The Communist Alliance has lodged an application with the Australian Electoral Commission for federal registration. If approved, it will be the first time a communist party has been registered in Australia since July 1990, when the then national congress was deregistered due to declining membership. “The most common response we get is ‘Oh, you still exist’,” Victorian state branch secretary Andrew Irving told The Age yesterday.
Oddly enough, this is precisely the same reaction received when the Communist Alliance last launched itself upon the world stage. Assessing the outcome of the 2001 Federal election — a contest in which the CPA ran candidates — the editorial in the November 14, edition of The Guardian reads: The comment, “I thought you had gone out of existence”, is still all too frequently heard; more hopefully: The discovery that that is not the case is often followed by the comment that the Party’s continued existence is a good thing.
In the NSW Senate contest in 2001, there was a ding-dong battle between the CPA and the Socialist Alliance for electoral supremacy. Sadly for the CPA, they lost by over 100, gaining 1241 to the SA’s 1364 votes (from an overall total of 4,021,724). (By 2008, SA had gained 3,351 votes.)
*Note that following the Socialist Party of Australia’s adoption of the name Communist, the Militant Socialist Organisation adopted the name Socialist Party. The MSO/SP is a member of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), originally formed in 1974.
Oh yeah. Previously…
Communists’ website a hit with youth
Karen Heinrich The Age
April 29, 2001
Perched at their Internet-connected computers, an army of apparatchiks-in-waiting has flocked to the Communist Party of Australia’s website, bombarding it with more than 95,000 hits in the past two months.
CPA general secretary Peter Symon, 78, says it’s the strongest wave of youth interest he has seen in his 60 years as a card-carrying communist and almost three decades as general secretary.
And at its ninth National Congress recently, the CPA voted unanimously to convene in September a foundation congress of the Communist Youth of Australia for those aged 14-29. Waiting in the wings is a small but dedicated number of wannabe reds, who have been meeting as a loose network since October.
Mr Symon said that most of the hits came from young Australians curious about the party that former prime minister Robert Menzies tried unsuccessfully to declare unconstitutional in the early 1950s.
Youth interest in the CPA is not new. The Eureka Youth League – formed in 1941 from the remnants of the Young Communist League, deemed illegal early in World War II – was one of the main rallying points for protests against the Vietnam War in Sydney and Melbourne.
By 1972, however, many young firebrands of the left had broken ties with the Eureka Youth League, outraged by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia four years earlier.
Ray Berbling, CPA Victorian state president, said that youth interest in the party was “a cyclical thing” and interest was high now because “young people are suffering more under the governments that have been running Australia for the past 20 years”.
Organiser and youth spokesman Jules Andrews, 26, said the stimulus for forming a youth branch of the CPA was a trip to Melbourne last September for the S11 protests outside Crown Casino, which he hailed as “a triumph of left parties working together”. Mr Andrews said aspiring members of the Communist Youth of Australia met at party headquarters in Sydney once a fortnight for a formal meeting. Another activity – such as meeting at a protest rally, or a party function where they can set up a
youth table – is also held once every two weeks.
Raised in Townsville, Mr Andrews did not go to university (“it’s too expensive”) and does not come from a long line of communists (“my older sister, two younger brothers and I had a conservative, Christian upbringing”). He said his siblings had adopted his ideas.
To Mr Symon, such support is “indicative of a certain sort of milieu that’s developing in a society that is discontented and disillusioned” with the major political parties.
“They (young people) want to make life better, which is very commendable and understandable, and that need is being facilitated by the Internet. And in the 60 years I have been involved with the CPA, I can say without fear of contradiction that the ideas that we stand for have never let us down,” Mr Symon said.
But Sander Hicks refuses to turn a blind eye. As an active Green Party member he works tirelessly to put his 9/11 truth book, The Big Wedding, into action. He is also owner of Vox Pop Coffee Shop, a fair-trade establishment that places unions and democracy higher on the menu than sales and revenues. He works steadily towards living his visions to show that seeds, though small, can be a very potent enemy when their potential for destruction is ignored.
When I hear the words ‘Catholic Anarchy’, I reach for my copy of Ken’s Guide to the Bible.
