NOVANEWS
October 2013
GENERAL
We have received invitations to attend the PTB May Day seminar, which will be next June, on the topic of Imperialism and War; and the 13th Congress of the PCdoB to be held from 13-16 November next month in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Meanwhile, Comrades Harpal and Ella have submitted their presentations for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ forum, which will taking place at the end of this month in Beijing. Representatives from the Korean, Cuban and Venezuelan embassies
have accepted invitations to our October Revolution rally on 9 November. The Chinese ambassador has sent his apologies and best wishes, although this does not rule out attendance by other embassy personnel.
EUROPE
Germany
Angela Merkel has been re-elected chancellor for a third term with her party winning just short of an overall majority. Although Merkel is popular in Germany as a champion of maximum austerity for the countries of southern Europe, the fact is that the various rescue funds for southern Europe have pledged in loans and guarantees the equivalent of an entire year’s federal budget. (‘Merkel
is Europe’s misunderstood visionary’ by Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, 23 September 2013)
Despite Merkel’s large majority, her party will still be outnumbered in parliament by ‘left-of-centre’ parties, which, however, would have to be able to cooperate with each other in order to defeat any measure the government was proposing. It is not thought that the social-democratic
SPD will be able to bring itself to cooperate with Die Linke, which, although a small party, is nevertheless very much on the rise.
Greece
On 18 September, a massive demonstration took place in Athens to protest at the murder of hip-hop artist Pavlos Fyssas (known as Killah P) by a supporter of the extreme right-wing Golden Dawn. Although the party denied responsibility for the killing, it has been involved in violence against immigrants and political rivals. Only the week before the murder of Fyssas, Golden Dawn members attacked a group of KKE supporters with crowbars. The youngsters had been putting up posters advertising an annual youth festival. In the face of public outrage, the Greek government arrested five Golden Dawn MPs, as well as at least 15 others. They are likely to be charged with murder, attempted murder and blackmail. Nikos Michaloliakos, Golden Dawn’s leader, has been charged with forming a criminal organisation.
Italy
“I will always be with you”, said Berlusconi to Italian prime minister Enrico Letta at the beginning of
September. A couple of weeks later, Berlusconi sought to pull his party’s ministers out of the coalition government in the hope of forcing a new election – only months since Italy’s last election.
A new election might have enabled Berlusconi to resuscitate his political career following his conviction on fraud charges (for which he has accepted a sentence of community service). However, it turned out that this was too much for even members of his own party to swallow … and so,
at the end of September, Berlusconi’s party supported Letta in roundly defeating a vote of no confidence. Greece On 18 September, a massive demonstration took place in Athens to protest
at the murder of hip-hop artist Pavlos Fyssas (known as Killah P) by a supporter of the extreme right-wing Golden Dawn. Although the party denied responsibility for the killing, it has been
involved in violence against immigrants and political rivals. Only the week before the murder of Fyssas, Golden Dawn members attacked a group of KKE supporters with crowbars. The youngsters had been putting up posters advertising an annual youth festival. In the face of public outrage, the
Greek government arrested five Golden Dawn MPs, as well as at least 15 others. They are likely to
be charged with murder, attempted murder and blackmail. Nikos Michaloliakos, Golden Dawn’s leader, has been charged with forming a criminal organisation.
MIDDLE EAST
Iran
The new president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, has expressed a willingness to negotiate with the West on the issue of his country’s nuclear programme. Western imperialism is sufficiently
interested to want to explore what it hopes will be the possibility bydiplomatic means to set up sufficient controls over Iran’s nuclear industry to ensure it is never in a position to develop nuclear weaponry. It has been Iran’s consistent position that it would be against Islam for Iran to do so, but this has never previously led the imperialist powers to even consider lifting its evermore-crippling sanctions. The hue and cry over Iran’s alleged nuclear weaponry ambitions serves at one and the same time as a ploy to deny any country the right to have these without permission from the US and to use as a standing pretext for any future imperialist military attack on Iran aimed at taking control of Iran’s substantial oil resources. Devotion to Islam does not prevent the Iranian leadership from perfectly understanding this. As a result, is deeply suspicious of Rouhani’s overtures, and its ventriloquist’s dummy, Netanyahu, is screaming that Rouhani is a wolf in sheep’s clothing who should not be trusted. However, in view of the gradual alignment of world forces away from the US and Europe – greatly assisted by the economic crisis, which has severely depleted the war chests of
imperialists armies- US imperialism is at least willing to enter into negotiations to try to persuade the Iranian government to ‘see reason’ –ie, to make concessions. Truly freedom-loving people will be keeping their fingers crossed that, whatever else happens, Iran will do nothing to jeopardise its sovereignty and independence, but will, on the contrary, establish the case for demanding that Israel too should be required to decommission its nuclear weapons and the reactors capable
of creating fuel for them.
