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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 1 October
Imperialism will be working hard to see Chavez ousted in the presidential elections due to be held in Venezuela next year.
One issue that greatly concerns it is compensation for Venezuela’s oil nationalisations. Whereas Venezuela has been willing to pay a very reasonable $1bn, the imperialists are insisting on at least $6bn.
Venezuela is facing about 20 international arbitration cases after a wave of nationalisations of strategic sections of the economy, including energy, metals, cement, food and utilities, which could give rise to a total bill in the region of $40bn that the Chavez government will certainly not be willing to pay.
In fact, Venezuela’s recent moves to repatriate all its gold holdings and to move its international reserves out of the US and Europe are widely seen as signalling that Venezuela will not pay anything more than it considers fair.
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 1 October
Under the tender care of US imperialism, Haiti is having a hard time recovering from the January 2010 earthquake that destroyed much of the country.
So little has been done to alleviate the conditions in which the people are having to live that a major cholera epidemic has broken out in a rural area north of Port au Prince. The cause is thought to have been contamination of the Aritbonite river by a seepage of sewage from an encampment of UN ‘peacekeepers’.
No fewer than 420,000 people have been infected, of whom at least 6,000 have died so far. Yet it is not particularly expensive to provide clean water and/or cholera inoculations. It would seem, however, that much of the ‘aid’ to Haiti goes in providing ‘peacekeepers’ to restrain the anger of the population rather than to addressing the causes of that anger!
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 1 October
On 29 September, the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the PRC, China launched an experimental module to lay the groundwork for a future space station.
The car-sized Tiangong-1 module was shot into space from a launch centre on the edge of the Gobi Desert aboard a Long March 2FT1 rocket. After moving it into orbit 217 miles above the Earth, China plans shortly to launch an unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft to practise remote-controlled docking manoeuvres.
Two more missions, at least one of them manned, are to meet up with it next year for further practice, with astronauts staying for up to one month.
The 8.5-ton module, whose name translates as Heavenly Palace-1, will stay in place for two years. Two other experimental modules will be launched after this, followed between 2020 and 2022 by the actual station in three sections.
China has succeeded in warning off US imperialism from supplying Taiwan with the 66 F-16 fighter jets that had been negotiated. China had announced it was cutting off all military cooperation with the US if that contract went ahead, and the US has bowed to the pressure.
Although the US will instead be helping Taiwan upgrade its existing forces, it is thought that Taiwan will no longer have the independent military power to ward off any attempt by China forcibly to reintegrate it into the mainland.
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 1 October
Under the Congress government, India reached an agreement with the US that had the effect of lifting all restrictions on her developing her nuclear industry, which, it will be recalled, India had originally developed to the point of producing nuclear weapons, in secret and against the wishes of US imperialism.
Under the agreement, India is left free to develop its military nuclearisation in peace, while its civil uses of nuclear energy are open to regular IAEA inspections – a curious result, the quid pro quo of which is that US construction and engineering companies were to be offered lucrative contracts to ‘help’ India build its civil nuclear industry. In the wake of Chernobyl, this agreement was controversial in India, to say the least.
Now it is being alleged that prominent politicians were heavily bribed to ensure that the proposal for the agreement was accepted in the Indian parliament in July 2008. Amar Singh, former general secretary of the Samajwadi (socialist) party was arrested in this connection on 6 September and refused bail, while Janardhan Reddy, a Karnataka mining baron, was arrested ostensibly on the grounds of illegal mining but in actual fact, it is believed, because of the role he played in bringing about the parliamentary vote in favour of the US-India deal.
Confidential US embassy cables revealed on WikiLeaks are said to have recorded an incident where a Congress party aide told a US embassy staff member that the Rashtriya Lok Dal, a political party, was paid $2.5m for each of the votes of four members of parliament. The aide was apparently shown a war chest containing no less than $25m available to ensure that the ‘right’ result was achieved in the parliamentary vote.
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 1 October
The 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan has been marked by a series of resistance actions that prove that in all those 10 years the Nato marauders have totally failed to subdue the country.
In mid-September, an attack on the US embassy and the Nato HQ in the heavily fortified ‘green zone’ of central Kabul was followed a few days later by the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani. Rabbani was the member of the Afghan government most pivotal to the new US strategy of trying to bring various sections of the resistance into a peace process that might enable Nato to retreat from Afghanistan in a semblance of order.