The War Against Preterrorism: The ‘Tarnac Nine’ and The Coming Insurrection
Alberto Toscano
I. The Case
On 11 November 2008, twenty French youths are arrested simultaneously in Paris, Rouen, and in the small village of Tarnac (located in the district of Corrèze, in France’s relatively impoverished Massif Central region). The Tarnac operation involves helicopters, one hundred and fifty balaclava-clad anti-terrorist policemen and studiously prearranged media coverage. The youths are accused of having participated in a number of sabotage attacks against the high-speed TGV train routes, involving the obstruction of the train’s power cables with horseshoe-shaped iron bars, causing material damage and a series of delays affecting some 160 trains. Eleven of the suspects are promptly freed. Those who remain in custody are soon termed the ‘Tarnac Nine’, after the village where a number of them had purchased a small farmhouse, reorganised the local grocery store as a cooperative, and taken up a number of civic activities from the running of a film club to the delivery of food to the elderly. In their parents’ words, ‘they planted carrots without bosses or leaders. They think that life, intelligence and decisions are more joyous when they are collective’.[1]
Almost immediately, the Minister of the Interior, Michèle Alliot-Marie, brushing aside Republican legal niceties, intervenes to strongly underline the presumption of guilt and to classify the whole affair under the rubric of terrorism, linking it to the supposed rise of an insurrectionist ‘ultra-left’ (ultra-gauche), or ‘anarcho-autonomist tendency’ (mouvance anarcho-autonome), filling in the vacuum left by the collapse of the institutional Left (the PCF). Invoking anti-terrorist legislation, the nine are interrogated and detained for 96 hours; four are subsequently released. The official accusation is that of ‘association of wrongdoers in relation to a terrorist undertaking’, a charge that can carry up to 20 years in jail; what’s more, the accused might be detained for as long as two years before their case goes to trial. On December 2, three more of the Tarnac Nine are released under judiciary control, leaving two in jail, at the time of writing (early January 2009): Julien Coupat and Yldune Lévy.
Giorgio Agamben and Luc Boltanski, among others, write editorials decrying the disproportion and hysteria of this repressive operation.[2] A petition is circulated by Eric Hazan, radical publisher and friend of Coupat, signed by Badiou, Bensaïd, Butler, Rancière, Žižek and several others.[3] In the city of Tarnac (a village proud of its role in the Resistance, and represented by a communist mayor for four decades) a combative committee of support is set up, conveying a virtually unanimous show of solidarity of the villagers with the arrested; other committees and protests emerge in Bruxelles, New York, Moscow, and elsewhere.
*A slightly abridged version of this text will appear in Radical Philosophy 154.
Note that, according to some accounts in the French-language press, the remaining two prisoners, Julien Coupat and Yldune Lévy, have been subjected to sensory deprivation.
For almost five months, the Student Housing Action Cooperative (SHAC) squatted several properties in Farady Street, Carlton belonging to the University of Melbourne. When the squat was established in August 2008, the properties had been vacant for three years, having previously housed offices providing students with counselling. On January 14, 2009, after having issued numerous demands to vacate, the University finally arranged for the eviction of the squatters, conducted by a small group of about 25-30 police, accompanied by a handful of University employees.
There is little dispute regarding the general housing crisis in Melbourne. The University’s own housing service states: “The current shortage of housing in Melbourne’s private rental market has increased the demand on student housing providers located in the city and close to the University’s Parkville campus”. It further notes that “With a population of over three million people, Melbourne is a cosmopolitan and multicultural city. The University’s main campus is located in Parkville, a suburb that is approximately two kilometres from the city centre. The inner-city suburbs surrounding the University are diverse. Some are quiet, some are surrounded by parkland, some are surrounded by bars and cafes. The city itself offers a vibrant lifestyle.”
The principal requirement to gain access to the city’s vibrant lifestyle is of course money. This fact hardly needs reiterating, but its existence is both determinative and regarded as being as natural as breathing; as such, it provides the framework for almost all of the discussion which SHAC generated.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. . . . And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money.
I Corinthians xiii (adapted)
Over a century ago, a Frenchman called Paul (1841-1911) made the following observations on property.
Individual property can only exist in a primitive stage of human life, because of its two attributes, it is the product of the owner’s labour, and it is used by him.
These two qualities, regarded as indispensable to and inseparable from individual property, have left so strong an impression upon the human mind that the defenders of capitalism idiotically state that property is the reward of toil. Nevertheless, capitalist production can only exist when individual property is stripped of the two attributes which alone justify it.
Personal wealth is still, indeed, the result of labour, but it no longer belongs to the workers who produce it; the means of production (land, machinery, mines, &c.) are not owned by the wage-workers who use them, but by the capitalist who has not made them, and who does not work them. Capitalist property does not, consequently, possess the two attributes of individual property.
