other industries have systematically recruited workers from Mexico and Central America. The Latino population of many of these rural counties has gone from zero in 1970 to 10-45% in 2000. In Dodge City, Kansas 1,500 immigrant proletarians marched down the main street and all five of the major beef packing plants in Kansas (which employ more than 12,000 people) were closed. In Emporia, a Kansas town of 25,000, which is 20% Latino, more than 1,500 people protested at the county fairground near the Tyson meatpacking plant where many immigrants work. Immigrants protested in Storm Lake, Iowa, where 20% of the town's 10,000 people are Latino. Tyson Foods, the world’s largest meat producer, was forced to shut down for the day. In dozens of other small towns, immigrants also took to the street on May First.

To the U.S. ruling class, the millions of immigrants who come across the border are something to fear and attack. But the revolutionary proletariat and its allies, welcomes these immigrant sisters and brothers, who are a strategic strength in the struggle for revolution.

There were lots of American flags at these demonstrations – reflecting widespread illusions about what the United States is all about and what it means for the masses of people here and around the world. In the midst of this, the red flag was taken up by thousands – including people who consciously see this as the flag of proletarian revolution. Some people carried the American flag and the red flag – reflecting the fact that this movement has not broken out of the bounds of acceptable bourgeois politics as well as the motion and potential in such a situation – and the need for revolutionary leadership.

Millions of non-immigrant people in this country who oppose the discrimination and mistreatment of immigrants have been inspired by this growing struggle for immigrant rights, and there were important expressions of this on May First. In Chicago, social workers who treat rape victims greeted the march with signs that said “Gracias” and “Thank You”. White church members provided water to protesters under a sign that read: “Yesterday’s Immigrants Support Today’s Immigrants – Your Journey is Our Journey”. A multi-national contingent of medical students chanted: “Our patients will be treated, papers are not needed.” And there were others who came out to these demonstrations with a similar message: “We Are All Immigrants” and “No Human Being is Illegal”. Such seeds of unity are significant and, if nurtured, can grow into something necessary, powerful and beautiful in the struggle against the system, in the fight for a better world.

On May 1, 2006, right here in the belly of the beast, it is truly exciting and significant that over a million immigrant proletarians took to the streets, in cities and towns throughout the USA, proclaiming their humanity and determination to fight for their rights. The sentiment that “we workers make society run” reflects a real truth, and at the same time, is not yet and needs to become class conscious – to recognize and act on the fact that as a class, the proletariat is the only class that can and must lead the fight to free all humanity. The outpouring of resistance by immigrants that marked May First this year is truly something that should be celebrated and joined. And it needs to be built off of, in a way that brings forth the class conscious leadership of the proletariat, prevents this movement from being channelled into ineffective bourgeois politics, and contributes in the most powerful way to the revolutionary struggle to free this planet from all oppression and exploitation.

1 May in Berlin

8 May 2006. A World to Win News Service. On 1 May this year, Kreuzberg, a traditionally proletarian district in Berlin, Germany, continued to be at the centre of the celebration of 1 May and once again witnessed a mass outpouring of revolutionary sentiment and militant struggle clearly targeting the system of imperialist exploitation and oppression. Home to thousands of German and immigrant working class families and rebellious youth, Kreuzberg was the scene of the mass rebellion in 1987 that inspired the rebirth of a revolutionary 1 May demonstration in Berlin.

The mood of the district on this day was different than usual. Youth and other people were moving from corner to corner in groups of three, four, five or more, seeking to hook up with the demonstration. A massive force of police had already poured into the area. Some were stationed on street corners, while others travelled around in vans and police cars. Large groups of anti-riot cops stood around in thick bullet-proof jackets and other gear, while more circulated in plain clothes. The police had practically surrounded the district. Dozens of people had been arrested after clashes with police the night before.

At 1 o’clock many people had already gathered at Oranienplatz where the march was to start, listening to the speeches and messages delivered by various speakers and activists of parties and organisations. Among the messages were those from the coalition of this demonstration’s organisers, the Revolutionary Communists (RK) of Germany, the Maoist Communist Party of Turkey and North Kurdistan (MKP), the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan, the Turkish Communist Party (M-L) Maoist Party Centre, the 8th March Women’s Organisation (Iran-Afghanistan) and others. They condemned the imperialists and their alliance against the people of the world, especially the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the threat of attack against Iran. The speakers also declared their support for the struggle of the people of Nepal and the people’s war there advancing under the leadership of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

More than 4,000 people were at the rally and more than 3,000 of them left with the march through the streets of Kreuzberg. At the front of the march was a big banner that said, “Fight Internationally Against Exploitation and Oppression, No Liberation Without Revolution!” A loudspeaker broadcast militant songs and attracted residents to their windows. Many waved their hands in a sign of support.

The large number of German youth and youth of many other national origins (including Turkish, Palestinian, Kurdish, Afghani, Iranian, Nepali, Indian and others) was a sign of the internationalist character of the demonstration – perfectly fitting for the International Day of Labour.

In an interview, a demonstration organizer was asked if they were there for a riot. The answer was that they were not looking for a riot, but that they had a message of struggle for the people, and they would not let anyone prevent them from delivering it. In fact, in a deliberately provocative act, the police did not allow the march to finish at the point where it was supposed to end, but blocked the way to keep the demonstrators from entering Kreuzberg’s main street. The organisers and the demonstrators tried to go ahead with their plan, but the police had prepared and concentrated their forces around that point. The bulk of the demonstrators staged a sit-in in the street. They sang the Internationale so powerfully that it could be heard several blocks away. There was at least one arrest.

However, the demonstrators went on to join other May Day events, such as the street festival with concerts and other performances. Even though this festival had been intended to prevent people from taking part in the march and transform 1 May into a peaceful day of entertainment, at the end of the day youth clashed with police and again dozens were arrested. It seemed that many people are in no mood to compromise with the oppressors.

1 May & other demonstrations in Canada

8 May 2006. A World to Win News Service. The following is excerpted from Arsenal-Express, the electronic newsletter of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada (Organizing Committee) (www.pcr-rcpcanada.org) and an article by a supporter of the World People’s Resistance Movement- Winnipeg (www.wprmwinnipeg.blogspot.com).

Montreal
Close to 250 people answered the RCP(OC)’s call and took to the streets in Montreal to celebrate International Workers Day. Our organization called for a “revolutionary and internationalist demo” after having learned that the big trade unions had decided to move the May First demo to April 29.

The demonstrators gathered in the evening in the Park-Extension district. With its dozens of ethnic communities, the Park-Extension district is among the poorest in the country, reflecting today’s reality of the multinational proletariat in Canada.

Before taking the streets, the demonstrators, some of whom travelled several hundred kilometres to join to the march, listened to a speech from a Red Youth Front representative (RYF, www.frontrouge.org), who denounced the fate that capitalism holds for young proletarians. Pointing to the example of French youth who mobilized themselves last fall in the cités and more recently against the provision allowing the firing of workers under 26 without cause during their first two years at job, the comrade stated that the youth are right to rebel and that they have a world to win in the struggle for socialism, if they side with the proletariat.

A representative from the Filipino Youth Organization, Kabataang-Montreal, then condemned the recent takeover perpetrated by the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo government in the Philippines and the illegal and arbitrary detention of Congressman Crispin Beltram, who is wrongfully accused of “terrorism” by the reactionary regime. The youth from the Filipino community actively support the revolutionary movement in their country of origin – a movement that fights for democracy and for ending imperialist domination.

Thereafter, a woman activist from the RCP(OC) read the May First statement from the Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, in both French and English. Lastly, our comrade François Thibault, who took part in the First International Road Building Brigade in revolutionary Nepal, stressed the need for building the general staff of the revolution – our revolutionary communist party that will lead the struggle for socialism and communism. Underlining that “the task of organizing for the revolution belongs to the revolutionaries and nobody else,” the RCP(OC) spokesperson invited all the demonstrators to assume this responsibility and take part in the Canadian Revolutionary Congress next fall.

Although modest, the demo was significant for more than one reason: while marching under the banner of revolution and proletarian internationalism on the same day when million others are doing so everywhere around the world, we clearly expressed our determination to fight all the way to end capitalism and build a new society free from any form of exploitation and oppression: a communist one.

Winnipeg
The World People’s Resistance Movement-Winnipeg held a 1 May demonstration in the context of a week-long series of protests against Operation Charging Bison, a training exercise for the Canadian Reserve Forces in Winnipeg, Manitoba (central Canada). They issued the following call:

“Will we accept the oppressing of the world’s people, through the armed forces of our government? Will we accept the ‘war on terrorism’ being fought in our name, which they say will last for generations to come? Will we accept the war in Afghanistan, propping up a theocracy clearly not in the interests of the masses? Or the overthrow of an elected government in Haiti? Will we accept the role Canada plays in the world? No! We must resist! Canada out of Haiti and Afghanistan! Walk out of school and work

One of the many protests against Operation Charging Bison was the 3 May Critical Mass bicycle ride. When the 50-plus biking contingent assembled in Old Market Square, the 12 police vehicles and numerous bike cops seemed to foreshadow what was to come. The group had only biked three blocks when three people were arrested for alleged traffic violations.

The ride coasted down Portage Ave, then headed north toward Camp Pioneer, where another series of confrontations would take place. As we rode within earshot of the troops the high-energy group chanted “Troops go home! Canada out of Haiti! Out of Afghanistan!”

At the camp protesters lined up in front of the fence and started agitating to the troops. Police outnumbered bikers, pinning them against the fence on the sidewalk. The police started pulling people off the sidewalk and off their bikes. They arrested four, and tried unsuccessfully to take others. People resisted by holding their friends and shouting at both the troops and the police.

Is this the type of democracy troops are being trained to enforce? Why, if it is freedom they are fighting for, would they not come to the aid of the protesters? Clearly it’s because they’re being trained to fight unjust wars against the world’s people – and not to protect people when they are being repressed by police.

Photos from the Walkout - May 1

2006-05-13T12:38:00.000-07:00

Pics from Operation Charging Bison

2006-05-10T16:24:00.000-07:00

A defiant show of strength after a bike cop stole someone's black flag. The riders chanted 'legalize flags,' and blocked traffic until the cop was forced to give the flag back. (May 3)
The police in front of "Camp Rendevous," where troops 'patrolled' - May 1 where the Walkout ended.

A tank for resisting unjust wars.

Week of Resistance: Charging Bison April 30-May 6

2006-05-10T15:45:00.000-07:00

Cops dragging a young women at the Critical Mass anti-military protest May 3. The police arrested four people at 'Camp Pioneer.'
May 1 - The Radical Cheerleaders in action.
The ride on Portage Ave May 3.

Returning over the bridge from the Walkout Against War - May 1 - where 100 youth confronted the troops on the terrible tasks they are being trained to do.

Troops 'on patrol' at 'Camp Pioneer.' They looked on quietly as cops arrested four anti-military protesters.

The Radical Cheerleaders giving it to both the cops and the troops. These fearless women and their pom-poms of power denounced Canada's military - and also the police with a ditty called P.I.G.S.

After the seven had been arrested May 3 at a Critical Mass, the bikers rerouted to the Public Safety Buildings for a solidarity sit-in.

Help Build The World People's Resistance Movement!

2006-05-08T16:39:00.000-07:00

Statement of the Provisional Organizing Committee (Europe)

Today’s, world is more sharply divided than ever before. On the one side are the rulers of the world’s big powers, the reactionary regimes they prop up and support around the world and the governmental apparatus and armed forces they use to maintain their position, impose their will on the people and carry out their unending drive for profit and domination.