The Kabul attack, incidentally, was the third spectacular assault in the capital in the past three months, following an attack on the British Council on 19 August and on the Intercontinental Hotel on 29 July.
The view is spreading in imperialist quarters that the policy of trying to win over sections of the resistance is a dead duck, and blame is being directed against the Haqqani network, a group based in Pakistan which is said to number 5,000-10,000 militants and to be supported by Pakistan’s security services.
The Haqqani network has almost become the new al-Qaeda for the imperialist media, as relations between the US and Pakistan continue to deteriorate. The Haqqanis, although characterised as deeply religious, are at the same time castigated as mafia-style criminals, their worst crime being the extraction of protection money from corporations engaged in lucrative road-building contracts, money supplied in the last analysis by the American taxpayer.
The other plank of US strategy in Afghanistan – to build up the puppet army and police to be able to take over from Nato as it reduces its forces – is also going badly as there is an almost total inability to recruit from the Pashtuns of southern Afghanistan. Those few who are recruited tend to be assassinated by the resistance not long afterwards.
Mark Mazzetti, Scott Shane and Alissa J Rubin commented in the New York Times of 24 September: “After a decade of war, there is a growing sense among America’s diplomats, soldiers and spies that the United States is getting out of Afghanistan without ever figuring out how a maddeningly complex game is played.” (‘Brutal Haqqani crime clan bedevils US in Afghanistan’)
Meanwhile, many of the lucrative contracts, for instance in oil exploration, that imperialist companies were expecting to be able to extract from the country are instead going to Chinese companies. Since these enterprises offer much better terms, they are undermining the efforts of western economic hitmen to conclude oppressive, unequal contracts and recoup the costs of the predatory war. China is doing the same thing with the same effect in Iraq.
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 1 October
Jacob Zuma’s leadership of the ruling ANC in South Africa is being challenged by 30-year-old Julius Malema, leader of the ANC youth league.
Malema, an admirer of Robert Mugabe, Castro and Gaddafi, is calling for the expropriation of white-owned land and nationalisation of South Africa’s mines, which has, according to the Financial Times, “placed him at odds with members of the government and alarmed the business community but [has] captured the imagination of poorer black South Africans frustrated by growing inequality, lack of employment opportunities and poor services”. (‘Violent clashes outside Malema hearing’ by William Wallis and Andrew England, 1 September 2011)
The furies of private interest have descended on Malema and five other leaders of the ANC youth wing, who face a disciplinary committee on charges of sowing division within the party and bringing it into dispute by calling for regime change in neighbouring Botswana. Malema is also being investigated for fraud.
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 1 October
Over the past month it has become clear that the supposed overthrow of the Gaddafi regime in Libya has not happened. Instead, a full-blown, nominally civil, war has been unleashed, in which a fractious, squabbling and divided minority of mainly fundamentalist extremists in alliance with Nato are fighting the vast majority of the Libyan people, who are still led by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
In that war, allegedly unleashed by Nato ‘to protect civilians’, at least 50,000 have now been killed and even more injured.
Even the bourgeois media admit to the fact that the loyalist forces are holding on to the oases of Hun and Sabha as well as the major cities Sirte and Bani Walid, in spite of the fact that both the latter have been subjected to barbarous Nato bombardment and a cruel state of siege, deprived of food, medicine, fuel and water. But still the defenders hold out, and are putting Grad multiple rocket launchers, mortars and RPG-7s to effective use against the marauders.
The New York Times encapsulated the atmosphere in describing the life of the bourgeois journalists reporting from the region:
“Like dogs tearing off to retrieve imaginary sticks thrown by their masters, television crews and photographers have repeatedly rushed to the front lines to cover the fall of the holdouts, only to discover that the attackers were merely on the outskirts, and not even planning to stay there beyond dark. In some cases, as happened at least three times in the past week, they actually pushed well into the downtown areas, only to be repulsed.