The economists, the moralists, the philosophers, and the politicians puzzle their brains to discover some attributes which can give it the appearance of being justifiable. Not being able to give the capitalist the character of a producer, they give him that of a thrifty man; his wealth is the result of his saving, they say. But, as he does not work, he must, then, save on the labour of others – in other words, he robs the workers of a part of the fruits of their labour, in order to make himself rich. The “thrift” argument having been recognised as being as silly as it is inconvenient, the leading politicians have generously endowed the capitalist with the qualities of organiser of labour and captain of industry, which by a genial co-operation with the labour of the wage-workers, beget his millions. But, reply the Socialists, as these qualities are not possessed by the capitalist, but by his managers and foremen, they cannot justify his ownership of wealth.
Then, arriving at the end of their inventive genius, they transform the transcendent virtues of the capitalist into a metaphysical entity. It is chance, it is blind fortune which makes him owner of property.
The existence of joint-stock companies demolishes these arguments, so laboriously maintained, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. The capitalist who possesses shares in them has not the least contact with production; he may be ignorant of the place where it is carried on, as of its nature; he receives his dividends, and that is all he cares about. The joint-stock company breaks the last bonds which unite the proprietor to his property; it has depersonalised property.
The shares of a joint-stock company can belong to Peter, Paul or Nicodemus, they can change hands every day at the Stock Exchange, and sometimes several times in one day; but the factories still go on producing as if the property had not changed hands. The joint-stock companies which create a kind of collectivist property possessed by shareholders, demonstrate the absolute uselessness of capitalist production and clearly show the parasitical nature of the capitalist class. It is not the possessors but the non-possessors who are useful in the field of the capitalist production; but the Social Revolution will sweep away these parasites.
~ Paul Lafargue, Capitalist Property (June 1903), from Justice, 13 June 1903, p.3 (Originally published in Droit du Peuple)
Student Grant
On March 13, 2008, former student politician and President of the Australian Union of Students The Hon Julia Gillard MP gave a nice speech titled ‘A Higher Education Revolution: Creating a Productive, Prosperous, Modern Australia’ (note that the AUS declared Higher education in crisis in 1983; the same year that Gillard became President). In her speech, Gillard announced a Review, the Bradley Review, into higher education. The Expert Panel’s final report was released on December 17, 2008, and is meant to be available online (although I cannot download a copy for some reason). In response to the release, the man ultimately responsible for evicting students from University property:
The acting vice-chancellor of Melbourne University, Professor Peter McPhee, told The Age yesterday urgent action was required to stop Australia subsidising research from teaching budgets. “What I think needs to be stressed is this affects every element of university life,” Professor McPhee said. “The impact of not having research fully funded is larger classes … and university classes are simply too large” (Unis lobby for fully funded research, Katharine Murphy, December 31, 2008).
Whether or not Peter gets what he wants, it seems likely that students will be getting less, especially as far as ‘income support’ is concerned. Thus:
MORE than a third of university students receiving the main form of government financial assistance live in households with incomes of at least $100,000, according to government figures. Nearly half live with families on incomes of $80,000 or above, prompting critics of the Youth Allowance to say it is being rorted and not going to the students who need the aid… Centrelink data given to the review shows 148,000 students received some form of aid in 2007, a decline of 12,000 students since 2000. About 69,000 of those received the Youth Allowance. ~ Widespread rorting of uni student allowance, Stephanie Peatling, Sydney Morning Herald, January 13, 2009
The Youth Allowance, of course, is peanuts. For a single with no children, 18 years and over and not living at home, the maximum payment is $371.40 per fortnight ($185.70 per week) plus a maximum payment of $73.47 per fortnight ($36.74 per week) in Rent Assistance. That’s a maximum income of $222.44 per week; as of July 2008, the standard Federal Minimum Wage (FMW) weekly rate was $543.78. “A recent report by the Welfare Rights Network indicates that both Youth Allowance and Austudy (including rent assistance) payments are almost 40 per cent below the Henderson Poverty Line” (Wanted: A place to call home, Chris Povey, The Age, January 12, 2009).
Outside of the media, SHAC also sparked conversation in the blogosphere. John Surname, who frequently contributes to Grods, pulls no punches in his post on Diddly-Squatters (January 14, 2009). Of the squatters, John reckons “they’re fuckwits who think they deserve to live in someone’s else property for free because it’s their right to live in the inner city.” A less tired and emotional Andrew Norton simply dismisses the idea that Universities should have any other obligation to consumers (students) than to provide a commodity called Education, aka “some residual notion of the university as a community with obligations beyond the strictly educational” (Why do squatters get to stay so long in university property?, January 12, 2009).