On the other side are the vast majority of the world’s people who are subjected to this system -- our common enemy, a system known as imperialism, a system in which:
-- half of the people of the world earn less than 2 US dollars a day
-- every three minutes a woman is raped and women in general are still under the domination of men
-- people are discriminated against, pursued or even killed due to their origin, skin color or religious beliefs
-- war has been declared as a permanent part of the future of humanity
-- the environment and of the natural resources that form the basis of our lives and of those of future generations are destroyed
-- the imperialist occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq are continuing and countries like Iran, Syria and North Korea are being threatened with attack almost daily…

We, the people have come together to rebel against the numerous crimes of this system or even against the system as a whole and to struggle for another world. This struggle itself is international and requires both an internationalist spirit and international organization and unity.The World People’s Resistance Movement was brought into being to help build exactly that kind of political consciousness, unity of action and organization.

The WPRM is a growing movement open to all who genuinely oppose imperialism and support the just struggles of the people. The WPRM provides an international vehicle to promote and facilitate worldwide unity against the common enemy – the capitalist/imperialist system. We are currently organized mainly in Europe and South Asia and are focused today on opposing the imperialist crusade being carried out under the signboard of the “war on terrorism”. In addition the WPRM supports the struggles of the oppressed peoples and nations for liberation and all those fighting against any form of oppression this system brings down on people: workers, peasants, women, youth, students, intellectuals, artists, ethnic and religious minorities, prisoners, etc. We believe that people must never accept a world in which the biggest criminals on earth can burn down whole cities, but the people are forbidden to even light a candle! For this reason any struggle truly aimed against this system, including those where the oppressed and exploited haven taken up arms against the enforcers of the old order, has our unwavering solidarity.

Since its founding, the WPRM has joined with people – both organized and unorganized – in Europe, South Asia and elsewhere [like Canada, Mexico and Colombia -wprmwinnipeg.blogspot.com] in numerous demonstrations and other forms of resistance to oppose the US-led imperialist war against the world and other acts of aggression. We have vigorously opposed the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and have consistently supported the struggle of the Palestinian people against Zionist occupation and for national self-determination. In particular the WPRM has sought to rally world wide opposition to imperialist intervention aimed against the revolutionary People’s War in Nepal and has been campaigning to secure the release of the leaders of this struggle who are currently imprisoned in Nepal and India.

The WPRM supports the struggle to win the freedom of progressive, anti-imperialist and revolutionary prisoners everywhere.The WPRM does not seek to supplant or compete with any other people’s organization on a national or international level. All those on the same side of the barricades are welcome in the ranks of WPRM. We call on people everywhere to support the WPRM, to contact existing chapters in their areas, help establish new ones where none currently exist and to affiliate their existing organizations with the WPRM.

We say: North, South, East and West: Unite the People’s Struggles!
Provisional Organizing Committee (Europe)World People’s Resistance Movement (WPRM)

WWW.WPRM.ORG
Contacts:
WPRM (Europe): wprm@wprm.org
WPRM (Canada): wprmwinnipeg@yahoo.ca

SEVEN ARRESTED PROTESTING OPERATION CHARGING BISON

2006-05-07T18:26:00.000-07:00

The following account is written by a WPRM supporter and Critical Mass participant:

Police arrested 7 youth at May 3rd's Critical Mass bike ride protesting Operation Charging Bison. Since the Canadian military set up on Sunday there have been small but determined protests every day. The arrests indicate a new turn in the struggle to confront Canadian imperialism and its military.

When the 50 plus biking contingent assembled in Old Market Square, the 12 police vehicles and numerous bike cops seemed to foreshadow what was to come. The group had only biked three blocks when 3 people were arrested for alleged traffic violations.

The ride coasted down Portage Ave, then headed north toward "Camp Pioneer," where another series of confrontations would take place. As we rode within earshot of the troops the high energy group chanted "TROOPS GO HOME! CANADA OUT OF HAITI! OUT OF AFGHANISTAN!

Two blocks away from the camp a bike cop rode up on one person and stole a black flag. Protesters gathered at the car where the flag had been 'detained,' shouting "Legalize flags! Legalize flags!" causing even some cops to smirk uncomfortably. The flag was eventually given back after a 10 minute delay.

At the camp protesters lined up in front of the fence and started agitating to the troops. Police out numbered bikers, pinning them against the fence on the sidewalk. The police started pulling people off the sidewalk and off their bikes. They arrested four, and tried unsuccessfully to take others. People resisted by holding their friends and shouting at both the troops and the police.

Is this the type of democracy troops are being trained to enforce? Why, if it is freedom they are fighting for, would they not come to the aid of the protesters? Clearly it's because they're being trained to fight unjust wars against the world's people - and not to protect people when they are being repressed by police.

The ride rerouted to the Public Safety Buildings downtown, where people sat in front of the doors chanting for the arrested friends to be released. All were released with traffic tickets, but one young women was charged with assault on a police officer.

Now the task of exposing the world system of imperialism is greatly magnified. And in the coming weeks and months, mounting a legal battle against the political charges will be important in exposing the brutality and naked aggression of the police. Moreso, the protests this week in Winnipeg have taken on a new and increased significance in the struggle for a world where imperialist armies won't need training - because they won't exist.

North, East, South, West - UNITE THE PEOPLE'S STRUGGLES!
wprm.org local: wprmwinnipeg@yahoo.ca
wprmwinnipeg.blogspot.com

Response to Shoddy Media

2006-05-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

Re: Free Press Tuesday, May 2 "Hey peaceniks, show some gratitude"

I was disgusted by Lindor Reynolds misleading and shameful two cents on Operation Charging Bison - in concordance with the noticable lack of in-depth coverage across all major media in Winnipeg of the student walkout on Monday.

Lindor chose to represent the hundred plus group of vibrant, energetic, democracy-loving youth as "peaceniks, people who are able to ingore the fact that Canada...is already at war."

No Lindor, we are not "able" to ignore it. We are firmly opposed to it! We are against the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan because it is a theocracy with Sharia law written into the constitution. Did you miss the putting on trial of a Christian for converting from Islam? Or the fact that the "government" is comprised of warlords with private armies, who have alongside the Taleban terrorized the masses for years?

As for "peaceniks," your choice of words is misrepresentative and ridiculous. Did not the black flags, or kids in camo-pants, or globe flags mean anything to you? Perhaps not when it is easier to make the protesters look "ungrateful".

I can respect the human under the helmet, but will not put down a placard to thank soldiers unless they quit or resist orders to fight an unjust war. I will have no gratitude for the military, or shoddy journalism. And frankly, this don't question, support the troops blindly attitude is frightening - and has nothing to do with peace and democracy.

yours sincerely,
-----

WALKOUT!

2006-04-30T15:21:00.000-07:00

The army has officially set up in Winnipeg to practice for their terrible and unjust missions in Afghanistan. WE MUST RESIST!!

We know from engaging with the masses of Winnipeg's inner city, going door-to-door, talking about the Canadian armed forces and their missions abroad, that there is little support for Operation Charging Bison. WE MUST RESIST!

Over a dozen schools have had organizers volunteer their time to talk with students, and many more have been reached through other means. STUDENTS WALKOUT OF CLASS! WORKERS WALKOUT OF WORK!

History has shown that even if the resistance movement is in a minority in society, that it can positively affect change. We need to do this now more than ever, to try to make as big of a splash as possible. We need to expose Canada's military and oppose the Canadian government for their crimes in Haiti, Afghanistan, and their support for the U.S. led 'war on terror.' WE CANNOT ACCEPT THIS!!

WPRM-Winnipeg encourages people to get out and support both May Day marches, as well as all actions against the military and OCB.

May 1st
Walkout Against war!!
1pm Memorial park - march to St. Boniface
Family friendly - BRING THE NOISE!!! Drums, instruments, banners and MASSIVE RESISTANCE.

6:30pm meet at City Hall - march to U of W for May Day program

WILL WE ACCEPT THE ROLE CANADA PLAYS IN THE WORLD?

2006-04-27T16:45:00.000-07:00

"That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn - or be forced - to accept"

Will we accept the oppressing of the world's people, through the armed forces of our government?

Will we accept the 'war on terrorism', being fought in our name, which they say will last for generations to come?

Will we accept the war in Afghanistan, propping up a theocracy clearly not in the interests of the masses? Or the overthrowing of an elected government in Haiti? WILL WE ACCEPT THE ROLE CANADA PLAYS IN THE WORLD?

NO! WE MUST RESIST!
CANADA OUT OF HAITI AND AFGHANISTAN! WALKOUT OF SCHOOL AND WORK!!!

May 1 - 1pm Meet in Memorial Park.
Bring signs and MASSIVE NOISE for a HIGH ENERGY march to St Boniface.
Bring your drum and join the drum contingent.
FAMILY FRIENDLY - strollers can march together!

The World People's Resistance Movement - Winnipeg is calling for MASSIVE RESISTANCE to meet the armed forces while they train April 30-May 6. We ask people to support all anti-military and anti-imperialist actions planned throughout the week. info for other events can be found at http://stopthebison.friendsofgrassynarrows.com.

¡Apoyar la lucha popular de Nepal!

2006-04-22T18:50:00.000-07:00

¡Abajo la monarquía! ¡No a la intervención

—Parar toda ayuda al régimen de Gyanendra!

En las dos últimas semanas un movimiento de una gran amplitud y profundidad ha barrido las ciudades y pueblos de Nepal. Cientos de miles de personas han desafiado los toques de queda (con orden de disparar a matar) del gobierno y a las cachiporras y gases lacrimógenos de la policía, tomándose las calles y exigiendo poner fin a la monarquía feudal. A pesar de los cientos de personas que han sido heridos y encarcelados por la policía —incluyendo al menos seis personas que han sido asesinadas— este movimiento continúa creciendo y extendiéndose e involucra a cada vez más amplios sectores de la sociedad nepalesa. A los obreros, estudiantes, intelectuales, periodistas, médicos y abogados se les están ahora uniendo empleados públicos incluso del aterrorizado Ministerio del Interior que han entrado a las protestas. Todos los observadores están de acuerdo en que el actual movimiento ya ha superado al de 1990 que obligó a la reinstauración de un sistema parlamentario. El logro de esta nueva y masiva oleada de lucha no puede ser menos que poner fin a la monarquía y establecer una república en la que todo el poder político esté verdaderamente en manos del pueblo.

Como era de esperarse, esta grandiosa efusión de sentimiento de las masas contra siglos de opresión feudal y dominación extranjera en Nepal ha lanzado a las clases dominantes allí y a sus padrinos internacionales a un frenesí de maniobras en un esfuerzo por salvar el barco que se hunde. El Rey Gyanendra, el odiado señor feudal, está ahora arrinconado como una rata en el Palacio Real. Está cercado por los que antes eran sus víctimas: aquellos cuya vida y sangre han sido por décadas e incluso siglos la fuente de la enorme riqueza de él y de su familia —así como la de las clases sociales a las que él representa y sirve. Desperados, él y sus compinches están amenazando con implantar la ley marcial. Esperan que derramando aún más la sangre del pueblo e intensificando más su reino de terror puedan mantenerse en el Poder y salvar al “único reino hindú del mundo”.