Syria
The threat of immediate direct imperialist intervention in Syria – on the fabricated pretext of the Assad government’s ‘use of chemical weapons’ – has been temporarily averted after the US and Syria both accepted Russia’s proposal that Syria’s chemical weapons should be decommissioned. This does, of course, represent a danger for Syria, as these weapons are a major deterrent of any military invasion from Israel. However, the elements within the imperialist bourgeoisie opposing the overthrow of Assad may be gaining the upper hand. On 25 September, the New York Times ran an article stating that the armed Syrian ‘rebels’ fighting within the country were overwhelmingly controlled by ‘Al Qaeda’ – ie, by islamic groups whose agenda is to impose ‘shariah’ – and that it was unlikely that pro-western stooges in exile – ie, the ‘moderate’ Syrian political opposition led by Ahmad al-Jarba and favoured by US imperialism – would be able to influence them in any way if the common goal of overthrowing the Assad government was actually achieved.
Palestine
Much to the annoyance of US Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as of US imperialism and Israel, the European Union has issued guidelines restricting EU funding for institutions operating in jewish settlements on Palestinian land. Huge pressure is being put on the EU to water down these provisions. The EU is asked to believe that Netanyahu must be ‘rewarded’ for engaging in peace talks with Palestine, however unconstructively. The DFLP has sent us a communication condemning these negotiations as “useless”. Did anyone imagine they could be otherwise at this stage?
AMERICAS
Brazil
Brazil’s president, Dilma Rouseff, has postponed what would have been her country’s first state visit to the US in protest at the US cyber espionage against Brazil that was revealed by Edward Snowden.
Columbia
There were widespread strikes and protests by peasants in Colombia during August and September, supported by truck drivers, students, miners, health workers and teachers, because the present economic policy of maintaining a strong currency is bankrupting national producers, especially farmers.
United States
As Democrats and Republicans wrestle with each other over Obamacare, a plan to ensure universal
health cover for US citizens, which Obama is determined not to abandon and Republicans want to force to close, it has proved impossible to pass a budget for the country, with the result that as from 1 October all government functions deemed ‘nonessential’ have ceased and 800,000 US government workers have been sent home without pay, while more than a million have been asked to work without pay!
There is still no resolution to this problem, while the annual debacle over lifting the debt ceiling is due to kick in this month, with the government unable to pay its bills until a suitable resolution is passed – in both houses. Because the two houses are controlled by different parties, the only way of securing the necessary resolution is by agreement by the two parties, which the Republicans are frustrating in order to force their agenda on the president.
AFRICA
Kenya
The trial has begun of Kenyan deputy president William Ruto at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. He is accused of complicity in crimes against humanity during the period of widespread violence that followed disputed elections five years ago. President Uhuru Kenyatta, a former rival of Ruto’s, has also been indicted on these charges, and his trial is due to start next month. In the meantime, however, the al-Shabaab assault on the Israeli owned Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi has somewhat changed the political situation for the imperialists. The attack was retaliation for Kenya’s continuing involvement as a lackey of US imperialism in suppressing the Islamic Courts – an independent-minded islamic government in Somalia, which had in turn wrested power from what even the New York Times described as a government of CIA-backed warlords.
(See ‘Kenya mall carnage shows Shabaab resilence’ by Nicholas Kulish, Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, 22 September 2013) The Islamic Courts were far more acceptable to the Somali masses than the US puppets that they overthrew. If dozens of innocents were killed at Westgate, it is also true that tens of thousands of innocents have died unnecessarily in Somalia as a result of outside interference – to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands injured and/or forced to flee their homes and livelihoods. The Kenyan government naturally sent in the army to end the Shabaab occupation of the Westgate centre, and managed to dislodge the militants after several days. James Blitz said that those fighting imperialism in the Middle East and North Africa do not have the strength to fight western imperialism on its own territory so they target Europeans in theirs, and he finds their ability to carry out major actions to be truly alarming. (‘Nairobi mall strike signals terrorist rise across Africa’, Financial Times, 23 September 2013) US president Obama hastened to express his support for the Kenyan government in the face of the al-Shabaab attack, and journalist Michela Wrong went so far as to say that the prosecution by the International Criminal Court of Kenya’s leaders is an embarrassment: “By driving home the fact that Kenya for all its faults is a relatively stable friend in a dangerous neighbourhood, the attack has reminded the West why it needs Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto, whatever their misdeeds.” (‘The Kenyan attack jeopardises international justice’, Financial Times, 24 September 2013).
ASIA PACIFIC
China
Bo Xi Lai has been sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of embezzlement and abuse of power. He will be appealing, but it seems unlikely that this appeal will succeed.
SOUTH ASIA
India
The men who raped and fatally injured a young woman on a Delhi bus in December have been convicted and sentenced to be hanged, a sentence that meets the demands of the vast majority of the people of India. The fifth participant in the rape, being underage, has been convicted of the maximum sentence possible for a person of his age, which is three years in prison. The sentences against the adults have re-awakened the debate in India on whether capital punishment should be retained, since life in an Indian prison is undoubtedly at least a strong a deterrent as hanging.