On 3AW, ‘Spoilt brats’ staying put, January 6, 2009. “Do you think that Max and his mates are doing the right thing by making a political point about the affordability of rental accommodation? Or are they just a pack of spoilt brats?” Student squatters spark housing debate, Architecture & Design, January 14, 2009, discusses the wonderful architectural possibilities provided by empty shipping containers.
The resentment on display in much of the popular commentary is noteworthy, and revealing in terms of the extent to which Mr.Block and his legions still dominate popular thinking on matters of Property, and the howls of outrage which accompany any challenge, however slight, to the subordination of the citizenry to its prerogatives. The argument goes something like this:
Spoilt brats attend unimelb; the squatters are spolit brats. Instead of renting, or otherwise obtaining some other form of lawful accommodation — as other citizens, including students, are forced to — this small group is utilising their mis-guided sense of privilege — and the liberal attitude of the authorities at unimelb — to break the law and to obtain a commodity to which they are not entitled. Worse, the ‘students’ in question — and their status as students, rather than as trouble-making anarchists, has been questioned — are seeking accommodation in the heart of the inner-city. (“One protester wore a t-shirt backing radical group Arterial Bloc, which has been blamed for much of the mayhem during the anti-G20 riots in Melbourne. [Q.] ‘Do you [think] it’s appropriate to wear an Arterial Bloc t-shirt to a protest like this?’ But while an official spokesperson for the Student Housing Action Cooperative denied suggestions they were anarchists, and not homeless at all, others weren’t so sure. [Q.] ‘Are you an anarchist?’ [A.] (Laughs) ‘What a hilarious question… I guess there are anarchists living here, as well as people of all different political persuasions’.” ~ Melbourne University denies students squatters’ claims it’s stingy, Matthew Schulz, Herald Sun, January 7, 2009.)
John Surname:
Let’s be honest here. A lot of students are in dire need of housing, and making ends meet as a student is never easy. But if being a student has lead to homelessness, it’s probably time to assess about whether it’s a good idea to continue studying, or whether you should go and get a full time job and come back when you’re in a better position to be able to afford to study.
If you’re on AusStudy [sic], there is no reason why you should be homeless. Squatting on AusStudy [sic] is a lifestyle choice, not a choice made out of desperation.
There are a number of obvious rejoinders that could be made to this argument, but I’ll leave that up to the reader.
As for the socio-economic status of the squatters, to some extent an accurate assessment depends upon their conforming to the profile of an average student. In terms of its student population, at unimelb in 1999, 7.3% of domestic students were from a low socio-economic background, as opposed to 14.7% of domestic students across all higher education institutions (Socioeconomic background and higher education: an analysis of school students’ aspirations and expectations [EIP 02/05]). A newspaper report from 2004 notes that by 2002 there had been an increase of 0.6% in low SES students at unimelb. Another report states that in the three years to 2005, the ‘Participation share for students from low socio-economic status backgrounds (all ages) for selected universities, 2005 (%)’ at unimelb had risen 0.1% to 8.0%.
The report’s author, Richard James, further notes that:
Like most leading universities, the University of Melbourne is in a difficult position. The University has an informal, unwritten social contract because of its history and place in the institutional hierarchy. The consequences of tinkering with this implicit contract are evident in the press coverage around the Melbourne Model this year. Awkwardly, the community expects the University to stand for academic excellence and to stand for equality of opportunity in equal measure. The tensions between these two values are profound in a society in which senior school completion rates and achievement levels are so strongly correlated with socio-economic status. The bind for the University is that it is open to criticism of either elitism or declining standards if any changes are made to its policies for student selection, access and equity.
The strong correlation between school achievement and socio-economic status is starkly evident in the University of Melbourne case, as with many of the Group of Eight universities. It is now so very difficult for the University of Melbourne to recruit students from low socio-economic backgrounds who have suitable levels of academic attainment, at least as measured by the ranking provided by ENTER. This dilemma has been experienced most keenly in the highly competitive fields of study, such as Law. The University of Melbourne has the challenge of assessing the genuine academic potential of students to be successful in a higher education environment, for which there is obviously no suitable measurement tool at the present time.
In other words, unimelb is an elite institution whose student population is overwhelmingly drawn from the middle and upper classes, the majority of whom attended a fairly small range of private or ‘selective’ public schools. unimelb is typically understood as being a middle or upper-middle class institution. (In 2005, for example, only 8% of students were categorised as coming from a background of low socio-economic status.)
Of course, even if all of the squatters were from privileged backgrounds, this would not render SHAC worthless. Certainly, the abuse directed at the squatters is in accord with that heaped upon other malcontents. It may have been pretty safe to say in 1966 that the student is the most universally despised creature in France, but in Australia in 2008, the student is merely a figure of contempt.