Los principales sustentadores extranjeros de Gyanendra, muy especialmente EEUU, el Reino Unido e India, están nerviosos. Están hablando abiertamente sobre una posible “caída del gobierno”, de que Nepal se convierta en un “Estado fallido” y están tratando de poner cierta distancia entre ellos y su esbirro real. Por supuesto que lo que ellos en verdad temen no es el surgimiento de un “Estado fallido” en Nepal, que ha sido un Estado fallido durante décadas. La monarquía feudal y el sistema social del que es parte han fallado completamente en proporcionar todo tipo de vida decente a la inmensa mayoría del pueblo de Nepal —uno de los países más pobres del mundo. Lo que las grandes potencias realmente temen es la posibilidad de que a partir de este levantamiento el pueblo nepalés mismo tome el control de poder político a nivel nacional y comience a arrancar completamente de raíz todo el sistema de relaciones sociales feudales y de dominación extranjera que es la causa de su actual miseria. Tal acontecimiento podría servir como un llamado a los más de dos mil millones de personas desesperadamente oprimidas de Asia —y a los oprimidos de todo el mundo.

Este curso de los acontecimientos no es una ociosa fantasía. En agudo contraste con el movimiento de masas de 1990, el actual levantamiento se está dando en el contexto del avance de la lucha revolucionaria que está dirigiendo el Partido Comunista de Nepal (Maoísta) [PCN(M)]. La Guerra Popular que los maoístas iniciaron en 1996 se ha extendido ahora por todo el país y abarca el 80% de su territorio y a la mayor parte de su pueblo. En las bases de apoyo revolucionarias del campo, el pueblo ha comenzado a crear nuevas instituciones que sirven a sus necesidades y a reorganizar la sociedad sobre una base de no explotación con verdadera igualdad entre nacionalidades, castas y géneros. En el curso de 10 años de lucha literalmente millones de personas han pasado a apoyar y aceptar nada menos que el cambio revolucionario de verdad. En particular ahora existe un Ejército Popular de Liberación con siete divisiones y una milicia revolucionaria que se dice está conformada por varios miles más de personas. El pueblo de Nepal tiene ahora un arma con la cual enfrentar eficazmente al asesino Ejército Real que es armado y entrenado por EEUU, India y otras potencies extranjeras y comandado por el rey. Y con el PCN(M) el pueblo cuenta con un liderato que tiene una visión viable de una sociedad completamente diferente y que está dirigiendo conscientemente sus esfuerzos como parte de la lucha mundial por la eliminación del imperialismo. Como históricamente ha sido el caso, estos logros del pueblo han sido tachados como “terrorismo” por los gobiernos imperialistas del mundo. Pero son precisamente estos grandes avances revolucionarios los que han sentado las bases para el actual acuerdo entre los siete partidos parlamentarios y el PCN(M) y han dado por resultado el completo aislamiento político de la monarquía y han puesto el escenario para el actual levantamiento.

Al mismo tiempo y por estas mismas razones, también está creciendo el peligro de una abierta intervención militar extranjera. Las grandes potencias y sus “diplomáticos” están buscando por todos lados alguna forma de descarrilar el movimiento, romper el actual alineamiento de los partidos parlamentarios con la revolución dirigida por los maoístas y de alguna forma salvar la monarquía o al menos a los principales componentes del actual establecimiento. Aunque ya no puedan mantener la monarquía, ellos están decididos a encontrar una forma de aplastar una vez más las aspiraciones del pueblo. Por eso es por lo que junto con la perspectiva de triunfo de la lucha popular también está creciendo la amenaza de intervención militar.

En esta situación, toda la gente de mentalidad progresista en todo el mundo debe ponerse del lado del pueblo de Nepal y su lucha. Tenemos que apoyar, de todas las formas que podamos, su exigencia de poner fin a la monarquía y nosotros mismos tenemos que exigir que se ponga fin inmediatamente a toda forma de ayuda y apoyo extranjeros al régimen de Gyanendra. Tenemos que dejar en claro ahora que cualquier intento de intervención militar enfrentará nuestra decidida y masiva resistencia.

¡De norte a sur, de oriente a occidente, unir las luchas del pueblo!

Comité Provisional de Organización (Europa)

Movimiento de Resistencia Popular Mundial (MRPM)

19 de abril de 2006

www.wprm.org Contacto América Latina: wprm_co@hotmail.org
Contactos locales (¡comuníquese, entre en actividad, únase al MRPM!)

Appuyons la lutte populaire au Népal!

2006-04-22T18:48:00.000-07:00

À bas la monarchie!
Non à l’ingérence – Cessez toute aide au régime de Gyanendra!

Depuis deux semaines, un mouvement profond et puissant a envahi les villes du Népal. Des centaines de milliers de personnes défient ouvertement les couvre-feux, les ordres de « tirer pour tuer », les matraques et les gaz lacrymogènes, et ont pris la rue pour exiger la fin de la monarchie féodale. Malgré des centaines d’arrestations et de blesséEs aux mains de la police (au moins six personnes ont déjà été assassinées par les forces de l’ordre), le mouvement continue de s’étendre et mobilise des secteurs de plus en plus vastes de la société népalaise. Les fonctionnaires et les employéEs du redouté ministère de l’Intérieur ont désormais rejoint les travailleurs et travailleuses, étudiantEs, intellectuelLEs, journalistes, médecins et avocatEs. L’ensemble des observateurs conviennent que le mouvement actuel a déjà surpassé celui de 1990, qui avait forcé la ré-institution du système parlementaire. Le succès de cette vague de lutte nouvelle et massive exige rien de moins que la fin de la monarchie et l’établissement d’une république dans laquelle le pouvoir politique sera véritablement transféré aux mains du peuple.

Comme il fallait s’y attendre, cet immense soulèvement de masse contre des siècles d’oppression féodale et de domination étrangère au Népal a eu pour effet d’amener les classes dominantes et leurs soutiens internationaux à multiplier les manœuvres dans le but d’empêcher leur bateau de couler. Le roi Gyanendra – le suzerain féodal détesté – est désormais retranché comme un rat dans son palais royal. Il se trouve littéralement encerclé par ses anciennes victimes – celles dont les vies et le sang ont toujours été la source de sa richesse, celle de sa famille et des classes qu’il sert et représente depuis des décennies, voire même des siècles. En signe de désespoir, ses copains et lui menacent maintenant d’instaurer la loi martiale. Ils espèrent qu’en faisant couler encore plus de sang et en intensifiant leur règne de terreur, ils pourront se maintenir au pouvoir et sauver « l’unique royaume hindou au monde ».

Les supporters de Gyanendra à l’étranger, et en particulier les USA, le Royaume-Uni et l’Inde, sont en état de panique. Ils admettent ouvertement la possibilité que le gouvernement s’effondre et que le Népal se transforme en un « État failli » ou « déstructuré »; ils essaient donc de prendre leurs distances avec leur traditionnel homme de main. Naturellement, ce qu’ils craignent, ce n’est pas tant l’apparition d’un « État failli » au Népal. De fait, le Népal est bel et bien un État failli depuis déjà plusieurs décennies. La monarchie féodale et le système social dans lequel elle s’inscrit ont totalement failli à permettre quelque vie décente que ce soit pour la grande majorité du peuple du Népal, qui reste un des pays les plus pauvres de toute la planète. Ce que les grandes puissances craignent par-dessus tout, c’est qu’à travers le soulèvement actuel, le peuple népalais finisse par conquérir le pouvoir politique à l’échelle du pays et qu’il en vienne à déraciner tout le système des rapports sociaux féodaux et de la domination étrangère qui est à la source de la misère qui sévit dans ce pays. Un tel dénouement pourrait servir de tremplin aux deux milliards et quelque d’exploitéEs en Asie, et aux masses opprimées partout dans le monde.

Ce scénario n’a rien d’une vision de l’esprit. Contrairement au mouvement de masse de 1990, le soulèvement actuel a lieu dans le contexte de la progression continuelle de la lutte révolutionnaire dirigée par le Parti communiste du Népal (maoïste) [PCN(M)]. La guerre populaire que les maoïstes ont initiée en 1996 se déploie maintenant dans tout le pays et elle englobe 80% du territoire et la majorité de la population du Népal. Dans les bases d’appui révolutionnaires, le peuple a commencé à établir de nouvelles institutions pour répondre à ses besoins et réorganiser la société sur une base de non-exploitation, en assurant une véritable égalité nationale, de caste et de genre. Au cours de ces 10 ans, des millions de personnes en sont venues à appuyer la révolution, et elles n’accepteront rien de moins qu’un véritable changement révolutionnaire. L’Armée populaire de libération possède maintenant sept divisions, et on compte aussi une milice révolutionnaire regroupant des milliers d’autres personnes. Le peuple du Népal est désormais équipé pour parer efficacement l’armée royale meurtrière, armée et entraînée par les USA, l’Inde et les autres puissances étrangères. En outre, la direction du PCN(M) défend une vision d’ensemble cohérente d’une société radicalement différente, et elle agit consciemment dans le cadre de la lutte internationale pour éliminer l’impérialisme. Comme ce fut toujours le cas historiquement dans des situations de ce genre, ces réalisations du peuple népalais ont été qualifiées de « terrorisme » par les gouvernements impérialistes. Mais ce sont précisément ces grandes avancées révolutionnaires qui ont jeté les bases à l’entente conclue il y a quelques mois entre les principaux partis parlementaires et le PCN(M), qui a eu pour effet d’isoler complètement la monarchie et de mettre la table au soulèvement actuel.

En même temps – et pour les mêmes raisons – le danger d’une intervention militaire étrangère augmente de jour en jour. Les grandes puissances et leurs « diplomates » s’activent afin de trouver une manière de faire dérailler le mouvement; elles souhaitent en particulier briser l’alliance entre les partis parlementaires et la révolution maoïste et sauver la monarchie, autant que possible – ou à tout le moins ses composantes principales. Si la monarchie ne peut plus être maintenue en tant que telle, les grandes puissances sont déterminées à trouver une autre façon d’écraser les aspirations populaires. Voilà pourquoi la menace d’une intervention militaire augmente, au fur et à mesure que la lutte populaire se rapproche de la victoire.

Dans ce contexte, les forces progressistes de partout à travers le monde doivent se tenir du côté de la lutte du peuple du Népal. Nous devons soutenir la revendication de la fin de la monarchie par tous les moyens possibles, et exiger la cessation immédiate de toute aide et de tout soutien au régime de Gyanendra. Il faut affirmer haut et fort et dès maintenant, que nous résisterons de manière déterminée et massive à toute intervention militaire étrangère, quelle qu’elle soit. (19/04/2006)
Nord, Sud, Est, Ouest – Unissons les luttes populaires!

Le Comité d’organisation provisoire (Europe)
Mouvement de résistance populaire mondial
(World People’s Resistance Movement, WPRM)
www.wprm.org
Contact : WPRM (Europe) : wprm@wprm.org

Exposing the Military…One Door at a Time

2006-04-21T19:38:00.000-07:00

The following was submitted to us:

For the past two Sundays I’ve participated in ‘Outreach Sunday,’ going door-to-door to talk to inner city people about Canada’s military. At first I was nervous because I had never done this type of thing before. Would people be receptive? Would anyone be angry and slam a door in my face?

But I had nothing to fear: no doors were slammed in any of our faces.

In fact, most people were friendly and curious about what we had to say. Some expressed support for protesting the military training in our city. Going door-to door gave us the chance to talk with people about the Charging Bison, Afghanistan, and the ‘war on terror,’ and to find out what people think about ‘all that.’

A typical door for my team started off like, “Have you heard about the urban war exercises happening in your neighborhood? What do you think of that?” Several people had heard of it, but most had not, despite the fact that the training is supposed to be happening in the inner city.

We were eager to expose Canada’s military for what it is, an arm of the world imperialist system, acting to protect the interests of a few, over the needs of the many. This is no doubt a difficult view to get across, considering the media cheerleading for Canada’s new combat role. But we were also eager to learn from the masses, from their experiences and world view.