“The photographs produced are very picturesque — flames licking the skies from the twin barrels of the former rebels’ 30mm antiaircraft guns — but what is not as clear is that many such pictures are posed, or taken while the former rebels are doing what they seem to do best, or at least most often — firing light and heavy weapons into the sky in celebration of every victory, including imaginary ones.” (‘Anti Gaddafi forces capture, then lose, last redoubts’ by Rod Nordland, 17 September 2011)
Despite Nato’s supposed victory in Libya, it was forced on 21 September to announce a three-month extension of its bombing campaign.
Moreover, even the bourgeois media are having to admit that the so-called rebels are committing atrocities, although they are ashamed to admit either the extent or the barbarity of these, and try to excuse them as ‘revenge’ for what loyalist forces did to them.
The New York Times has admitted to the wanton destruction of homes in Tawerga, and the disappearance of men rounded up and not heard of since. The fact that rebels, for all that they are supposed to be devout muslims, are going from house to house rounding up young girls in their hundreds for rape, torture, disfigurement and agonising murder is naturally hushed up.
Meanwhile, an independent news website, mathaba.net, has reported that on 28 September a mass demonstration in support of Gaddafi took place in Tripoli, brutally suppressed by the rebels and Nato firing on the unarmed demonstrators. The website reports that the “response by the masses was ongoing throughout the day and night, with shooting in various parts of Tripoli, sending rats running, abandoning some of their check points, with Nato air force terrorists no longer knowing where to hit”.
On the same day, loyalists were able to destroy an enemy aircraft.
The following day, 29 September, there was fighting throughout Tripoli, and the 32nd Reinforced Brigade of the Armed People (known as the Khamis Brigade) is said to have destroyed the remaining Nato-rebel checkpoints. It also claims to have taken control of a building that for the past three weeks has housed the Tripoli headquarters of Nato and the CIA and been used as a command and control centre to guide the Nato ground operation in Libya. The all-green flag of the Jamahiriya (self-governing society of the people) has been hoisted above the building.
Loyalists have taken over many other parts of Tripoli, though not yet the central market area, and the green flag can be seen once again flying proudly in many districts.
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 1 October
In Cairo, tens of thousands of demonstrators were involved in tearing down a concrete wall that had only just been built around the Israeli embassy. The wall was meant to protect the embassy from the fury of continuing demonstrations that have been taking place outside it since the killing of Egyptian military personnel in Sinai last month.
Not only did the protesters tear down the concrete wall, they also scaled the walls of the building to tear down the Israeli flag, broke into offices and tossed documents into the streets. The Egyptian army did intervene to remove protesters from the building, but they were not arrested.
On 10 September, however, in the early hours of the morning, there was a full-scale confrontation between protesters and the police, who were trying to disperse the demonstrators by the use of tear gas and rubber bullets.
Subsequently, Egypt’s ruling military council, made up entirely of Mubarak-appointed military personnel, has reimposed emergency laws curtailing freedom of the press, and have closed a TV station connected to Al Jazeera on the grounds that it had no licence.
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 1 October
In Yemen, the part of the army that remains loyal to the imperialist puppet president Ali Abdullah Saleh, under the command of Saleh’s nephew, General Yahya Saleh, opened fire with heavy-calibre machine guns and other weapons on unarmed protesters in Sana’a on 18 September.
By 20 September there were armed confrontations between Saleh’s forces and those of the First Armoured division, led by General Ahmar, who has sided with the protesters against the government.
The following weekend, Saleh, who had been detained in Saudi Arabia to recover from wounds he received in an attack on the presidential palace, returned to the Yemen, announcing that he was “carrying the dove of peace and the olive branch”.
That peace and that olive branch, however, are entirely dependent on the Yemeni masses succumbing to his demand to remain in power, when almost the whole of Yemen wants him to step down.
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From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 1 October
At long last Saudi women are to have the right to vote and to run in municipal elections. It is a start, as the medieval regime struggles to maintain its authority against the tide of the Arab spring.
However, as well as continuing to be barred from state elections and office, women have to have their male relatives’ permission not only to stand but even to vote. And this reform is not due to be implemented until 2015. Fathers or husbands still control whether women can travel, work, receive health care, attend school or start a business.
The ban on driving or going out in public without male chaperones remains. Women lawyers are not allowed to appear in court, and a reform proposed recently to permit female shop assistants to be employed for the sale of women’s undergarments was abandoned as a step too far.