Oh Mr. Block,
you were born by mistake,
You take the cake,
you make me ache.
Tie a rock on your block
and then jump in the lake,
Kindly do that for Liberty’s sake.
Nineteenth Century Anarchist Terrorism: How Comparable to the Terrorism of al-Qaeda?
Richard Bach Jensen Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol.20, No.4, 2008 (589–596)
In a speech given last November and in an article, Professor James L. Gelvin argues most forcefully for the existence of close similarities between nineteenth century anarchist terrorism and contemporary terrorism.1 In his talk Gelvin specifies six main areas of resemblance. These include the fact that both anarchists and al-Qaeda: number one, prefer action over ideology, number two, focus single-mindedly on resistance to an intrusive alien order, three: lack programmatic goals, four: pursue violence for its own sake, five: attack the state and the entire world system of nation states and, finally, operate through decentralized, semi-autonomous cells. Gelvin goes further than noting similarities, since he actually contends that al-Qaeda–style jihadism is a kind of anarchism, an Islamic anarchism, and indicative of the reemergence of anarchism as a force in world history after an approximately sixty year absence. Understandably, Gelvin concentrates on al-Qaeda, a subject that forms part of his general area of expertise, and spends little time explaining how the anarchist terrorists fit into his paradigm.
This points to a problem for commentators trying to compare these two terrorist phenomena, since usually those authors who know something about the Middle East and Islamic terrorism know little about nineteenth century anarchists, and those who know something about anarchist terrorism know much less about al-Qaeda. I have to place myself in the latter category, since my field of expertise is not contemporary, but rather nineteenth century terrorism, and more specifically, the diplomatic and police efforts to repress nineteenth and early twentieth century anarchist terrorism. Nonetheless, in this essay I will go out on a limb and analyze the ways in which the phenomenon of nineteenth century anarchist terrorism prefigures the phenomenon of contemporary terrorism, adding my amendments and additions to Gelvin’s intriguing hypothesis.
Wow. I hadn’t heard this track for like 20 years… It was a blast of fresh air through my suburban teenage wasteland.
“In 1986, Class War released a 7” EP single entitled “Better Dead Than Wed”. The single was released to coincide with the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson and the front cover featured a picture of the royal couple kissing. The rear of the sleeve featured a picture of the changing of the guard overlaid with a black and white image of an inner city riot. The single was released on the Mortarhate label and had the catalogue number MORT 000.”
The Hon. Mr Alex Chernov, AO QC BCom Melb. LLB Melb. Appointed to Council 1 January 1992. Elected Deputy Chancellor 8 March 2004. Re-elected 1 January 2008. Elected Chancellor 10 October 2008 to 31 December 2009
Vice-Chancellor:
Professor Glyn Conrad Davis, AC BA NSW PhD ANU. Appointed 10 January 2005.
President of the Academic Board:
Professor Geoffrey Wayne Stevens, BE RMIT PhD Melb. FIChemE FAusIMM FTSE CEng. Elected 1 January 2009.
One Person appointed by the Minister:
Term expiring 31 December 2010
Professor Peter Dawkins, BSc Hons Loughborough MSc Econ Lond PhD Loughborough. Appointed 18 February 2008.
Six persons Appointed by the Governor-in-Council:
Term expiring 31 December 2009
Dr Meredith Doig, BA MEd Stud Monash PhD RMIT Dip Ed Melb Grad Dip Mgt RMIT Appointed 23 October 2001. Re-appointed 6 March 2007.
Mr Robert Niven Johanson, BA LLM MBA Appointed 6 March 2007.
Term expiring 31 December 2010
Ms Elizabeth Alexander, AM BCom Melb FAICD FCA FCPA Appointed 2 October 2004. Re-appointed 15 April 2008.
Judge Irene Elizabeth Lawson, LLB Melb Appointed 23 October 2001. Re-appointed 15 April 2008
Term expiring 31 December 2011
Vacancy
Vacancy
Six persons appointed by the Council:
Term expiring 31 December 2009
Mrs Lynne Landy. Appointed 1 January 2007
Dr Virginia Mansour, MBBS Melb PhD Monash. Appointed 9 July 2007
Term expiring 31 December 2010
Ms Rosa Storelli, BEd Adel.CAE GDipStudWelf Hawthorn MEdSt Monash. MACE FACEA AFAIM Appointed 1 January 2001. Re-appointed 1 January 2008. Re-elected Deputy Chancellor 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2010.