I found myself talking about the media and government fixation with ‘terrorists.’ They say they are fighting the ‘terrorists,’ the Taleban, but at the same time they’ve formed a government with warlords who are like the Taleban, surely no less brutal. I mean, they only weeks ago put on trial someone - for converting to Christianity. And Canada supports this theocracy, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Clearly, not all the people resisting imperialism in Afghanistan are terrorists – no less than the U.S., who uses torture, commits massacres like Falluja in 2004, and abandons thousands of poor and oppressed people in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But it sure makes the war easier to sell if the public fears and stereotypes the entire geopolitical region…

Over the two outreach days we distributed several hundred copies of ‘Get on the Bus.” The four page World People’s Resistance Movement-Winnipeg newsletter features articles on Canada’s role in Afghanistan, Haiti, an exposure of Canada’s support for the use of torture, and a front page commentary on undrinkable water on Reserves (and why the Canadian government is not fit to rule.)

Powder Keg of Potential: the Inner City

One thing that is striking is the very multi-national make-up of Winnipeg. There are literally people from every corner of the world! While walking between houses my team met two Somali refugees. They are only staying here until things improve at home, so they supported Canada, they said. I replied that I was born in here, but don’t support Canada!

What I was getting at, and what I feel they understood after we shared our views, is the sort of shame that comes from being from an imperialist country that is oppressing other peoples.

One team told me about how they met some men from the Phillipines hanging out on a corner. The men were very advanced on many levels, they agreed with the team that imperialism is the main enemy facing the people of the world, and they shared some of their experiences of how US imperialism has exploited their home country. But on another level, they held some seriously backward views. For example, they expressed their frustration that their wives in Canada had “too many rights”. It was a real eye-opener for that team to learn about these difficult contradictions present among the masses.

Another Outreach Sunday participant told me of how he approached several Aboriginal and African youth enjoying the day on their front steps. They said they didn’t care about what Canada is doing in Afghanistan or around the world. So the outreach participant asked, ‘well what do you care about? Your neighborhood? The cops? Do the cops treat you well?’ They were able to find some common ground on having been negatively affected, and having problems with, the role of cops in society in oppressing and policing the poor.

Canada is built upon the backs of the most oppressed. This is true around the world – where Canadian owned sweatshops make super-profits for the imperialists. But it is also true at home, where super-exploited immigrant labour holds the economy together, perpetuating racial and economic oppression, and where police can get away with murder and brutality against Aboriginal and immigrant communities.

WPRM realizes where there is oppression, there is resistance. Where there is more oppression, there is more resistance. Winnipeg then can be seen like a powder keg waiting to go off. The desire for a real break with the imperialist system and the misery in perpetuates, is not something that can go unrequited forever.

Doing mass work is the oxygen and lifeblood of any anti-imperialist movement. You get to confront head on the media myths, and learn from the people what they think of the burning issues of today, and what they think of the political line of the anti-imperialist movement. This is the type of community building that needs so desperately to take place. After visiting people in their homes and talking to people in the streets, I’ve come to realize that this is where hope for change begins.

Support the People's Struggle in Nepal!

2006-04-21T18:47:00.000-07:00

Support the People's Struggle in Nepal!
Down With the Monarchy!
No Intervention -- Stop All Aid to the Gyanendra Regime!

In the last two weeks a movement of tremendous depth and breath has swept across the cities and towns of Nepal. Hundreds of thousands of people have defied government curfews, shoot-to-kill orders, police batons and tear gas to take to the streets and demand an end to the feudal monarchy. Despite the hundreds who have been injured and jailed by the police - including at least six people who have been outright murdered by them - this movement continues to grow and spread and involve ever widening sections of Nepali society. Workers, students, intellectuals, journalists, doctors and lawyers are now being joined by civil servants and even employees at the dreaded Home Ministry who have enlisted in the protests. All observers agree that the current movement has already outstripped that of 1990 which forced the re-institution of a parliamentary system. The success of this new massive wave of struggle can be nothing less than an end to monarchy and the establishment of a republic in which all political power is truly in the hands of the people.

As is to be expected this great outpouring of mass sentiment against centuries of feudal oppression and foreign domination in Nepal has sent the ruling classes there and their international backers into a flurry of manoeuvring in an effort to save the sinking ship. King Gyanendra, the hated feudal overlord, is now cornered like a rat in the Royal Palace. There he is surrounded by his former victims: those whose lives and blood have for decades and even centuries been the source of his and his family's own great wealth - as well as that of the social classes he represents and serves. Desperate, he and his cronies are threatening to institute martial law. They are hoping that by spilling even more of the people's blood and further intensifying their reign of terror they can hold on to power and save "the world's only Hindu kingdom".

Gyanendra's major foreign supporters, most especially the US, UK and India, are in a tizzy. They are talking openly about a possible "collapse of the government", of Nepal turning into a "failed state" and are seeking to put some distance between themselves and their royal henchman. Of course what they really fear is not the emergence of a "failed state" in Nepal. Nepal has been a failed state for decades. The feudal monarchy and the social system it is a part of has completely failed to provide any kind of a decent live for the vast majority of the people of Nepal - one of the world's poorest countries. What the big powers actually fear is the possibility that out of this upsurge the people of Nepal will themselves take control of nationwide political power and begin to thoroughly uproot the whole system of feudal social relations and foreign domination which are the root cause of their current misery. Such a development could serve as a clarion call to the over two billion desperately exploited people of Asia - and to oppressed people all around the world.

This course of events is no idle daydream. In sharp contrast to the mass movement of 1990 the current upsurge is taking place in the context of the advancing revolutionary struggle being led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) [CPN(M)]. The People's War that the Maoists initiated in 1996 has now spread throughout the country and encompasses 80% of Nepal's territory and the majority of its people. In the revolutionary base areas of the countryside the people have begun building up new institutions to serve their needs and to reorganize society on a non-exploiting basis with true equality of nationalities, castes and genders. In the course of 10 years of struggle literally millions of people have come to support and accept nothing less then true revolutionary change. In particular there is now a People's Liberation Army with seven divisions and a revolutionary militia reported to number additional thousands of people. The people of Nepal now have a weapon with which to effectively counter the murderous Royal Army which is armed and trained by the US, India and other foreign powers and commanded by the king. And in the CPN (M) they have a leadership which has a viable vision of an entirely different society and is consciously conducting its efforts as part of the world wide struggle for the elimination of imperialism. As has historically been the case, these achievements by the people have been labelled "terrorism" by the imperialist governments of the world. But it is exactly these great revolutionary advances which have laid the basis for the current understanding between the main parliamentary parties and the CPN (M) and have resulted in the complete political isolation of the monarchy and set the stage for the current uprising.

At the same time and for these very reasons the danger of open foreign military intervention is also growing. The big powers and their "diplomats" are scrambling around seeking some way to derail the movement, split the current alignment of the parliamentary parties with the Maoist-led revolution and somehow save the monarchy or at the least the main components of the current set-up. Even if the monarchy itself can no longer be maintained, they are determined to find a way to once again crush the people's aspirations. That is why along with the prospect of victory for the people's struggle the threat of military intervention is increasing as well.

In this situation, all progressive minded people around the world must stand on the side of the people Nepal and their struggle. We must support their demand for an end to the monarchy in every way we can and we ourselves must demand and immediate end to all forms of foreign aid and support to the Gyanendra regime. We must make clear now that any attempt at military intervention will meet with our determined and massive resistance. (19.4.2006)

North, South, East and West - Unite the People's Struggles!

Provisional Organising Committee (Europe)
World People's Resistance Movement (WPRM)
WWW.WPRM.ORG Contact: WPRM (Europe): wprm@wprm.org

US, UK and All Foreign Occupiers Out of Iraq! No Attack on Iran!

2006-04-21T18:45:00.000-07:00

People of the World Unite to Defeat the US-led Imperialist Offensive!

March 20, 2006 marks the 3rd anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Three years since a great crime was committed; 3 years of non-stop crimes that have cost the lives of over 100,000 people in Iraq and thousands of others around the world: 3 years of lies, deceptions, excuses and open naked terror against the people of Iraq and people all around the planet.

The following words remain as true today as they were two years ago when we first wrote them: In May 2003 US president George W. Bush proclaimed the war in Iraq to be over. In fact it was just beginning. The US- and UK-imperialists along with their allies said their bloody invasion was necessary because of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. But they found nothing because these weapons did not exist. They said they had come to liberate the Iraqi people. Today they stand exposed as old-style colonial occupiers. Instead of peace, justice and prosperity, the imperialists' occupation has brought death and destruction to the Iraqi people.

The occupiers have stolen the country's wealth through capitalist privatisation. They have installed an admitted CIA collaborator as the "prime minister" of Iraq to act as their new loyal puppet and local henchman - just as they helped install and supported Saddam Hussein for over a decade, before Saddam no longer served their purposes and overnight went from "president" to "criminal tyrant" and "madman". Is it any wonder that the Iraqi people are fighting against the occupation forces with greater and greater determination! The US-imperialists used the attacks of September 11th as an excuse to launch a so-called "war on terrorism". In reality the "war on terror" is nothing less than a worldwide offensive for global hegemony. Who is it that has terrorized the world? Despite the spectacle of their rigged "election" in Afghanistan, are the people there better off today - or are they suffering under the renewed domination of the warlords of yesterday, with women afraid to go out without veils, heroin production massively increased, and repression on the rise throughout the country? Meanwhile, in the Middle East the imperialist-backed Zionist State of Israel has only intensified its vicious oppression of the Palestinians. A huge apartheid wall now surrounds the Palestinians, making them prisoners in their own land where they are subjected to daily attacks with tanks, helicopter gunships and F-16s. In the name of the "war on terror", the US and its allies have sent troops to countries and regions around the entire world. For the first time ever the US has even set up military bases in the oil-rich countries of Central Asia. They have gone into the Philippines to help suppress the revolutionary guerrilla war there.

The US, UK and other countries have multiplied many times over their military assistance and other aid to the reactionary monarchy in Nepal in an effort to help that sinking regime in its fight to suppress the revolutionary People's War there. In Africa and Latin America they seize natural resources and squeeze profits from the masses labour. When their excuse of the "war on terror" won't work as a pretext for their interventions and domination they have a seemingly endless number of other "wars" they use in an effort to conceal their imperialist aims: "war on drugs", "war on AIDS", "war on poverty", "war on illiteracy", almost anything will do, so long as it's a "war". After all as Bush himself repeats so often: "I am a war President." How true this is, and not just of Bush, but of the entire social and economic system that today is ruling over the people of the whole world. Or to put it another way: "Imperialism means war."

This year, on March 20, 2006 hundreds of thousands of people and more, in countries all around the world, will be taking part in protests and demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq, the continuing imperialist occupation there and many other crimes being committed by the imperialists on every continent. The World People's Resistance Movement wholeheartedly supports these protests. We call on people everywhere to join them, work to strengthen and spread them and to unite people of all nationalities, religions, and ethnic backgrounds to fight our common enemy - the world system of imperialism.

Building such unity and struggle is all the more an urgent task as in the last few days and weeks we have seen how the big powers led by the US have purposely created a "crisis" with Iran and are openly threatening a "pre-emptive" attack - perhaps with nuclear weapons. While they are now openly talking about their "right" to spill the blood of thousands of our sisters and brothers in Iran while claiming this act of aggression is "to preserve world peace", they are once again proving to the people of the world, that there is no lie they will not tell and no crime they will not commit. Only the people of the world and our united struggle can stop them. This is a challenge we must accept and a mission we must complete.

North, South, East and West - Unite the People's Struggles!