Vacancy
Term expiring 31 December 2011
The Hon Mr David Ronald White, BCom Melb. BA Melb. MBA Melb. FCPA Appointed 1 March 2000. Re-appointed 1 January 2006. Re-appointed 1 January 2009
Ms Eda Natalie Sandford Ritchie, GDip Bus Monash AMusA. Appointed 13 September 2004. Re-appointed 1 January 2006. Re-appointed 1 January 2009
Three persons elected by and from the staff of the University:
Professors:
Term expiring 31 December 2009
Professor Glenn Bowes, MBBS PhD FRACP GradCert Mgmt. Elected 1 January 2008.
Academic Staff, Other than Professors:
Term expiring 31 December 2009
Associate Professor Mark Joshi, BA Oxon. PhD MIT Elected 1 January 2008.
Professional Staff Members:
Term expiring 31 December 2010
Mr Michael Francis Coyle, BA Melb. Elected 1 January 2009.
Two persons elected by and from the students enrolled at the University:
Term expiring 31 December 2008
Ms Tammi Jonas, Elected 1 January 2009.
Ms Onagh Bishop, Elected 1 January 2008.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” ~ Anatole France, The Red Lily, 1894
Scumbag College in Faraday Street, Carlton was evicted at 6am this morning by about 30 police. There were no arrests. Students are still formulating a response.
According to Union Solidarity, “Victorian Trades Hall Council Campaigns Coordinator Bronwyn Halfpenny has confirmed that unions will meet next week to consider what kind of industrial action will be taken by Trades Hall.” This follows a previous utterance by Secretary Brian Boyd that the Trades Hall Building Industry Group would take appropriate industrial action in the event of an eviction.
Melbourne University says it is relieved the squatters have finally been evicted.
Acting Vice-Chancellor, Peter McPhee says the university knew yesterday that the students were to be evicted, but the final decision was made by the Sheriff’s office.
“The students had made it very plain publicly that they had no intention of leaving the building, so of course the sheriff’s office had to make a decision about the right moment to make sure that they did,” he said.
“We’re very relieved that it’s over. The squatters from SHAC certainly had a point to make but this was not the right way to make it.”
As the trial of former President Fujimori draws to a close (seeThe Fall of Fujimori by Ellen Perry), remnants of the Shining Path remain at large. In fact, just a few weeks ago, according to the BBC, the Peruvian army “said the Shining Path — which moved into cocaine trafficking after its bloody war against the state collapsed in 1992 — killed at least 25 police or soldiers this year in a series of brazen ambushes, including one that blew up a military convoy with dynamite”.
NTDTV, October 14, 2008:
Fujimori is accused of being one of the principal authors of a state terrorist campaign to destroy Shining Path in the late ’80s and ’90s. Specifically:
1991 Barrios Altos killings: 15 dead
1992 La Cantuta killings: 10 dead
1992 illegal detention: journalist Gustavo Gorriti and businessman Samuel Dyer
Separate trial on corruption and illegal wiretapping charges
His trial is the subject of a Major Motion Picture:
Captured in 1992, Chairman Gonzalo — akaManuel Rubén Abimael Guzmán Reynoso (b. December 3, 1934) — was sentenced to life in prison in 2006.
Peru’s Shining Path founder sentenced to life for terrorism, murder
BBC
October 14, 2006
A court in Peru has sentenced the founder of the Shining Path Maoist guerillas, Abimael Guzman, to life in prison for terrorism, murder and other crimes. The sentence was for leading an uprising in which about 70,000 people were killed during the 1980s and 1990s. In sentencing Guzman to life imprisonment, three judges listed the charges of terrorism and murder in a verdict that lasted more than six hours. In his second retrial the former Shining Path leader stood impassively as he received his sentence. His partner and second-in-command, Elena Iparraguirre, also received a life sentence. During the trial, Guzman rejected being called a terrorist and described himself as a revolutionary combatant. Most Peruvians revile him, particularly in the poor rural areas, which bore the brunt of the violence.
A bourgeois, he left the philosophising behind to become a General in a People’s Army, fighting a People’s War, in Peru. This insurgency against the Peruvian state was conducted in the name of the Communist Party of Peru, aka Sendero Luminoso, aka Shining Path. (NB. Bloody Peruvian terrorist also had fuzzy side: “LIMA (EFE) – Peru’s Abimáel Guzmán, the founder of a Maoist guerrilla movement-cum-death cult that sometimes dynamited the bodies of just-murdered functionaries and hanged canines from lamposts as warnings to “capitalist dogs,” also had his soft, sappy and romantically poetic side…”)
Since the September 12th capture of Comrade Gonzalo, Chairman of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP), a fierce and complex struggle has been unfolding. On the one side, the Fujimori regime backed by U.S. imperialism and egged on by reactionaries the world over. On the other side, Chairman Gonzalo, the People’s War in Peru, the world’s proletarian revolutionary forces centred around the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement and a broad and growing front of people opposed to imperialism and reaction and united in the demand to save the life of Dr Abimael Guzmán (Chairman Gonzalo’s given name).