Provisional Organising Committee (Europe)
World People's Resistance Movement (WPRM)
WWW.WPRM.ORG Contact: WPRM (Europe): wprm@wprm.org

Organizers Needed! Light up the city!

2006-03-28T13:18:00.000-08:00

To help coordinate your school for Winnipeg Walkout 2006, look over these starting points, and then get in touch with the coordinating committee at walkoutwinnipeg@yahoo.ca:

Make posters with the date, time, and location: Memorial Park, May 1st, 1pm. Let us know if you need posters or leaflets
Make sure the whole school knows about it, and try to organize a contingent with likeminded people to spread the word. Come as a group on busses, bikes, skateboards, or foot
Make signs, puppets, or whatever expresses your dissent, before the day of action.
Write to: walkoutwinnipeg@yahoo.ca about planning in the coming weeks; let the coordinating committee know how things are going in your school
Have fun and think big!

Winnipeg Walkout 2006

2006-03-28T13:15:00.000-08:00

The following was submitted by a Winnipeg Walkout supporter

On May 1st there will be a Walkout against War. In particular the day will draw attention to Canada’s role in Afghanistan, Haiti, and as a supporter of the U.S. driven war on the world, known as ‘war on terror.’

April 30 through May 6 the army will be in Winnipeg training for a mystery mission in 2008. The walkout is one among several important events throughout the week protesting “Operation Charging Bison,” the name for the urban warfare training.

When I first heard about Walkout 2006, I was reminded of the incredible Winnipeg Walkout of 2003. Protests were exploding around the world at this time, on every continent, and involving millions of people. Hundreds of thousands were marching in the cities of Europe, the Middle East, and America. Even Winnipeg drew a massive mid-Febuary demonstration of 10 000.

Winnipeg Walkout 2003 occurred in this exciting type of atmosphere – where every day the news changed rapidly. With millions of people on the streets of the world, and Winnipeg being a part of this, it made it seem that we were a part of a global movement fighting a global system, and that it could actually stop the war. But as we know now, Bush and his Christian fundamentalist movement were going to invade anyways, and use any excuse to justify it. The world stood in shock.

Winnipeg Walkout 2003 occurred days after the bombs started falling on Iraq. The day of action was organized by World People’s Resistance Movement, and coordinated through students in schools across the city. Hundreds of youth flooded into Memorial Park on the day of action. Almost the entire Gordon Bell high school walked out – taking up the whole street along the way! Other schools marched from far away as a group, or rode the bus together. The result was amazing – the sight of seeing an estimated 3000 youth taking action against something that was so clearly wrong. The atmosphere was electrifying, as anyone who was there can attest to.

Winnipeg Walkout 2006 is in a different time, and with new opportunities and challenges posed by the training of the Canadian imperialist army in our city. Canada’s role in the world is hidden with murky, untruthful distortion of what they are actual doing in Afghanistan, Haiti, and their support for the war in Iraq. As it begins to emerge with the increased deployment in Afghanistan, the progressive forces in Canada are faced with the challenge of exposing Canada’s imperialist nature, of how it is seeking to protect its own interests around the world at the expense of the world’s people.

Canada is deeply divided over the supposed transition from “peacekeeping” to combat roles. Protesting “operation charging bison” has received support across the country, even from people as far away as Japan and Europe! Some from around the country are even planning to join us for these important days of resistance.

The crimes being committed by the Canadian government, in our name, are every bit as horrendous as the invasion of Iraq. Winnipeg Walkout 2006 another critical step in the movement toward justice for the World’s People - with the potential to explode across Canada.

Three years ago no one thought it was possible to bring thousands of youth together for a powerful demonstration – but what started as only a few organizers and coordinators in schools exploded massively. What will the soldiers think when they see a crowd of their own citizens, small or large, opposing what they do? Will they be able to keep on fighting? We have organize, organize, organize, so hopefully they will join with us to oppose Canada’s role in oppressing other countries.

Canada out of Haiti!

2006-03-22T09:18:00.001-08:00

Originally printed in Get on the Bus, January 2006

Canada participates in overthrowing elected government: trains death squads to tame protests

On February 29th 2004, US, French, and Canadian troops invaded the caribbean country of Haiti. US marines swept into the capital, Port-au-Prince, and kidnapped the democratically-elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, while Canadian forces took over the country’s main airport. Aristide was then shipped out of the country into exile in the Central African Republic, one of the most isolated countries in the world.
The US claims this was a ‘voluntary’ exile. Aristide has called this a lie, saying he was ousted against his wishes.
Within weeks, the Haitian government was being headed by Gérard Latortue, a pro-US Haitian who had lived in Florida for the past 15 years. This was a coup d’etat – a sudden overthrow of a government by illegal means – orchestrated and carried out with Canada’s direct involvement.
To understand why this happened, a brief look into recent Haitian history will be useful. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a priest, first came to power in the 1990 elections at the head of the popular Lavalas movement, which drew its support primarily from Haiti’s poor. This was a new period for Haiti, which was coming out of decades of imperialist-sponsored dictatorships.
Aristide wasn’t, and isn’t, a revolutionary. He is basically a pro-Western figure who has attempted to make small changes within the overall imperialist framework – ‘poverty with dignity’ according to one of his slogans. This meant using some of Haiti’s meagre budget for things like public education
But even this was considered to be ‘too much’ by Haiti’s imperialist masters. In 1991, Aristide was ousted in a coup sponsored by the CIA and replaced by a military junta. In 1994, Aristide was again brought to power with the aid of the US.
It soon became clear why. Aristide agreed to ‘austerity measures’ imposed by the imperialist-dominated International Monetary Fund. One of the outcomes of these austerity measures, among many, was to flood Haiti with cheap agricultural products which in turn drove thousands of peasants off the land. This was on top of decades of agricultural sabotage directed at Haiti which effectively destroyed any attempt at self-reliance for the Haitian economy.
For example, in the 1970s, agricultural chemicals sent by the US poisoned the rivers and killed fish, cutting off an important food source for peasants. In the late 1990s, Haiti lost 25,000 acres of arable land because of poisoning with defective agricultural chemicals, once again sent by the US.
The result was a destroyed economy. Many Haitians, unable to afford the now-imported food with their now-worthless currency, began to starve. Today Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, and the life expectancy, at 52 years, stands among the world’s lowest.
Aristide was re-elected in 2000. Although he had capitulated to most of the imperialist program, he was unwilling to submit completely. Because of this, countries like Canada began plotting against him. Canada cruelly cut off aid to Haiti in 2001 and began throwing funding and support behind anti-Aristide Non-Governmental-Organizations. In 2003 Canada sponsored ‘The Ottawa Initiative on Haiti’, the first of many meetings meant to ‘solve’ the Haiti ‘problem’.
The final result was the aforementioned coup d’etat in February 2004. (For a more comprehensive breakup of the lead-up to the coup see Yves Engler and Anthony Fenton’s book, Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority.)
Since then Haiti has been plunged into more chaos and violence which carries the stamp of ‘made in Canada’. Immediately after the coup foreign troops gave a free hand to anti-Aristide forces to rampage through Port-au-Prince’s slums, where they killed thousands of mostly poor Lavalas supporters.
Canada has sent 100 million dollars to Haiti’s new government, including millions in military aid, to prop up Haiti’s new armed forces and police. They have also sent the RCMP to train the new Haitian National Police. The HNP has become notorious for firing on unarmed protestors and carrying out massacres in Haiti’s slums. For instance, in October 2004 600 corpses were removed from the slums after an ‘anti-gang’ raid carried out by the HNP (‘gang’ right now is a codeword used by the Haitian government and Canadian media to describe Lavalas and Aristide supporters). It makes you wonder what kind of training the RCMP has been providing. Some sources indicate that Canada, together with France and the US, has been pressuring United Nations forces in Haiti to use even more violence against the slum dwellers.
The Canadian government has been taking these actions because it is in their interests to do so. The new puppet government of Haiti can now grant Canadian mining companies greater access to Haitian copper and gold. They can remove barriers for sweatshops – such as the one run by Gildan International, the Canadian clothing manufacturer which is expanding its stake in Haiti. And Haiti is now taking on a massive debt owed to Canada and other countries. This will increase the flow of profit and wealth out of Haiti to the rich countries.
Meanwhile the Haitian people are being murdered, impoverished, and driven into ever-deepening dependency. It all makes you ‘Proud to be a Canadian”, eh?

Thirst For Freedom

2006-03-21T13:47:00.000-08:00

Originally published in Get on the Bus, January 2006

Dangerous Drinking Water in 100 Communities

In early November of 2005, hundreds of people were evacuated from their hometown of Kashechewan because their drinking water posed a serious risk to their health. Nearly half of this 1,900-person community was suffering from symptoms caused by dirty, E. coli infested water -- the same bacterium that is blamed for the deaths of five residents in Walkerton, Ontario in the year 2000.

While it may seem that this is not a problem of a country like Canada, Kashechewan is a reserve off James Bay, in northern Ontario, home to a Cree First Nations community. This community along with an alarming 100 more indicates a tragically unequal relationship between native people and the rest of Canada – and is another reason among many others why the government of Canada is not capable of running this country.

The Canadian federal government as well as the Ontario provincial government have known about this problem for a while, as the reserve has been on a “boil-your-water” alert for two years.

Kashechewan’s older, out-of-date water treatment plant was replaced in 1995, however the newer one has apparently failed. It was placed downstream from the community’s sewage lagoon. It was also built too small for a community of Kashechewan’s size.

As a band-aid solution, the Canadian government has evacuated hundreds of people out of this community and has been sending bottled water up to the reserve since April. Many residents still use tap water for cleaning and bathing. Even if the government’s response to the immediate situation were adequate, they have still not procured a means to solve the full scope of the situation and its ongoing present problems.

The Kashechewan community is not the only reserve in Canada with this problem. An alarming amount of one hundred reserves suffer from this epidemic of dirty water. Kwicksutaineuk, a First Nations reserve off the coast of British Colombia has been on a boil-water alert for nine years!

Dangerous levels of E. coli, the source of gastrointestinal health problems, force water treatment plants to shock drinking water with high amounts of chlorine. Generally, this kind of water along with poor living conditions of Reserves is known to cause scabies, chronic diarrhea and impetigo, where bacteria and parasites live under the skin.

The government and opposition continue to stress that no one deserves to be drinking dirty water in Canada as it has the largest fresh water surplus in the world. Yet, very little has been done to actually solve the problem of contaminated water in Canada for northern communities. More water treatment sites are being built full of errors and reserves have been suffering for years. What more will it take to expose this repeated disgusting carelessness of our government? Why is it that Canada, one of the most developed countries in the world, cannot even provide clean water for so many of its citizens? It isn’t because it’s impossible, or because it’s not practical. It’s because First Nations have been systematically oppressed by a certain class of people – a group of people who have never acted in the interests of aboriginal people, and don’t intend to. This class of people who don’t end inequality are not fit to rule – and should be fought continuously in every arena by the multi-national masses.

Now that they have been shamed into acting, the government is attempting some minor improvements. But shouldn’t we be asking why this situation has gone on for so long? And, shouldn’t the government all along be responsible for providing people with disease-free living conditions fit for human beings?