Chairman Gonzalo was hauled before a military tribunal with breakneck speed. The reactionaries planned to present the people with a settled question before much could be done about it. But on September 15th, the Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement issued a call to “Move Heaven and Earth to Defend the Life of Chairman Gonzalo”. In only a few days, a movement to defend his life had already begun to spring up, with an unprecedented rapidity and a broad social scope and international character.
A broad array of people from all over the world stepped forward to form the International Emergency Committee to Defend the Life of Dr Abimael Guzmán (IEC). By September 20th, the IEC began issuing regular bulletins and other messages by fax to the local defence committees that were being established in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and North and South America. Among them was a letter from Alfredo Crespo, Chairman Gonzalo’s lawyer, who wrote, “My client is aware of the concern of your organization and appreciates all of the efforts that are being undertaken…
Gonzalo was associated with RIM. Another, US-based Maoist mob, the Maoist Internationalist Movement, was opinionated, and has remained so:
Again on the arrest of comrade Gonzalo
MIM
February 5, 2008
With death threats against MIM, it is imperative that we attempt once again to address the greatest blow to communist hopes since 1976, the arrest of Comrade Gonzalo in Peru. A CIA agent involved in contributing to Gonzalo’s arrest was a white male speaking Spanish and with knowledge of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist teachings–and as of now we have verified this with one source. The main blame for Gonzalo’s capture lies with the imperialists and their lackeys, because of the “occupational hazards” of revolution. Nonetheless, Gonzalo shares partial blame for his own capture by disarming his own security ideologically.
It was the hope of many in the 1980s and early 1990s that Gonzalo in Peru would turn out to be both a genuine communist and successful revolutionary. He did have the most successful communist movement of his time, but he ended up captured and put in prison for life in 1992.
In 1980, the “Covert Action Information Bulletin” available and distributed by Gonzalo’s comrades published a CIA document on how “deep cover” is arranged. The 1980 article specifically mentioned the space services of other countries and communist parties as two targets for infiltration:
“For a Western service, penetration into an Orbit installation or the leadership of a Communist party are types of missions for which deep cover of indefinite durability may be required.”
Now it is time to criticize the Peruvian comrades ruthlessly for their own contribution to enabling the CIA.
# MIM raised the struggle against Trotskyism and its single world party idea since before there was the RIM single party Gonzalo joined. Gonzalo lightly joked on the topic the same way that RCP=CIA has all this time.
# Even after the arrest of Gonzalo, Peruvians could be found saying “only” MIM talks about crypto-Trotskyism.
# When MIM published on Internet Mao’s words on dissolving the Comintern, a Peruvian cursed us as “academic.” No Peruvians we met were aware of Stalin’s and Mao’s position.
# No Peruvian we met was familiar with Lenin on the “seal of parasitism” being on whole countries.
# No Peruvian we met was familiar with what Mao said in the Selected Works about armed struggle in imperialist countries. Only after struggle was this finally grudgingly admitted, only because it was in black-and-white from Mao.
# No Peruvian disowned Avakian for his attacks on “Lin Biaoism.”
To his credit, Gonzalo did sit his Central Committee down and have them discuss hegemonism within the RIM and he published a document from that. Gonzalo also had his Central Committee discuss whether there should be a world party, but he never evidenced any knowledge of what Stalin and Mao had said or reasons why Trotsky’s position should be resuscitated. Nor was there any discussion how the CIA builds cover from inside the u$a first in many cases.
Without Gonzalo’s being decisively correct on this question, there were bound to be problems in a military situation where the main force was peasants. In lower levels of the organization, MIM found military rigidity and aridness, and an inability to connect line and strategy, an inability to reason concretely.
Reinforcing this problem was the RCP=CIA. It held that 90% of the U.$. population was “objectively revolutionary.” The Peruvians in exile went out into France to conduct canvassing work as if Avakian and Gonzalo knew what they were talking about. They did not. No revolution came about in France.
Instead of white males imminently about to become revolutionary, such that Avakian’s slogan was “Revolution in the ’80s, Go for it!”–the Peruvians in fact encountered Amerikan white males from the CIA. Having been told that 90% of Amerikans were objectively revolutionary, the Peruvians were disarmed when it came to dealing with the reality of deep cover and international operations. The CIA was on a mission exactly at that time to have agents spend years in the united $tates building business or hobby covers for international operations.