Canada: Secret Trials and Torture

2006-03-21T13:45:00.000-08:00

Originally published in Get on the Bus, January 2006

Imagine being held in solitary confinement. Imagine being alone in your cell for 24 hours a day. Imagine being kept in that cell for years. Imagine that you are being kept in prison without having any charges laid against you, without being able to know why you are being held, or even when you will be released, if at all.
For Mahmoud Jaballah, this scenario isn’t just a nightmarish thing to think about, it’s his daily reality. Jaballah, along with four other men, is being held without charge on what is called a “security certificate”. The men have so far spent a combined 223 months behind bars.
Security certificates allow the Canadian government to arrest anyone and hold them indefinitely without any formal charges being brought against them. They also allow for the deportation of non-Canadian citizens. Arresting people without charge is a serious (and frankly scary) act that runs counter to hundreds of years of basic democratic traditions and rights. But it gets worse.
Security certificates allow the government to hold people in prison without even telling them why they have been arrested. Also, all ‘evidence’ against them is kept secret. This means that once arrested, the detainees have no reasonable means of defending themselves, since they do not know what they are being charged with or what, if any, proof exists to back up the charges.
If this sounds insane it’s because it is. The potential for abuse at the hands of the government is huge, and the potential for injustice is practically guaranteed. Take the case of Tarek Khafagy, who was arrested on a security certificate in 2000 by the RCMP. He was accused of plotting to bomb the Israeli consulate and was held for 5 months in prison. It turns out though that the only evidence against him was a tip from a man who owed Mr. Khafagy money and wanted him out of the way so that he wouldn’t have to repay him.
It hardly needs to be emphasized the danger that exists when completely unaccountable police and spies (whose main social role is to protect the basic interests of this system and repress any resistance to the system) have this sort of arbitrary power over anyone in the country.
In the meantime, five men, three of whom have children, continue to be held in jail in conditions so terrible that one of them, Hassan Almrei, launched a hunger strike to draw attention to their plight. And, the spectre of sudden arbitrary kidnapping by the government hangs over us all.
Getting Syria to Do the Dirty Work
The five men in Toronto are not the only ones who have come under police-state attack from the Canadian government. It is worth remembering here the case of Maher Arar. Arar is a Canadian citizen who was deported to Syria by American officials with the consent and knowledge of the Canadian government. While in Syria he was repeatedly tortured with the most horrific and dehumanizing means. All of this despite the fact that he had no links to terrorism. Fortunately Arar has been released and is back in Canada. But shouldn’t Arar’s story have woken up officials to just how unjust the security certificates are? You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. In fact, the Canadian government has shown no interest in abandoning security certificates. (see Maher Arar’s story in his own words in the sidebar)
Several Other Canadians have been tortured in Syria with the complicity of our government: Abdullah Almaki was arrested in Syria in 2003 and was held for 22 months. He faced regular beating and torture. Syrian officials told him they arrested him based on information coming from the Canadian government. Ahmad Al Maati was arrested in Syria based on the information given to them by The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. He was tortured, forced to ‘confess’ to crimes and was then released in Egypt after 790 days’ imprisonment without charge. Muayyed Nureddin was arrested while en route from Iraq to Toronto in Syria. He was tortured in Syria and also released without charge. (source: cbc.ca)

And the Saudis Too…
In 2000, William Sampson was a Canadian citizen working in Saudi Arabia when he was arrested out of the blue. The Saudis wished to frame him and several other Westerners for a string of car bombings in the country. Saudi Arabian police tortured him repeatedly. They beat him with cane and an axe-handle. They stomped on his genitals. They even anally raped him –an account of which is given by Sampson himself in his book, Confessions of an Innocent Man: Torture and Survival in a Saudi Prison. The horror and terror experienced by Sampson is beyond any description. So what did Canadian officials do aid one of their citizens facing this kind of unspeakable abuse? Well, the short answer is not very fucking much. Embassy officials believed what the Saudis told them, and refused to look into many of the obvious signs that indicated Sampson was being tortured. Fortunately, Sampson was eventually released and exonerated of any wrongdoing. He has since renounced his Canadian citizenship.

Let’s Not Forget Iran…
Zahra Kazemi was an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist who was arrested in Iran in June of 2003 after taking photos of a student-led protest against the Iranian regime. A little over two weeks later she had died in Iranian police custody. Although Iran originally tried to claim she had died of natural causes, it was later revealed by Shahram Azam, a doctor in Iran’s Defence Ministry that Kazemi suffered torture in various ways: She was brutally raped, beaten to the point of having broken finger, a fractured skull, swelling around her head, multiple body bruises and had deep scratches that were evidence of flogging (whipping). Canadian officials visited Kazemi several times while she was in custody, but once again, no alarm bells were sounded, and nothing was done to prevent her mistreatment. After her death, Canada’s inaction was appalling. Aside from some mild diplomatic censures, Canada has retained normal relations with Iran.

Afghanistan: One Big Jail

2006-03-21T13:43:00.000-08:00

Originally published in Get on the Bus, January 2006
Afghanistan: One Big Jail

In early 2002, shortly after the Bush regime launched its global tirade known as the War on Terror, Canadian troops were deployed to Afghanistan with the aims of assisting their American allies carry out Operation Enduring Freedom. And Canada has played a major role in the continuing occupation of Afghanistan, with 2600 troops currently on the ground and another 1000 scheduled to arrive in February of 2006.
In early 2002, shortly after the Bush regime launched its global tirade known as the War on Terror, Canadian troops were deployed to Afghanistan with the aims of assisting their American allies in carrying out Operation Enduring Freedom. And Canada has played a major role in the continuing occupation of Afghanistan, with 2600 troops currently on the ground and another 1000 scheduled to arrive in February of 2006.
But the actual objectives of Operation Enduring Freedom have little to do with freedom for the people of Afghanistan. Rather the campaign is meant to prop up and protect a political system in Afghanistan that serves the needs of the US, Canada, and other western imperialist nations. And it is doing this at the expense of the Afghani people whose needs are being ignored or denied, and who are put down with force when they rise up against the oppressive conditions imposed on them. The initial attack forced food aid agencies to flee Afghanistan, putting millions at risk of starvation, and the ongoing occupation has continued to disrupt food aid in that country.
Why is Canada in Afghanistan?
The campaign in Afghanistan is strategically important to the world’s wealthiest nations, Canada included. Firstly, control of Afghanistan offers a foothold in an oil-rich corner of the world. A puppet regime installed by the US would prove to be a useful tool in controlling the flow of oil in that region. Secondly, an Afghanistan controlled by the US could act as a base from which to launch similar strikes on other uncooperative states in the region (such as Iraq). Thirdly, Afghanistan stands as a warning, like a head on a pike, to other states not to think that they can simply do as they please. Finally, Afghanistan is an enticing site on which to build military run prisons to hold the thousands of prisoners the US led coalition is scooping up.
Canadian Forces’ presence on the ground has helped with every aspect of the US’ list of objectives, and at the same time kept Canadian objectives in perspective. Oil is just as important to Canada as it is to the US, and so a regime friendly to western nations is equally desirable. Canadian firms also stand to profit from the American war machine by providing supplies to them, such as helicopters, combat simulation technology, and weapons components. The Canadian government also invests money into foreign weapons manufacturers to the tune of billions of dollars. Thus, a Canada that is supportive of the US War on Terror is good for \business.
The Terrifying Reality of the Occupation
Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, American troops have been building up a massive prison system meant to detain and interrogate “unlawful combatants” in a manner not unlike that which is happening currently in American run prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Canada’s presence on the ground on the ground in Afghanistan has freed up US soldiers to provide the man-power to build and run these prisons
According to Nader Nadery of the Human Rights Commission, “Afghanistan is being transformed into an enormous US jail. What we have here is a military strategy that has spawned serious human rights abuses, a system of which Afghanistan is but on part.” American officials are not willing to speak about hat goes on inside these prisons and there have been widespread allegations of human rights abuses and torture reminiscent of the atrocities of Abu Ghraib.
Dr. Rafiullah Bidar, regional director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission: “All I do nowadays is chart complaints against the US military…People who have been arrested say they’ve been brutalized – the tactics used are beyond belief.”
Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark of the British Guardian filed a story of their investigation of the prisons in Afghanistan in March of this year. In their report they say: “We have obtained prisoner letters, declassified FBI files, legal depositions, witness statements and testimony from US and UK officials, which document the alleged methods deployed in Afghanistan – shackles, hoods, electrocution, whips, mock executions, sexual humiliation and starvation – and suggest they are practiced across the network. Sir Nigel Rodley, a former UN special rapporteur on torture, said, ‘The more hidden detention practices there are, the more likely that all legal and moral constraints on official behaviour will be removed.’”
There have also been numerous reports of prisoners gone missing in Afghanistan, their whereabouts unknown to their family. Allegations are these prisoners are often taken to other countries to be tortured. According to Robert Baer, a CIA case officer in the Middle East until 1997, this is not an uncommon practice. “We pick up a suspect or we arrange for one of our partner countries to do it,” he explains. “Then the suspect is placed on civilian transport to a third country where, let’s make no bones about it, they use torture. If you want a good interrogation, you send someone to Jordan. If you want them to be killed, you send them to Egypt or Syria. Either way, the US cannot be blamed as it is not doing the heavy work.”
In light of this testimony, one shudders to think of the fate that awaited Maher Arar, a Syrian-Canadian who was arrested and sent to a Syrian prison where he was tortured for 10 months. It also exposes the role that Canada is playing in their participation in the War on terror and in the occupation of Afghanistan.
And while Canada willingly subjects its own civilians and Afghan prisoners (many of hom are detained only to name names) to torture in these prisons, they at the same time willingly subject Afghan civilians to a repressive Islamic government.
In October, 2005, it was reported that the editor of a women’s magazine in Afghanistan was sentenced to two years in prison for writing articles denouncing a law that allows one to be stoned to death for leaving the religioin of Islam, challenging the practice of 100 lashes as punishment for adultery, and arguing for equal rights for women.
“We work together…[we provide] whatever they need. Whatever they as for…We’re here at the behest of the government to provide them with assistance,” said NATO spokesperson, Major Karen Tissot Van Patot (a Canadian) on NATO forces in Afghanistan’s relationship with the Afghani government.
This is what Canada has brought to the people of Afghanistan: an oppressive theocracy, starvation, systemic attacks on women’s fundamental freedoms, abductions, and torture chambers. Canada is a partner in crime, and doesn’t care what kinds of atrocities are committed in its name. Canada’s only concern is that they are a beneficiary of the system that is being set up in Afghanistan, no matter who gets raped and murdered. Rick Hillier, Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff, summed thins up perfectly: “We’re not the public service of Canada, we’re not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces and our job is to be able to kill people.”