The lying sacks of shit from the RCP=CIA told people of distant lands to expect 90% revolutionaries from the united $tates. They swindled many people of peasant background with little education and no thorough concrete knowledge of the imperialist countries. Reality was that in the 1960s, chances would have been better IF those white males Peruvians were meeting had been youth, because in the 1960s there were that many young people thinking about revolution even in the united $tates. By the 1980s and early 1990s, spies outnumbered communists by far in the united $tates, but instead of expecting exploiters, Peruvians expected benevolent white males as exemplified by Avakian’s omnipresent picture. Everywhere the RCP=CIA newspaper went, the masses received the wrong impression, a completely upside-down distortion of the general facts. Ideologically disarmed, the Peruvian masses and their allies south of the U.$. border could not contribute to the defense of comrade Gonzalo.
Every step of the way, before RIM even existed, MIM was there saying RCP=CIA was wrong. So these crimes of the RCP=CIA cannot be excused for “not knowing better.” We told them their “Conquer the World” document was wrong. We told them they were Trotskyists in our very foundation struggle. The Covert Action Information Bulletin they themselves distributed told them that the CIA used U.$.-based covers before going to the Third World. Nonetheless, Gonzalo and Avakian kept to Trotskyism, Gonzalo going so far as to admit that the RIM was “principally” a U.$.-led phenomenon. In the late 1980s, the Peruvians noted MIM as “coming on strong,” but they did not listen to us that the majority of Amerikans are exploiters. Instead of preparing the masses, the PCP ended up with Gonzalo captured–with the help of an Amerikan white male CIA agent enabled by the RCP=CIA. Contact with the masses is a disadvantage to the revolutionary struggle, if the supposed revolutionaries feed the masses incorrect information.
As for Gonzalo Thought, this precious commodity is preserved at redsun.org. An archive of earlier materials may be found at The People’s War in Perú Archive (‘Information about the Communist Party of Perú (PCP)’). Some of the flavour of His Thought and its impact may be viewed in the form of the Peruvian Revolutionary Women of Canto Grande Prison; apparently, murdered at some point following this footage.
More recently (January 12, 2009), a schmuck called Josh Rushing of AlJazeera has compiled a report on the path that still shines: “The Shining Path is on the move again. The formerly idealistic Maoist guerrilla force now models itself on the Farc in Colombia. It supports its operations by drug trafficking. Josh Rushing embeds with the Peruvian military as it goes on raids to flush out guerrillas and destroy the cocaine labs that fund them.”
Jo-Marie Burt is a scholar who has written extensively on Peru. Here she talks about inequality, human rights, democracy and the Fujimori trial. She’s also written a book on Peru, Political Violence and the Authoritarian State in Peru : Silencing Civil Society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008): “The Shining Path was one of the most brutal insurgencies ever seen in the Western Hemisphere. Political Violence and the Authoritarian State in Peru explores the devastating effects of insurgent violence and the state’s brutal counterinsurgency methods on Peruvian civil society.”
The Communist Party of Peru (Marxist-Leninist) (Partido Communista del Peru (Marxista-Leninista) / PC del Peru(ML)) participated in the ninth International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations in December 2007. Note that this ICMLPO is Maoist; the other International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations is Hoxhaist.
“We are living historic moments, each of us knows that this is the case, let us not fool ourselves. In these moments we must strengthen all forces to confront difficulties and continue carrying out our tasks. And we must conquer the goals! The successes! The victory! That is what is to be done. We are here as children of the people and we are fighting in these trenches, they are also trenches of combat, and we do it because we are Communists! Because here we are defending the interests of the people, the principles of the Party, and the People’s War. That is what we do, we are doing it and will continue to do so!” ~ Chairman Gonzalo, 24th of September 1992
LONG LIVE THE 15TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MASTERFUL SPEECH OF OUR GREAT LEADERSHIP THAT SHINES VICTORIOUS AND POWERFUL BEFORE THE WORLD AS A COMBAT WEAPON! FOR THE NEW PARTY CONGRESS IN THE MIDST OF THE PEOPLE’S WAR!
LONG LIVE THE VICTORIOUS AND INVINCIBLE PEOPLE’S WAR!
LONG LIVE CHAIRMAN GONZALO!
LONG LIVE THE BPU!
LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM, GONZALO THOUGHT, PRINCIPALLY GONZALO THOUGHT!
LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU!
Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