Caution: Road Blocks Ahead

2006-03-21T13:39:00.000-08:00

Originally from March/April 2005 issue of The Applecart

Caution: Road Blocks Ahead

By Revolt fer Brains
In the summer of 1990, the world watched as a group of Mohawk warriors and supporters from Quebec engaged in a 77 day long armed standoff with provincial police and the Canadian military in an effort to assert their land rights and sovereignty as a nation.
It happened in Kanesatake, a Mohawk settlement near the town of Oka, Quebec. Like many other First Nations, the Kanesatake Mohawks have time and time again been denied title to their traditional land. And, like many other First Nations, their outcries and protests were downplayed and ignored, forcing them to take a more direct approach to defending their land, and their lives.
In 1989, the mayor of Oka, Jean Ouellette, unveiled plans to expand the old nine-hole golf course to 18 holes. The plans called for the nine-hole expansion and sixty luxury townhouses to be built on a strip of land reaching into the pine forest that the Mohawk people of Kanesatake claimed to be theirs. Several protests against the expansion were held over the next year, most initiated by the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, but scores of non-Mohawk residents of the town of Oka opposed the plan as well, for a variety of reasons. Many townspeople were angered that the town council had not consulted the Mohawk people about the project, and a petition circulated, gathering nearly nine hundred signatures from residents of Oka and the surrounding area.
Despite widespread opposition, the Oka town council voted in favour of proceeding with the project in early March 1990. On March 10th, the people of Kanesatake set up camp in the Pines. The occupation of the disputed land to prevent the project had begun.
The Mohawk people stayed at the camp day and night to prevent landscapers from beginning their work to expand the golf course. In mid-April the Mohawk people erected a barricade on a road leading to the Pines after their camp was vandalized. Four days later, the Oka town council obtained an injunction against the Mohawk occupants to remove the barricade. The Mohawks did not budge, and on May 1st, the Quebec provincial police, the Surete du Quebec (SQ), attempted to push past the barricade only to be met with resistance by Mohawk warriors and supporters, some of whom had come from nearby Kahnawake to assist with the occupation.
Then, in the early morning of July 11th, the SQ launched a raid on the occupied territory. A gun battle broke out, and SQ officer Marcel Lemay was killed. Beginning that day, in an effort to prevent further potentially violent raids against them, the Mohawk protesters erected a series of new roadblock on Highway 344. The SQ responded with roadblocks of their own. The standoff was on, and tensions mounted.
Across the country, many other aboriginal groups showed their support for the Mohawks of Kanesatake, and at the same time expressed their own frustrations by organizing similar actions. Roadblocks and barricades went up on railway tracks and roads in B.C., Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia. Rallies, marches, and hunger strikes were held to support the warriors, and some even made the trek to Kanesatake to become warriors and fight with the Mohawk people.
In nearby Kahnawake, Mohawk warriors seized the Mercier Bridge, essentially cutting the Montreal suburb of Chateauguay off from the city itself. Chateauguay residents grew furious, and in mid-August several hundred residents rioted. The Chateauguay riots exposed an underlying racist sentiment toward the Mohawk people of the region. Some radical rightwing groups were involved in the riots, including members of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Many people were threatened for simply looking like a Mohawk. In one case, two young men were beaten by an angry mob who assumed they were Mohawks simply for wearing camouflage pants.
As the standoff dragged on into mid-August without any solution drafted by the negotiating parties representing the various interests in the situation, the prospect of a peaceful solution seemed to be slipping away. On August 17th, Quebec Premier, Robert Bourassa requested that the Canadian military replace the SQ at the frontlines of the standoff, and the change over was complete by August 20th. Seven days later, Bourassa made yet another move.
“We cannot have in Canada or in Quebec this type of democracy or pseudo-democracy that permits citizens, no matter what the value of their ultimate cause, to choose which laws they are going to follow…”. And with that, the Premier requested that the army dismantle the Mohawk barricades. What followed was an escalation that almost guaranteed a violent and potentially bloody end to the situation. The army began moving their roadblocks closer to the Mohawk barricades, pushing the limits, and testing the warriors’ resolve.
On September 1st the army pushed forward past three Mohawk barricades and into Kanesatake, and by the next day they had advanced further to the barricade blocking the entrance to the Pines. Out-manned and out-gunned, the warriors and supporters fell back into the pines and took up defensive positions. Children were taken to a nearby community centre as their parents feared door-to-door raids by the army that could put them in harm’s way.
On September 7th the military breached the final barricade. The warriors and supporters retreated into the nearby drug and alcohol treatment centre that had acted as the Mohawk headquarters throughout the standoff. There, the Mohawk rebels spent 19 days under constant fear of an assault by a much stronger military force, all the while asserting their rights to land and sovereignty. But by September 26th, the rebels realized that there was nowhere left to go. Their bargaining power had fizzled.
That evening, the military was prepared to take the Mohawk rebels into custody. They anticipated the warriors and their supporters would walk down the main route from the Pines and turn themselves over, but the fighting spirit of the Mohawk rebels still burned.
The rebels left the treatment centre at approximately 7:00pm and started down the path toward the frontline. Suddenly, they veered off the path and headed northeast toward the town of Oka. The Canadian soldiers were caught off guard, if only briefly, as the rebels attempted to escape arrest and the abuse that was certain to follow.
Some were able to evade the military and make it to the town. Most, however, did not. The military swarmed the Mohawk rebels, knocking them to the ground, and clubbing them with the butt of their rifles. One soldier stabbed Waneek Horn-Miller, a fourteen-year-old Mohawk girl, in the back with a bayonet as she rushed down the highway toward Oka carrying her four-year-old sister. At 8:00pm, the Mohawk rebels were loaded up and taken away on two military busses.

Though the Mohawk rebels were taken into custody by the military, many Mohwak people saw the events of the summer of 1990 as a victory. They had shown the provincial and federal governments, and the people of Canada that they were no longer content to be marginalized and forgotten, and they inspired a number of other aboriginal communities to stand up for their rights in the process.
Many aboriginal communities have become disenchanted with the federal and provincial governments’ contempt for their claims to land and sovereignty. Recent history is laced with many examples of aboriginal communities resorting to direct action in their fight, after finding little or no help from the legal system.

International Women's Day

2006-03-14T11:47:00.000-08:00

This year WPRM activists worked a table at the University of Manitoba, distributing WPRM literature, buttons, postcards, and T-shirts. Hanging the globe flag from the table, it was visited by many students and faculty throughout the day.

Articles from Li Onesto were distributed, including her open letter of support for the "World Can't Wait - Drive out the Bush Regime" campaign, as well as her article "Taking it Higher: Women's Liberation in Nepal," which many people took.

Also distributed were various WPRM statements, including the call, "Build the World People's Resistance Movement," and statement of support for Women in Iran and the March to the Hague for the Abolition of all Misogynic Laws in Iran. (see below for a report on this march)

By far the most picked up pamphlet was the call to resist Operation Charging Bison. Many who took it expressed support for the resistance being planned against the training of Canadian troops for urban war in Afghanistan and Haiti. Several conversations were held over how to overcome the imperialist system, and about what role Canada is playing in the world and Afghanistan.

European march for Iranian women successful

2006-03-14T11:18:00.001-08:00

European march for Iranian women successful

13 March 2006. A World to Win News Service.

“We saw a woman, just for love, condemned to death and stoned.

We saw the plant of hope turn yellow and die, without spring.

As long as we’re shackled, the world will endure the rule of capital, ignorance and religion.

What does the young life whose head is in a noose long for, if not liberation?

We said: what sort of life is that? There’s no time to lose. Yes, the time has come for this campaign.”

With this song called Karzar (Campaign) written especially for the occasion by a group of artists actively supporting this effort, the march for Iranian women organised by the Campaign for the Abolition of All Misogynist, Gender-Based Legislation and Islamic Punitive Laws started in Frankfurt, Germany, 4 March and ended on 8 March, International Women’s Day, in The Hague, Netherlands, where it culminated with a protest front of the International Criminal Court. Some 800-1,000 people, mainly Iranian women from all over the world, participated in the last day of the march.

The determination and enthusiasm of the protestors was such that the cold and heavy rain from early morning until late evening could not hamper their schedule. They felt as if they could see a bright sun shining over them that other people could not see: the emergence of a new women’s movement. If Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamic regime celebrated their seizure of power by brutally attacking women’s rights, sparking the demonstration of 8 March 1979 in Tehran, this year on 8 March women celebrated the emergence of their movement as one of the most powerful forces threatening the very existence of the medieval Islamic regime. This march was the most important Iranian women’s protest since 8 March 1979.

After Frankfurt, the march went through Mainz, Cologne and Dusseldorf before finally reaching The Hague. About 400 protesters started in Frankfurt, in bitter cold and the heaviest snow in 25 years. A theatre group presented a skit about the oppression of women before or after each march in a different city each of the four days. It featured a group of women covered with a black veil or blue burqa (representing the coverings Iranian and Afghan women are forced to wear) oppressed by a mullah, a symbol of the Islamic regimes. In the course of the short play the women rebel, turn the tide and manage to shackle the mullah. As the women prevailed, loudspeakers played the song Karzar and people enthusiastically sang along.

Following the day’s march in Mainz, Cologne and The Hague, there was a rally with speeches by women activists and those who had come a long way to express their support, solidarity messages, poems and songs and other artistic presentations. In Cologne, a young Iranian woman called Mitra presented “the dance of liberation”, in which an imprisoned young woman manages to free herself. In Dusseldorf, after the march the protestors headed towards The Hague, without a public meeting. However, the hall where the marchers lunched and the bus heading to The Hague served as venues for speeches, discussion, chanting slogans, singing and even dancing. Some people took part in the march just for a day; others joined along the way for the rest of the journey. There were new people in every city. Since 8 March was in the middle of the week, many demonstrators had to go back to work before the end.

The organisers and the main body of the march arrived in The Hague on Tuesday night and were busily occupied through most of the night. Many more arrived Wednesday morning. A minivan came from Denmark, another bus from Cologne, two buses full of women asylum seekers from the northern Netherlands, and carloads of friends and individuals travelled from other cities in Holland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the UK, France and even the US and Canada. A woman flew in from Vancouver in the morning and had to return right after the march that evening. Clearly these women gave a lot of importance to their participation.

Women from Afghanistan were among the most active organisers, seeing a common cause with Iranian women. Other Afghanistani women joined along the way. Dutch women of various ages took part, many expressing their opposition to the invasion of Iraq by the US and their own country. Turkish and Kurdish women and even African women were among the marchers. Others from Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, Hong Kong and Nepal made the march even more colourful and beautiful. The Iranian women themselves were very diverse. They included political refugees and women who had escaped death by stoning, mothers whose daughters or sons were executed by the Islamic regime, ex-political prisoners, communists and other political activists, women who had lost their job because they refused to wear the hijab, and others who also had fled Iran because of pressure on them as women, and women from Kurdistan who faced anti-woman as well as national oppression by the Tehran regime.

To the beat of drums played by a group of a dozen young Dutch women and men, and cries of “Down with the anti-women regime of the Islamic Republic”, the march wound its way through eight kilometres of city streets in The Hague. People standing in their doorways or at their windows waved in support or flashed the marchers the victory sign.

The marchers shouted “Down with the Islamic regime of Iran” and “No to US invasion” as they headed towards the Iranian embassy, where the anger and rage of demonstrators reached its highest point, and the rainy weather, too, turned most angry. After a short stop in front of the embassy, the march headed towards the International Criminal Court for a rally.

Among the speakers was Mary Lou Greenberg, who had come overseas to express the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA’s support for this march. She denounced the religious fundamentalism of the Bush regime, US imperialism’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and possible American aggression against Iran. She also emphasised the need for the people in the imperialist countries to support the anti-imperialist struggles of the people of Iran and the struggle of Iranian women. Her presence and especially her message were very well received and encouraging, especially when she announced that simultaneous actions in solidarity with the Iranian women’s campaign had been held in 12 cities in the US.

Another speaker from another side of the world, Radha Dsusanfar from India, also spoke of the necessity of supporting Iranian women. She addressed a knotty political problem that concerned many people and held back the participation of a few. She said some people may think that supporting Iranian women against the Islamic regime could mean playing into the hands of imperialism, but the situation was really just the opposite. When the bombs start to rain down on the people, it’s too late to support them because you have lost the initiative. You have to say no to the war now. Now is the time to discuss this with the progressive forces of Iran and support them in their struggle against imperialism.

It was true, as Dsusanfar said, that some progressive forces, particularly in Germany as well as other countries, refused to support this effort because of this same argument, but this could not dilute the internationalist character of the march. Many forces worldwide gave their support. Maoists were in the forefront because they hold that the only way to resist US imperialism in this situation is to support the just struggle of the Iranian people for their democratic rights and against imperialist domination, and not line up with a medieval regime that has suppressed the people and especially women for so long. In addition to the RCP,USA message, statements and other forms of support came from the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan, the Revolutionary Communist Party Organising Committee of Canada and other parties that provided logistical and practical assistance. Many other revolutionary and progressive groups also actively supported the march. WPRM activists came from Berlin. An enthusiastic group of women who had heard about this in a meeting came from Bielefield, Germany, to join the march in Mainz. A number of groups and organisations from Germany and especially the Netherlands sent solidarity messages and took part in the demonstrations in various cities.

During the second day of the march, the campaign received a very special message from a group of women who had celebrated 8 March in the mountains near Tehran, away from the eyes of the Islamic regime. This message tremendously boosted the mood and spirit of the rally. The reading of this short message was interrupted several times by the tears of the moderator and audience applause. It was followed by a solidarity message from the union of the United Bus Company workers in the capital, whose struggle for their rights had rocked the whole country before being crushed by regime security forces, with nearly a thousand union members arrested. This made the cheering overflow. (Later came additional news of two public demonstrations by hundreds of women in Tehran 8 March, one in Student Park and the other in Laleh Park. Both were brutally attacked by security forces.)

One of the strengths of the march was that a fairly large number of the youth were taking part in political activity for the first time. Some had travelled from as far away as Sweden. In fact three generations of women took part.

A young women of Kurdish origin named Bayan played an outstanding role all through the five days. When asked why, she responded, “We don’t have to go far, to Iran, Afghanistan or Iraq – where I live in Germany, women also experience oppression. Even here Kurdish women are oppressed by the society and their father and their husband. But I am concerned about the unequal laws in Iran too. I hope we can do more of this.”

The work of artists was very important in strengthening this campaign. Gisoo Shakeri, with her powerful voice, not only agitated the people but played a vital political role. Mina Asadi wrote the stirring words to the march’s theme song Karzar; her radical stand against imperialism and all reactionaries was also very encouraging. Jamileh Nedai a veteran cinema and theatre artist; Mohamad Shams, who wrote the music for Karzar; Abbas Samakar; Basir Nasibi and many other artists supported and actively participated in the march.

Afghanistani women also brought a distinct strength to this march. Like Iranian women, they, too, have endured especially severe oppression in the last 27 years. In their messages and speeches they made it clear that the American-led invasion of Afghanistan has not liberated women. Instead, it has made the situation even worse in many different ways. They shared with other women some of the pain they are suffering and their hopes for what they could achieve by organising Afghani women on a much broader scale.

At the end of the public indoor meeting that lasted until late, women did not hide their happiness. Women in every corner of the hall were hugging each other excitedly and even crying. Many women were happy and satisfied that they had taken part in this march despite the contradictions they had to face. This was the first time that many of them had left their children and family for more than a week to do something like march with other women. Azadeh, from London, like many other women, had left her young children behind to take part in the march. She told AWTWNS, “I am so happy that I took part in the march. I’m happy that a friend really pushed me. If I had not come I would’ve regretted it later.” Mina Asadi said that these five days of marching, along with the International Women’s Day demonstration of 8 March 1979, had been the best days of her life.

The greatest achievement of this march is that these women were able to organise this successful march by themselves. All this means that the women’s movement attacked by the Islamic regime has been reborn, and is taking on new momentum. Its great potential represents a real threat to the Islamic rulers.

Operation Charging Bison (in Spanish)

2006-02-19T15:05:00.000-08:00

Comenzando el 30 de Abril de este año, las Fuerzas Armadas Canadienses (FAC) estarán conduciendo a gran escala durante una semana entera maniobras de guerra urbana en el centro de la ciudad de Winnipeg. Acontecimiento que tomará lugar los primeros días de Mayo en el cuál se conmemora un acontecimiento mundial como lo es El Día Internacional de los Trabajadores. Estas maniobras son una provocación extravagante dirigida a los movimientos populares y debe de ser prevenida y resistida.

Alrededor del mundo la Maple leaf que ha sido elevada por el FAC (Fuerzas Armadas Canadienses) ha venido a representar tortura, opresión y asesinato para aquellos desafortunados que la han visto elevarse. En Afganistán, las Fuerzas Canadienses han ayudado a sostener y defender la teocracia que se opone completamente a los intereses básicos de la gente allá. En Haití, las Fuerzas Canadienses trabajan junto con Francia y Los Estados Unidos para llevar acabo golpe de estado en contra del Presidente electo de Haití, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, y establecer un gobierno de negocios élite quienes han abierto al ya extremadamente país pobre para explotarlo aun mas .

Las maniobras de la guerra urbana a la que han identificado con el codo Operation Charging Bison, servirá para entrenar al FAC para mejorar su papel cómo reaccionarios, anti popular, antipaz, anti revolucionarios y pro-imperialistas.

Nosotros los activistas del Movimiento de Resistencia de los Pueblos (Winnipeg) estamos haciendo un llamado masivo de resistencia. Al principio de la semana en que se llevara acabo "Operation Charging Bison" nosotros estaremos lanzando un trabajo masivo en el vecindario cercano y en las comunidades donde las maniobras tendrán lugar. Este trabajo masivo servirá para edificar bases de soporte para las acciones previstas también nos dará la oportunidad de entablar dialogo con las masas acerca de lo que es el internacionalismo, antiimperialismo, oposición a una guerra injusta y la posibilidad de un mundo mejor. Durante estas acciones incluyendo (pero por cierto sin limite alguno) una marcha en Mayo, haciendo un llamado al retiro de las tropas canadienses en Haití, Afganistán y nuestra ciudad. Es aborrecible que ellos estén entrenando para poner abajo a los movimientos de resistencia legítimos y nosotros necesitamos asegurarnos que ellos no sean bienvenidos.

En breve, nosotros queremos cambiar todo el terreno político en ambos; en esta ciudad y alrededor del mundo. Queremos poner oposición al terrible papel que Canadá tiene en Haití y Afganistán en el área principal. Queremos hacer una gran mancha que nadie en el país podrá ser capaz de ignorarla. Nosotros queremos mandar un mensaje a la gente de todo el mundo desde Puerto Príncipe a Kandahar a Fullujah que nosotros nos solidarizamos con ellos en unidad y esperanza en contra de nuestro gobierno por una liberación futura.

Dejen sus planes y únanse a nuestra causa en Winnipeg en las semanas cercanas al día de Mayo. Ayúdenos a colocar a Winnipeg el la misma categoría que Seattle, La ciudad de Québec y Genoa. Sea parte de la historia en proceso. Porque el mundo no puede esperar.

Movimiento de Resistencia de los Pueblos World People’s Resistance Movement

Stop the ‘Charging Bison’ in its tracks!

2006-02-16T16:58:00.000-08:00

Beginning April 30th of this year, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) will beconducting a week-long, large-scale urban-warfare exercise in downtown Winnipeg. Taking place over May Day, International Worker’s Day, this exercise is an outrageous provocation toward people’s movements and must be opposed and resisted.

Around the world, the maple-leaf flown by the CAF has come to represent murder, torture and oppression to those unlucky enough to see it flying. In Afghanistan, Canadian Forces are helping to prop-up and defend a vicious theocracy that is completely opposed to the basic interests of the people there. In Haiti, Canadian Forces worked together with France and the US to carry out a coup d’etat against the elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and to install a government of business elites who are opening the already extremely-poor country to even more exploitation. Here in Canada, the CAF has suppressed numerous acts of resistance by Aboriginal Peoples.

The urban-warfare exercise, already given the codename ‘Operation Charging Bison,’ will serve to train the CAF to better carry out their reactionary, anti-people, anti-peace, counter-revolutionary, and pro-imperialist role.

We, the activists of the World People’s Resistance Movement (Winnipeg) are therefore calling for massive resistance. In the weeks leading up to‘Operating Charging Bison’ we will be conducting mass work in the nearby neighborhoods and communities where the exercises will be taking place. This mass work will serve to build up a basis of support for the upcoming actions as well as give us an opportunity to engage with the masses around the questions of internationalism, anti-imperialism, opposition to unjustwar, and the possibilities of a much better world. During the operation itself we will be participating in many diverse actions, including (but certainly not limited to!) a May Day march calling for the withdrawal of all Canadian troops from Haiti, Afghanistan, and our city. It is abhorrent that they will be training to put down legitimate resistance movements –and we need to ensure that they are not welcome.

In short, we want to change the whole political terrain, both in this city and around the world. We want to put opposition to Canada’s terrible role in Haiti and Afghanistan in the mainstream. We want to make a splash so big that no one in the country will be able to ignore it. We want to send a message to the people of the whole world -- from Port-au-Prince toKandahar to Fallujah – that we stand with them, against our government, in unity and in hope for all-the-way liberation.

Drop your plans and come to Winnipeg for the weeks leading up to May Day.Help place Winnipeg in the same category as Seattle, Quebec City, and Genoa. Be part of history in the making: Because the world can’t wait.

Call of the WPRM

2006-02-16T16:55:00.000-08:00

Build the World Peoples Resistance Movement!
By the Provisional Organising Committee, World People’s Resistance Movement

The people of the whole world are confronted with a global challenge by a dangerous enemy aiming to solidify and expand a world-wide empire. This enemy has declared its right to use military force to intervene anywhere and everywhere, to destroy peoples and their lands, to slander the people’s struggles as "terrorist" in order to legitimise snuffing out any resistance to their vicious military, political, and economic order. When they use their newly proclaimed "right" to replace regimes at will even against the most despicable of tyrants (most of whom they themselves have backed and fed), the ultimate victim and target is not the tyrants but the peoples themselves. Last year’s smokescreen of human rights and democracy have been largely replaced with naked gangster logic of national self interest, resurrection of the "white man’s burden" of 19th century colonialism and holy wars pitting Christianity (or the "Judeo-Christian tradition") against the "heathens". And this reactionary crusade carried out in the name of "war on terrorism" is backed by the most powerful weapons of terror and mass destruction that has ever existed on the earth.

The progressive forces in every country are confronted with a great challenge. They must either "be with us or against us", as the chieftain in crime has put it. Long before Sept 11 the injustice of the world order in which a relative handful live off the labour and misery of the worlds peoples was screaming out for resistance. Millions were already in motion and the need for world wide unity was already apparent. Now it all the more clear that the road to social progress and liberation cannot sidestep a direct confrontation with the US led machine.

It is the imperative duty of all progressive forces to dare to resist and unite against this enemy whose name is imperialism.

When the masters openly praise the virtues of torture, it is a green light for every despotic regime in the world to clamp down viciously. When the imperialists have declared that there is no national frontiers that they need respect, the people, too, are required to unite their forces across national lines. Powerful movements against the global institutions of the enemy bring together demonstrators for many countries. The actions of even a relative few reverberates throughout the empire and the blows struck in distant corners strengthen the resolve of those fighting in the entrails of the enemy. The courageous stand taken by prominent writers and artists in one country inspire counterparts the world over. The protectors of a vicious system want an global struggle-so be it!

We can never allow our foes to determine which struggle is legitimate and which is not. All those struggles against imperialism and reaction must be supported including where the oppressed and exploited have taken up arms against the enforcers of the old order. We can never accept that the biggest criminals on earth may burn down whole cities while the people are forbidden to light candles.

The World People’s Resistance Movement is being formed to help the struggles all over the globe flow together into a mighty torrent. The WPRM provides an international vehicle to promote and facilitate the world wide unity against our common enemy. Today’s focus must be opposing the imperialist crusade carried out under the sign "war on terrorism".

The WPRM does not seek to supplant or compete with any other people’s organisation on a national or international level. All those on the same side of the barricades are welcome. Help form the chapters of the WPRM in every country made up of individuals, circles, associations and political parties. North and South, East and West, unite the people’s struggles!